“In thinking about globalization, we need to start with God.”
Asia
Australia, and New Zealand
NEW ZEALAND In New Zealand, we — especially the younger generation — sometimes perceive ourselves as being in the middle of nowhere. Now that's starting to break down, thanks to the media. And there's so much talk about the New Zealand economy being a fine example of an economy that functions the way it should. The Internet is allowing people to find out about that.
The positive aspects of globalization are really happening because hearts are reaching out to hearts. People are starting to look for spiritual answers because we've exhausted everything else. Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health can help religions around the world find a basis for working together.
Craden Henderson, Auckland
JAPAN Globalization means communication. Communication is a good thing. One of the biggest opportunities globalization offers is for all of us to understand each other better, to get along with each other better, and to minimize the chances for conflict in the world. But we're not there yet. Obviously, there's been an increase in small-scale conflicts around the world since the end of the Cold War. The great opportunity is in global understanding, in global oneness.
That brings us to the challenge of globalization. When the G-7 countries meet and talk about the need for a new financial architecture, that may signal a step towards broader forms of global government. And this is a very new thing when we start to think of planet Earth as a place that depends on administration and bureaucracies — whether they're economic, political, or cultural — to govern certain aspects of the way people deal with each other.
World unity, however, is a very spiritual concept. There is one Lord, one God, one Mind. Understanding that concept can help make institutions of international government work, make global understanding work, and make peace happen. It can make economic prosperity happen.
In Indonesia, which has 200 million people and is the fourth most populous country on the planet, the effect of the withdrawal of foreign money has been devastating. The World Bank says that never has a country fallen so far so fast, especially not one the size of Indonesia. There's the challenge — to prevent that sort of thing from happening again.
As we talk about trying to administer the world as one place, people may want to hang on to a strictly national identity. People sometimes think there's a tension between acknowledging the allness of God and wanting to preserve their individual identity.
Yet acknowledging God's allness doesn't in any way impinge on one's identity. In fact, if God is the source of your identity, then acknowledging the allness of God, and your individual reflection of that allness, gives you strength, gives you courage. Cameron Barr: Staff Writer, The Christian Science Monitor. Tokyo
INDIA In India, globalization has brought in technology and foreign investment. It has improved the quality of goods manufactured, raising them to international standards. It has also built bonds with people from other nations, so they are no longer strangers. We are realizing that everybody is fundamentally the same — with the same aspirations and hopes.
There are some undesirable things connnected with globalization, though. We've had an inundation of international companies in India, and sometimes the smaller, indigenous companies get swallowed up. And sometimes the technology is not always the most recent. It is often three or four years old when it reaches us.
In thinking about globalization, we need to start with God — to open our thought beyond the limits of the physical universe, to the universe God has created, the spiritual universe. The entire government of this universe is in His hands. Globalization, in spiritual terms, is knowing God's presence, which means His intelligence and love are everywhere. Our true progress, our true culture, our true activity, are entirely spiritual.
Jer Master, Christian Science Practitioner and Teacher, Bombay
CHINA The opportunities of globalization include understanding new cultures, history, customs, art, and religion. Globalization is strengthened by enlightenment — understanding more fully God's creation.
I'm filled with gratitude for my new business as a specialist in Chinese artifacts and Qing furniture, for my friends in Hong Kong and China, for the beauty of the things I'm working with, and for the way the people I'm selling them to around the world appreciate these things.
Andrea McCormick, formerly of Hong Kong
JAPAN The media and the Internet have made us timeless and spaceless. During the Tiananmen Square crisis, fax machines were busy full time, pouring news into and out of China. It is extremely difficult to keep things hidden any more.
Over the past year, however, we've been experiencing the negative effects of globalization in an acute way throughout Asia. Globalization helped inflate the economic bubble, then helped burst it. Now we have to seek higher values, something that does not crumble. Economy is really not a matter of dollars and cents. It's about ideas. When things are going well, people don't stop to think. In this gloomy economic picture, though, we need to listen to the ideas that come to us from God. And, with these, we can make a breakthrough. We can change things.
Toshi Morikawa, Journalist, Tokyo
AUSTRALIA This thing we call globalization started some three centuries ago, at least. It's more than just what happens to the Japanese yen and Hong Kong dollar. It includes a thirst for technology, a thirst for the rule of law — for civil rights and civil liberties. It also includes an openmindedness and an awareness of cultural facts, including a spiritual foundation.
Mary Baker Eddy described an ethic and an agenda for a higher sense of globalization in Science and Health, which says: “One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself;’ annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, — whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed” (page 340).
The challenge today is to turn our prayers beyond the personal level. We must all learn to pray at the global level.
Roger Pyatt, expert on globalization and former Professor, University of Hong Kong.
Asia
Most populous countries
• China: Pop.: 1,236.9 mil; 9,597,000 km2 ; Industry: steel, coal, mechanical engineering
• India: 984.0 mil; 3,288,000 km2 : textiles, chemicals, food production
• Indonesia: 212.9 mil; 1,919,000 km2 ; oil, textiles, coal mining
• Pakistan: 135.1 mil; 803,900 km2 ; textiles, food production, beverages
• Bangladesh: 127.6 mil; 144,000 km2 ; jute, cotton, food production
• Japan: 125.9 mil; 378,000 km2 ; steel, electro industry, construction materials
• Philippines: 77.7 mil; 300,000 km2 ; textiles, pharmaceutical industry, chemicals
Sources: Der Fischer Weltalmanach ‘97, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag Frankfurt/M. /CIA, www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook
“We were really protected.”
INDONESIA During the riots last year, I stayed with my eldest daughter in an area of Jakarta where most of the burning was done. It was two o'clock in the morning, and we couldn't sleep. We could see smoke everywhere. I called a Christian Scientist in Holland and asked her to pray. My daughter and I read the Indonesian Science and Health all night.
The next morning, she was told that during the night there had been two trucks of people near our complex, ready to plunder it. Then some workers we know told them, “Don't do that. The people who live here are loving people. They are very nice to us, who are just common workers.” And the trucks left. We were really protected.
Whether it's global problems or problems in our own country — when we see our neighbors as God made them, these problems can be solved. Those who believe that God, the one Supreme Power, is governing us still walk hand in hand, praying in accordance with their respective religious beliefs that harmony will be restored.
The future looks very bleak. To find food for 200 million people is not easy. But there is hope. There is a growing hope. Lynn Noerhadi, Christian Science Committee on Publication, Jakarta
