ABSTRACT
The last 30 years have seen a global shift in the international division of labour, in which some parts of the former ‘Third World’ have become newly industrializing countries (NICs). This is most visible in the case of East Asia, and particularly China in recent years, but can also be seen in other parts of the developing world. The old, colonial-based division of labour in which it was said that the ‘advanced’ capitalist countries produced the industrial goods and the ‘Third World’ produced the primary goods was always an oversimplification; now it is simply inaccurate. Thus, according to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) figures, by the late 1990s almost 50 per cent of manufacturing jobs were located in the developing world and over 60 per cent of developing country exports to the so-called ‘First World’ were of manufactured goods, a 1,200 per cent increase since 1960 (UNDP 1998: 17). The share of the developing world in global manufacturing exports has increased substantially, from 4.4 per cent in 1965, to 30.1 per cent in 2003 (Glyn 2006: 91).
