Hyperglobalisation
Topic: Globalisation and MNCs · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Hyperglobalisation was a period, from about 1990 to 2008, when world trade grew much faster than world GDP. In those years countries joined the world economy at great speed. Five things drove it:
- ICT (telecom, computers and the internet), which made contact across the world cheap and instant.
- Containerisation, which means packing goods in standard boxes that move straight from ship to train to truck.
- The end of the Cold War.
- China's entry into the WTO (December 2001).
- The rise of global value chains (GVCs). In a GVC, making one product is split into stages, and each stage is done in a different country.
Example
After China joined the WTO in December 2001, it became the world's factory for parts and finished goods. In the same period, India's post-1991 opening made it a hub for outsourced services such as call centres. The World Bank's WDR 2020 says almost half of world trade is GVC-related, and that share peaked around 2008.
Don't confuse with
- Slowbalisation: the phase after the 2008 global financial crisis, when world trade grows no faster than world GDP. Hyperglobalisation means trade grows much faster than GDP.