The Pitfalls, Principles and Priorities of Establishing a New Global Economic Order

Abstract

Some scholars call it the world legal economic order, while others describe it as the ‘rules-based’ global order. This essay contends that the world urgently needs a new economic order. While the world cannot, and should not, revolutionize the system that is currently in place, it does need to consider how it should be reorganized and subsequently replaced by a new order. It is essential that a new order serves not only the established world powers but a greater number of the newly emerging economies and nations. The development of this new order must ensure that it is representative of a world that is markedly different from the post Second World War ‘legal economic order’. Those creating the new order are dealing with new challenges that could not even be imagined at the end of the Second World War. Humanity now inhabits a world that is more interconnected, more interdependent and, in a word, more ‘global’. This connectivity is part and parcel of the process of globalization, which at this point cannot be avoided. China and other emerging powers will be greater contributors to the process of globalization if they follow fundamental principles that benefit all of mankind.