Mandelson on globalization

By Penny Hawthorne | 20 September 2005

In a speech yesterday, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson warned that:

Europe cannot hide away from what is happening to our world. Sheltering ourselves from change is not an option...

Those who interpret this challenge as a race to the bottom based on low wages, have got it wrong, or at least substantially wrong. The staggering thing about Asia is the appetite for education, the outpouring of graduates often in computer science and engineering, and determination to develop their own research base.

Nor have we in Europe, America or Japan the moral right to think that the world owes us a living. It doesn't. Developing countries have every right to exploit the legitimate comparative advantages they have.

Also, the Western Mail (UK) reports that:

He said the economic challenge from China and India was not pushing Europe into a "race to the bottom" but a race to the top. "It's a question of not trying to compete where we can't, but making sure we succeed where we can as a provider of top quality, often highly-specialised goods and services in a knowledge-based economy." The economic challenge was 'urgent and inescapable for a Europe of falling productivity, 20 million people unemployed and tens of millions more of working age inactive'.