ABSTRACT
Introduction The key to understanding the international impact of China’s emergence as a major economic power, as marked by its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), is that the global division of labour at the end of the last millennium was a highly unnatural one. It was unnatural because the self-imposed isolation of China in the 1949-1979 period and its slow integration into the international economy in the 1980-1991 period kept over one fifth of the human race from meaningful participation in the world trade and investment systems. This is why China’s accelerated integration into the world economy beginning in the mid1990s has led to significant relocation of labour-intensive industries to China. In mid-2003, the electronic and electrical firms in Penang, Malaysia, employed 17 per cent fewer workers than in 2000. On the other side of the Pacific, 500 of Mexico’s 3700 maquiladoras (foreign-owned export-oriented firms) have closed since 2001, and the surviving maquiladoras have reduced their employment by almost a third.
