| The observation of changes of time and space that have taken place in human society from the point of view of historical philosophy, reveals that human society has been moving towards "economic globalization" since the advent of capital. As an objective and historical progress pushed by scientific and technological revolution and information economy, economic globalization has become inevitable, with the development of trade, finance, investment and the spread of knowledge. How to understand and deal with economic globalization properly poses both theoretical issues on how to analyze the developmental process of the contemporary capitalism and developmental stage of socialism; and practical issues on how to make strategic choices in the new century for China. Therefore, China, one of the developing countries, should pay special attention to and do systematic research on globalization in order to put forward appropriate strategies.The crucial components and driving force of economic globalization are trade globalization, financial globalization, investment globalization, production globalization and technological globalization etc. Since the end of 20 century, there have been more conflicts on how to understand the historical development trends of economic globalization; how to understand the new changes of relationship between North and South; how to deal with the unequal distributions between the developed countries and the developing countries; and how to explain whether globalization is a "trap" set up by the developed countries for the developing countries. Though many scholars at home and aboard have analyzed and expounded them in depth from different point of view, there are still much vagueness and ambiguities, which confuses people and needs further study.The history of human civilization is the one in which human beings have been interacting with one another and developing their social relationship or assimilating different civilizations. Since 1492 when Christopher Columbus discovered America, the world has entered a new era of "interdependence and interaction" termed by Marx and Engels. With the discovery of the New World, opening up the sea route to Asia by Portuguese navigators such as Dias, and Magellan's navigation around the world, human history has entered what Toynbee considered "revolutionary reformation" from grassland to sea and ended the isolation between the east and the west. This made it possible to expand capital and caused a great mass fervor of exploration and trade. Colonial expansion of the European Powers not only accelerated the primitive accumulation of capital and the establishment capitalist production but also opened up trade routes to every corner of the world. From then on, economic development and cultural transmission have no longer been restricted within one area or one nation, but on a global scale. The histories of different nations all over the world have been becoming a united world history. Since the beginning of the capitalist era in the 16th century it has been 500 years. Within this period, the means of capitalist production has been expanding so tremendously that market economy has been carried out beyond national boundaries. Historically speaking, the geographic discovery and the expansion overseas created adequate environment for economic globalization, which was born after the first industrial revolution and the establishment of capitalist system, and whose steps were quickened by the second industrial revolution and the development of capitalism at the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century. During the First World War and the "Cold War", economic globalization proceeded slowly. The end of "cold war" marked the real arrival of the age of economic globalization.There were four main factors that promoted the development of economic globalization: Developed countries advocated to loosen economic controls between countries and to smash all kinds of protectionist barriers in order to shake off their economic recession an...
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