In the digital era, new upheavals of globalization continue to shape and reshape our geopolitical, technological, and environmental structures, continually challenging our world systems. Many governments and institutions are scrambling to transform their current strategies to suit the needs in a dramatically changing global landscape. Meanwhile, in the middle of multiple global crises, COVID-19 pandemic, racism, global warming, and other long-standing global issues, people wonder how globalization is contributing to resolving or aggravating these problems.
To address these concerns, at the invitation of Columbia Global Centers | Beijing, Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, put forward in his article on China Daily that people will need concerted, planet-wide action to secure long-term peace and survival.
Main points of the article are as follows:
- The technological revolution has made the new world of e-everything.
- The digital revolution has brought China to the front ranks of global power and diminished the United States in relative terms as digital technologies have spread worldwide.
- The most important concept will surely be global solidarity, or as the UN puts it, “leaving no one behind.” With pandemic diseases, global climate change and the ongoing degradation of the world’s ecosystems, no region will be safe unless all are safe.
- China rightly favors international cooperation but needs to convince many worried nations that its vast powers and technological might will be used for the global good.
- Globalization will not go away, but it can and must be better managed.
- Well-being can be secured only when we choose politics and economics for the common good.
In an early June book launch, together with Axios’ World News Editor David Lawler and Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Columbia University’s Global Centers and Global Development, Professor Sachs introduced his new book The Ages of Globalization and turned to world history to examine how we can meet the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century.
Read the full article here, or watch the webinar here.
