I think this will be my second entry of the day. You guys are lucky today! So I was sitting in my International Relations class this morning bored. We were discussing the idea of globalization and whether it was a good or bad thing. Actually, I never participate in discussions because I’m intimidated by all the History and Public Policy majors. Half the time I have no idea what they’re talking about. Today we talked about the United States’ foreign policy with China. Since Clinton’s administration, the United States has implemented an engagement policy with China. Basically, this means that the US hopes by having economic relations with China, we will have more leverage to tell them to stop violating the human rights of their people. I think that is a whole lot of garbage. My professor made a good point that the US has a huge trade deficit with China, and that just shows how we don’t have any political/economical leverage over them. Also, China has been getting what it wants from us, so why would they change and still get the same things? To them there’s no need to stop their human rights violations.

I guess I’m kind of biased on this whole topic being that I’m a Taiwanese-American. I visited China three years ago, and I was quite surprised with just how behind it is. I know that its economy has been growing at a rate of 10% a year for almost a decade, yet it doesn’t seem to be a wealthy nation. I guess it still needs a lot of growing. Anyway, I really don’t think the US can influence China in doing something that it doesn’t want to do.

At the end of class, my professor gave out a handout with some numbers from the World Bank. Here are some interesting facts:

• Half the world population lives on less than $2 a day
• One fifth of the world population lives on less than $1 a day
• In the transitional economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia the number of people living with less than $1 a day has increased 20 times in the last decade
• In South Asia, the number of people living with less than a dollar a day has increased from $474 million to $522 million
• In Europe and Central Asia, the number of poor people has increased from 1.1 million to 24 million in the last decade
• The average income in the richest 20 counries is 37 times larger than the average income in the poorest 20
• The gap between rich and poor countries had increased 20 times in the last 40 years

Isn’t that just crazy? How can anyone live on just $1 a day? That’s how much a 20 oz. bottle of soda costs. Is globalization really worth it? In the end, it just makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. It’s not all about free markets. It’s really about unfair trade. Okay, that’s my 2 cents.