New Humanism and Global Governance

Lijun Yang, Wei Shan

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9789813236196
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Globalizzazione

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New Humanism and Global Governance is the first in this subject to study how a variety of factors related to globalization will shape the future of the human community. It discusses the major challenges to today's world order and governance, as well as international experience in responding to these challenges. It covers a wide range of issues including unequal distribution of wealth, the widening income inequality gap, contradiction between economic development and environmental protection, the middle-income trap, de-globalization, democratic crisis, anti-immigration sentiments, nationalism, and radical extremism. It addresses these issues by emphasizing policy implications for governance.

The chapters are selected papers from two international conferences jointly held by the Institute of Public Policy(IPP) at the South China University of Technology and UNESCO. Contributors from China, Europe and the US present their questions, observations, and analyses in a narrative and descriptive style which appeal to a wide range of audience.

--> Sample Chapter(s)
Introduction: New Humanism and Global Governance
Chapter 1: Sustainable Development and New Humanism --> Contents:

• Theory and New Perspective:
  • Sustainable Development and New Humanism (Hans d'Orville)
  • New Humanism with Cultural Roots for the Anthropocene: A Confucian Perspective (Chenyang Li)
  • The Impact of Political, Economic and Social Transitions on Order and Governance, Their Vulnerabilities and Predictabilities (Hans d'Orville)
  • The Impact of Globalization on Political Order of Developed and Developing Countries (Mehri Madarshahi)
  • Why Does Globalization Reverse? The Crisis of the Neoliberal Policy Paradigm (Bai Gao)
• Cultural, Knowledge and Gender:
  • The Transformative Force of Culture in Sustainable Development: Innovative Approaches in Practice (Helene George)
  • Governance, Knowledge and Crisis in the Developed World: The Use of Expertise in the 2008 Financial Meltdown (John L Campbell and John A Hall)
  • Copreneurship and Sustainable Development in Small Family Firms Under the Transitional Economy of Taiwan (Yu-Hsia Lu)
• Trade, Market and Labor Force:
  • Market, State and Development (Ramesh Thakur)
  • Global Value Chains and New Thinking on Trade and Industrial Policy (Yuqing Xing)
  • Deconstructing Informality: A Response to Vulnerability or an Optimal Choice? (Lina Song, Simon Appleton and Zhe Liang)
• Party, Governance and the Rule of Law:
  • Governance in Post-Neoliberal Latin America: Lessons from Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela (Anthony Petros Spanakos)
  • The Rule of Law, Market Order and China's Party-State System (Ning Wang)
  • The Party, Governance and Rule of Law in China (Lance L P Gore)

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--> Readership: General public interested in the social, political, economic and financial development of China. -->
New Humanism and Global Governance;Isolationism;Anti-Immigration;Income Inequality;Cultural Knowledge;Governance in Post-Neoliberal Latin America;Global Value Chains;The Rule of Law;Market Order;China's Party-State System0 Key Features:

• Differs from competing topics by covering a wide range of factors contributing to global governance, including inequality, immigration, global value chains, global market, cultural knowledge, etc.
• Addresses the topics by emphasizing policy implications for governance
• Includes chapters by international organization leader Hans d'Orville and leading scholars like Prof John L Campbell and Prof Gao Bai

Part 1

Theory and New Perspective

Chapter 1

Sustainable Development and New Humanism

Hans d’Orville

Honorary Professor, The Institute of Public Policy
South China University of Technology
Former Assistant Director-General for Strategic Planning, UNESCO

[email protected]

In 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for developing domestic think tanks that have international influence and reputation.

China’s think tanks have gained strong momentum in recent years — not least highlighted at the recent world summit of think tanks held in Beijing, addressed by Prime Minister Li Keqiang. Yet, Chinese entities are still lagging behind their fellow peer organizations in Western countries in terms of in-depth analysis, scope, independence and funding. To go global, institutions must build an international horizon and amass broad expertise, specialize in national, regional and international affairs, and stimulate international debates. They should also set tangible goals and encourage branding, publications and media relations. The Internet should be considered as a mandatory tool for publicizing research projects and results.

Research results will need to be presented in a very readable way to reach policymakers both nationally and internationally, which necessitates the presentation of results in languages other than Chinese.

Why is going global so important and what efforts need to be made to be recognized and sought after internationally?

In foreign policy, it is imperative that one understands other government policies and what shapes them. At the outset, it is the political system, society and culture that must be grasped and appreciated. If you want to foster cooperation and minimize misunderstanding, there must be policymakers who have a deep knowledge of the way other systems function, their concerns and the meaning of words and terms they use.

What China does influences tremendously, directly and indirectly, the interests of other countries and global issues. Hence, there is a need for a high-quality decision-making entity in China and for understanding China — to avoid emergence of distrust.

Think tanks can act in a way that governments cannot do and can go deeply into understanding the thinking, concerns and assumptions of the other side. Think tanks can speak in a way that government officials cannot in deep dialogues and join research projects — which is vital. The Institute for Public Policy (IPP) at South China University is an important new think tank entity, which lines up with other respected institutes like the Tsinghua Center for Public Policy or with a recent conference by the German Marshall Fund in Guangzhou.

It is therefore my great honor and pleasure to share with you some think-tank style reflections on the relationship between sustainable development and the quest for new humanism.

Humanism: The New Relevance of an Old Modus Vivendi

“The fellowship between man and man which has been the principle of development, social and moral […], is the ideal of goodness entirely human.”¹ This citation of the Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans, well-known by her pen name George Eliot, reflects an early definition of a concept that marks one of mankind’s most influential philosophical strands of thought and a crucial turning point within the history and the development of human civilization: the concept of humanism. As an intellectual and ethical stance, humanism stresses the significance and the normative value of human beings both with respect to the individual as well as to the community and overall society. As such, the concept of humanism involves a critical reflection of the constitution of society and of the manner social interactions between human beings proceed. Regarding the concept’s origins within the framework of the era of Enlightenment, humanism was cast as a moral rationale to address fundamental questions relating to humanity and human nature, which sought to facilitate mankind’s progress in science, knowledge and technology. Rooted in the notion of a free and resourceful human existence, humanism evolved into a grand movement of human spiritual and creative liberation, which enabled an unparalleled acceleration of prosperity and transformation of civilizations. In line with humanist ethics, the material growth was understood as a collective good, which was to serve all participants of a community and meant to enable the socio-economic progress of society. Thus, although the exact definition of humanism has historically fluctuated in accordance with successive and diverse strands of intellectual thought, the underlying concept rests on the universal ideas of human emancipation, independence and social justice. To put it in Spinoza’s words, humanism proposes a free and fruitful society, in which not conflict, but peace presents the prevalent status quo, describing not only “an absence of war” but “a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence [and] justice.”² Humanism can hence be understood as a moral inspiration for critical reflection and positive action, aiming to establish a society based on peace, justice, democracy and human rights. This then is the mission and vision for IPP.

The moral foundations implied by humanism have universal claim and encompass all periods and times of human development. However, the realization of such humanist values is not a given, but a continuous task; it is not static or predetermined, but dynamic in nature, constantly striving to adapt to changing societal conditions. In the light of a rapidly progressing globalization, the contemporary world faces a myriad of unprecedented and unpredictable challenges, risking the well-being of millions of people who desire to live their lives in safety, dignity, self-determination and happiness. Global problems like climate change, environmental degradation, shortages of natural resources, the pollution of the ocean and the loss of biodiversity, growing social inequalities and lack of inclusion, economic uncertainty, shrinking cultural diversity and disappearing languages, social upheaval and new forms of conflict and war put to test the progress of human civilization and the very core of the humanist idea. As an intrinsic part of an increasingly interconnected world, these challenges mirror the somewhat paradoxical and ambivalent nature of the process of globalization and the one-dimensional way it has been structured and conducted thus far by political leaders and economic elites. Hence, in order to implement the societal vision of humanism in today’s socio-political and economic systems, one has to adjust and tailor the humanist claim to the present circumstances of today’s interconnected world. As UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, postulated in her speech on the occasion of the award ceremony for the Honorary Diploma in European and International Politics in Milan 2010, “[b]eing humanist today means adapting the strength of an age-old message to the contours of the modern world. By definition, this work is an ongoing effort that knows no end.” It is an effort that essentially lies at the heart of UNESCO’s mandate, an effort which is dialectical, steeped in dialogue and open-ended, which is innovative, inclusive and holistic. It is the quest for a New Humanism.

The Globalizing World — Oscillating Between Unprecedented Opportunities and Drawbacks

The phenomenon of globalization, defined as the global interweaving of economic, financial, social, political and cultural spheres, has brought about unprecedented opportunities for countries, regions and the global community, private businesses and individuals. Arguably, globalization has created tremendous material prosperity and wealth and has lifted many developing countries from the thralls of absolute poverty. Just look at China.

As envisaged by the neoliberal approach, the world’s developed countries have gained mammoth profits through the deregulation of markets and unconstrained flows of capital, goods and labor. Being at the top of the league of countries benefitting significantly from globalization, today’s industrial countries have sought to transform the international trade environment from a rules-based system to one dominated by self-regulating approaches. In this framework, economic development practices have mostly been inspired by the theories of neoliberalism, the modernization theory, the dependency theory or the institutional theory of development, the Marxist theory of development, the developmental state theory based on East Asian development models or post-modernism theory. Most of those theories — regardless of how different their substance and political implications may be — stem from scholars and writers residing in developed countries as they were the first to experience and witness a rapid economic development according to the neoliberal pattern. On the international level, this led to the application of an equally one-sided approach to development largely embraced by the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations and its special agencies — all committed to a liberal market economy and their perceived benefits. The neoliberal credo thus became institutionalized and accepted as the universal development model.

The generation of wealth and power in the process was accompanied also by costs and sacrifices at levels hitherto unimagined. As political theorist David Harvey elaborates in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, “[t]he theoretical utopianism of the neoliberal argument has […] primarily worked as a system of justification and legitimation for whatever needed to be done to achieve this goal,” irrespective of its political, social and environmental costs. Increasingly, an economic and social divide opened up and deepened, not only between different regions of the world, but also within individual countries themselves. This has exacerbated social inequalities and injustice, thereby jeopardizing social inclusion and the evolution of a peaceful and sustainable society and an equitable international system.

The Critical Turn — Moving from a Purely Growth-Oriented Approach to True Development

Slowly, but truly, the global community has begun to comprehend this downside of globalization and started to grasp its causes, implications and repercussions, which put the successful building of a world society and the effective preservation of our planet at stake. In addition to a growing global uncertainty in economic terms, the world is facing more and more natural catastrophes with tremendous socio-economic consequences for millions of individuals and whole regions. It can no longer hide from a swelling ecological and environmental destruction, resulting from a growth-only strategic orientation of development efforts at large. In an equally drastic way, rising social unrest, social movements and civil wars draw attention to the narrowness and the limitations of prevalent one-sided development models. All these aspects constitute a crucial turning point, which demands for a profound restart of reflection on purely neoliberal approaches to development. As a consequence and in contrast to the predominantly neoliberal discourse of development theory and policy, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements have more and more emphasized the relevance and the role of civil society and have put forward a more comprehensive understanding of development as a participatory process, involving social equality and equity as motors for a more inclusive economic growth. In similar lines, scholars as well as practitioners have started to examine the negative influences of globalization, neoliberalism and of the blind attempts to reproduce the industrial countries’ development experiences in countries trying to find their own strategy and their particular form of development. It has been in this context that the concepts of sustainability and of a new humanism have penetrated the international discourse, pushing for a critical reflection and inclusive reorientation of developmental policies.

In this connection, the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, which ushered in a financial crisis across the entire developed world, served as a harsh reminder that a predominantly growth-oriented approach to globalization was about to run its course. This not only led the financial crisis to a stagnation of economic development in both the U.S. and the European Union, but it also had a highly negative impact on those regions’ long-term prospects in the political and social realm. The socio-economic defects inherent in the neoliberal market model have been transferred to the world’s developing and transitioning states. In many developing countries, an economic standstill provoked political instability and social upheaval. In addition, countries undergoing an economic transition were faced with the problem of a “middle-income trap.” Such a phenomenon describes a situation, where transitioning countries like Brazil, South Africa or Malaysia that have attained a certain level of economic and social development, are beginning to lose their competitive edge with respect to production and export of manufactured goods, in light of rising wages and costs. I described this challenge at the 2014 IPP Conference with respect to China. As they are at the same time not yet capable to keep pace with the more developed industrial economies, these countries risk to get stuck at what the World Bank describes as the so-called “middle-income range.”³ Among other aspects, they consequently have to deal with stagnating growth, poor investment opportunities, inadequate diversification of industries and critical social conditions. Another problematic aspect of a purely growth-driven development strategy can be followed by the examples of China and India. Both developing countries have been highly regarded as effective models for successful and rapid economic advancement. However, their economic accomplishments have partly been achieved at the expense of ecological and cultural life. Environmental deterioration, exploitation of natural and human resources, a rapidly progressing climate change, menaces to cultural diversity, increasing social inequality and so forth are testimony of the unsustainable nature and the negative consequences of a narrow-minded approach to economic development. And, contrasting the general intuition, a purely neoliberal approach to growth has even started to undermine its own economic premises: After almost 30 years of having obtained an annual growth rate of 10% or more, China’s economy seems to have phased out, settling at first at an annual rate of 7+%,⁴ before settling in 2015 at the level of 7% as the “new normal.” Therefore, in order to support a continuous and resilient economic growth, the world has to distance itself from a short-sided and unstable form of neoliberal economics. The call for a sustainable, equal and participatory economic development has gained momentum.

The Quest for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Growth

The question as to what would constitute sustainable development and sustainable economic growth soon began to dominate the international debate. No longer was globalization an exclusively economic web of linkages, but its paradigm had mutated into an all-encompassing phenomenon, comprising almost every sphere of life — from politics and technology to education, science, communications, media and culture. These trends did not only proceed at the macro-level, but also at the micro-cosmos of societal living. The transnational flow of capital, labor, technology, people and information seemed to supersede all obstacles and appeared to overcome both political and cultural boundaries. All such transnational flows and interactions entailed a confluence of various cultural elements and components, ranging from material goods of consumption over symbolic meanings to sets of ideas and values. Hence, the recognition of culture as a key dimension of globalization and as an enabler and driver of sustainable development. It also brings to bear culture’s potential to bolster economic and social resilience, reduce poverty, and foster sustainable development, especially in the urban environment. Culture, the arts and creativity are at the core of the emerging Creative Economy in all countries, generating new sources of income, creating decent jobs and improving livelihoods.

The fact of intercultural and interethnical exchanges increasingly gains importance in both the political and the social realms of society, putting aside the notion of pure and demarcated cultures as an artificial illusion. A dangerous illusion indeed, which finds its strongest formulation in Samuel Huntington’s over-simplified and somewhat banal thesis of a clash of cultures and civilizations. According to Huntington, the increasing intensity of intercultural contact will inevitably lead to profound cultural conflicts, social turmoil and the destabilization of whole regions. UNESCO has strongly opposed such a theory and instead upheld human civilization as a historical development characterized by constant exchange and mutual enrichment between different cultural groups. The idea of cultural fluidity and hybridity, inter alia put forward by scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall or Mikhail Bakhtin, has thus always played a vital part in the history of mankind. Within the context of a progressing globalization, such intercultural processes now experience an unprecedented acceleration and intensification. Although UNESCO clearly believes in the essentially humanist nature of cultural diversity and in the inspiring potential of intercultural discourses, one nonetheless needs to be aware that such processes need to be consciously strengthened in order to counter possible cultural stereotyping, prejudices, and intercultural misun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• About the Editors
• Contents
• Introduction: New Humanism and Global Governance
• Part 1 Theory and New Perspective
• Part 2 Cultural Knowledge and Gender
• Part 3 Trade Market and Labor Force
• Part 4 Party, Governance and the Rule of Law
• Index