New directions and motivations for globalization

Editor's note: The Center for China and Globalization, a think tank headquartered in Beijing, hosted a forum on globalization in Davos on Wednesday last week. Following are excerpts of a speech on the topic of Lin Yifu, a professor of economics at Peking University and former chief economist and senior vice-president of the World Bank:

The anti-globalization wave arose because of the weak economic growth after the 2008 global financial crisis - the developed economies grew at 3 percent to 3.5 percent before 2008 and around 1 percent to 2 percent after that - and the stagnant growth of ordinary workers' wage, which has remained almost unchanged for four decades in the United States.

Worse, the distribution of national wealth over the past 30 some years has been extremely unfair in some developed economies, including the US, which has widened the income gap and caused a series of social problems.