The World Will Never Be The Same Again?

……. that's because coronavirus has now shown that every country is now sequestered within itself, countries are raising borders, people are not travelling, people are working from home, they have forgotten travelling overseas and working from overseas, people are looking at shifting supply chains within their own countries. So does it mean globalization is finished? The answer is No! This is a larger debate. You can agree or you can disagree. The world is even flatter than before. COVID-19 rules the world and you will now see that globalization will get a second life because countries are heading to talk to each other, science now has become so important in our lives and there's nothing more global in the world, not even financial flows. You might not only see a new birth of globalization, the new life of globalization but you might see changes in the shape of this global, change in the global balance of power post COVID. And that is when we come to a question which is on top of our minds; What happens to China?

 This is because many people believe and even I believe that after this pandemic there will be a global push back on China. The world at large is very dissatisfied with the way China has handled the Corona crisis. China has been less than transparent, in fact, China has been criminally opaque on this and they took too long to warn the world. WHO may deny the fact but it is widely believed that ‘China exercises undue influence. On 14th of January 2020 as late in this crisis, WHO tweeted that, ‘there is no evidence of human to human transmission of this virus which made the whole world apparently little more complicit.

WHO's Tweet

 Later on, there were some statements from WHO praising China which brings me to a general feeling that China misused its power and the strength that it had to the advantages that it had because of the closeness of its system. In China, nobody can question the state. There is evidence to the fact about how the Chinese turned out the foreign press, how the Chinese shut up and side-lined some of their dissidence who were whistle-blower. In fact, some people disappeared in the sense that they have not been seen or heard in public since then. America, Britain, Germany, France have spoken about it at some level.

China is now the factory of the world. All the supply chains are linked to factories in China. So people suddenly realised that all their supply chains were linked to some factories in China. When China is hit by a virus like this, and China has got paralysed then everybody started thinking, do I need to shift my assembly lines? India also started thinking the same. Also, we have seen a lot of debate and discussion in the Indian media that, this is India's opportunity and all these factories will be shifting out of China. But that's where I feel that it might be premature to declare victory. I say this because when you look at all other countries they are still dealing with this corona crisis but the Chinese seem to be out of it already. In fact, the Chinese are going back to Disneyworld. Last Monday this week the Chinese have already reopened Disney World at Shanghai and tourists in China are visiting with masks & sanitizers. So here is a country which first got hit by the virus in a big wave, looked like paralysed but now it’s the first country that looks like it is back to normal. So we need to be cautious before declaring victory because we might get some of these assembly lines to ship from China to India but we have to start working on that right now and work very hard. We should not presume anything because the Chinese have already been able to work through the pandemic and because the Chinese have done it other countries might actually become more dependent on China. 

6 months from now if America and India are still entangled in this crisis whereas the Chinese may have resumed all their production. The Chinese going to Disney world! is now a metaphor for the turnaround in China. So just because the virus started in China we should not presume that we are winning this war. In fact, over the course of time opposite will happen. Global companies may think that, even in such a big pandemic, the Chinese were the fastest in handling the crises and we are safer working in China than shifting anything out of China. COVID 19 shows that the Chinese get their act together.

So we should not jump to the conclusion that China is now finished or China is on the decline and it is America's moment or India's moment. It will definitely need efforts to confront China. We all Indians have weakness and that is, We declare victory too soon’. Making a presumption that China is losing everything and all the opportunities may be coming to India seem to be quite hasty. In my opinion, the business may not leave China. 

Powerful Leaders

The one thing that Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Narendra Modi have done on the positive side of Coronavirus: Xi Jinping initially he missed the Coronavirus and he did not see how serious it was going to be. So it looked like he missed the bus but then he acted quickly after that and then he used all the methods that are available to him in China that obviously are not available in a democracy to get over the virus so that he can bring back China in order. Secondly, Donald Trump had to try very hard. What Donald Trump did was, that he stopped flights from China early but not from Europe. So people from China came to Europe and from Europe, they travelled to America. Thirdly Boris Johnson tried a bit harder. Boris Johnson wanted herd immunity in the UK and then lost his nerve but after that, he has come to grips with the situation faster than you would have expected. Lastly, Narendra Modi has been very quick with the national lockdown, very decisive and he actually gets a very decent grade for the way he responded to the virus. Shri Modi has been more effective in handling the crisis. The virus has not spread much in India at that speeds considering the population. It could be because of Epidemiology reasons, it may be because of the weather, it may be because of the latitude at which  India located. But the fact is that in a country like India with so much poverty, the huge density of population in large parts of the country where, ‘even to get water to wash your hands with a handwash is a luxury’, to keep numbers at low level is a great achievement. If 1.3 billion people who speak more than 100 languages can stay together like this, then remember its India's pluralism and democracy which is a blessing for India and it’s a blessing for the entire world. Just imagine if India turns like Syria having no community, no ethnicity, no sect can live with the other, then the world will be a different place. Because Syria being like this, the world can live with, but if India turned out like that the world will be a different place. So, it is very important for India to keep it all together.

The last question that comes to my mind is how the world will deal with China. 

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Donald trump's way of dealing with China has been moronic. He should not have taken on China alone. Instead of it, he should have brought the world together to take on China by walking of trans pacific partnership that involves countries like Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Vietnam, Canada etc. He should have also signed up deals with India, Europe, etc. which can bring the whole world together against China. On the other hand, he broke the trans-Pacific partnership and decided to take Xi Jinping on his own. 

The fact is, that globally there are impressions that China sooner or later they will have to accept some kind of a global inquiry into where the virus came from and how did it spread so fast and why it took so long for China to share this information with the rest of the world.

Climate change is a continuing pandemic. Nature is now hitting back at us and saying that you been taking too many chances.

Lastly, ‘Will the world never be the same again’? The word human beings are very resilient, and they come out of the crisis. So, anyone who says that the world will never be the same again, you are most likely to be proven wrong. So, to conclude with an optimistic note, ‘People are resilient & will bounce back soon’.

All views and opinions expressed in this blog are the personal opinions of the author.