What are the factors that determine the status of Japan, Germany, the United States and China in the world structure? Why?

2/kloc-0 The world situation at the beginning of the century was the result of the evolution of the world pattern in the early 1990s. In the early 1990s, three major events that may change the world pattern occurred: first, the retreat of the socialist wave marked by the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the marketization of China; Second, while Japan was stagnant and Western Europe was growing slowly, a "new economy" appeared in the United States, which lasted for ten years. Third, marked by China's taking the market road, China's economy, especially its industrial production capacity, has experienced a decade of high growth. Their interaction and influence determine the world today. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the retreat of the socialist wave marked by China's market road have produced two major consequences: first, globalization and economic liberalization-in fact, capitalist globalization and economic liberalization-have developed rapidly; Second, the rulers of all countries in the world have come together since then and have never United on the basis of the overall consistency of interests; Third, with the expansion of capitalism in the world, the increasing resistance force has lost its weight and position in the system. Socialism, as an opposing force, puts capitalism under pressure and adopts improved means to weaken the resistance to socialist nourishment. Once the tide of socialism ebbs, the external legal binding force of the vicious expansion of capitalism in the world basically disappears, and capitalism never wants to improve, which is an important foundation for globalization and economic liberalism to triumph within capitalism. On the other hand, China, former socialist countries, the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe have all joined the world capitalist system, and their strength has greatly increased. This is accompanied by the prevalence of capitalist ideological liberalism in the world. Since 1992, China's market-oriented road has completely integrated China's economy into the world capitalist system, and it has produced rapid growth for more than ten years. This growth is accompanied by great changes in the economic structure of the third world, which will have a significant impact on the whole world as much as that of the United States. First of all, the rapid growth of China's production capacity has broken the pattern of the third world chain in the world division of labor system. Secondly, the rise of China began to challenge the position of moderately developed countries and even Japanese in the world economy. The particularity of China lies in: its complete and huge industrial base can have the technology and processing capacity of almost any ordinary industrial product; Its low income level, huge population, basically universal primary education, huge secondary education and increasing absolute mass higher education can provide almost unlimited cheap human resources at all levels; Its high savings rate and the huge inflow of foreign capital that will surpass that of the United States in 2002 make it possible to provide almost unlimited capital; Its good and fast-developing infrastructure makes the support and accommodation capacity of investment and production almost infinite compared with the world market; Its huge population and not very low economic level have produced the largest market in developing countries; Its authoritarian system provides a relatively stable social environment and good protection for capital. All these are absent or not at all in other developing countries. As a result, China has the greatest production potential in the third world, which is the basic feature of today's world structure. First of all, vested interest groups composed of a few western developed countries, with their strong comprehensive strength, dominate and use existing international rules to protect and expand their vested interests. The objective consequence of the end of the Cold War is that for the first time in the history of the world, such a vast and relatively unified market has emerged, and the main global forces have such a broad and stable vested interest. There has been a situation that unless there is internal division, there will be no challengers in a decade or two, so that some people claim that freedom, democracy and market economy are the only feasible choices, and history begins to end with the victory of western values and systems. Secondly, the United States is the most influential and aggressive force in this group of countries with vested interests. At the same time, the overall strength of Europe is also rapidly improving. The understanding of American hegemony must be based on the developed countries as an interest group. In other words, the United States is only a part of the whole western world, and this is the source of its influence. It is in this sense that the choice of Europe is particularly worthy of attention. Thirdly, in terms of the establishment and implementation of international rules, the characteristics of regionality and diversity are obvious, and the trend of accelerated integration of North America, Europe and Asia has begun to show. In terms of depth and breadth, behind the intensification of regional integration lies the motivation of all major forces to consolidate and expand their sphere of influence and instill rules conducive to their resistance to competition outside the region. Finally, although the vast number of developing countries have a strong desire to establish a more rational new international political and economic order, and occupy an advantageous position in individual fields, such as Russian military strength, oil resources in Middle East countries, population size of China, etc., on the whole, most of them are recipients of the current unfair international rules and the mode of production and lifestyle set by developed countries, and their interests or losses are quite different, so they still need to take collective actions to seek common interests. The economic globalization led by developed countries has spawned a new pattern of international division of labor in the world. Economic globalization is mainly reflected in the changes of international trade, direct investment and technology diffusion in depth, breadth and quantity. Developing countries benefit from technology diffusion and market opening in developed countries, and the application and diffusion of new technologies are always accompanied by large-scale trade and investment growth. In this process, the human capital of many developing countries has also been accumulated. Experience shows that there is a positive correlation between the improvement of a country's economic openness and its per capita national income growth. It is true that the experience of developed countries and some developing countries supports the view that "* * * will win". However, while globalization provides the world with a chance to win, it also challenges developing countries to fall into the trap of international division of labor. In the whole international division of labor chain, developed countries have occupied the market of products and services with high added value and high technology content by virtue of their advantages or opportunities in capital, science and technology, talents, marketing and consumption methods, while most developing countries are at the end of the international division of labor chain and become the providers of labor-intensive products and services with low added value and low technology content in the global market. With the rapid development of information and communication technology, there is an obvious "digital divide" in different countries or economies in acquiring information and communication technology and using the Internet to carry out various business activities. In other words, most of the benefits of globalization are obtained by developed countries, while developing countries can only get a small part of them. Moreover, it is this small part of income that leads to fierce competition among developing countries. They compete to offer various preferential conditions, such as tax incentives, promise to open the domestic market to the maximum extent, promise to abide by the strict economic rules formulated by developed countries, and even make political concessions. The vast number of developing countries have begun to unite to safeguard their own interests, but there are still many obstacles to overcome in order to truly synthesize a force. Generally speaking, developing countries share common interests, and the latter creates conditions for them to safeguard their own interests through cooperation. However, we also need to see that common interests are only necessary conditions for cooperation, not sufficient conditions. Considering that there are too many developing countries, countries have different interests due to their different levels of development and natural environment, and the sharing and enjoyment of the costs and benefits of collective action are often unequal, coupled with the differentiated policies of developed countries, it is difficult for many developing countries to form vested interest groups or international forces, so they are often at a disadvantage in the negotiation process of formulating international rules. In other words, successful cooperation among developing countries is often partial and temporary. The conditions for them to unite and truly become a force to be reckoned with in the world pattern are not yet ripe. The "bipolar" pattern of vested interests in developed countries began to appear, and the trend of world multipolarization was obvious. In a sense, the differences between the United States and Europe are profound and difficult to bridge. We can see that there are differences in the route and concept of building the future world order, and the competition in the monetary field is fierce. But the key point is that the way the United States promotes globalization is tantamount to subverting European production methods, lifestyles and values. Europe is reforming itself, but this does not mean that it fully agrees with the United States. It should be noted that the widening gap between the comprehensive strength of the United States and the European Union has stopped. Compared with the United States, Europe is more independent. In other words, Europe needs the help and support of the United States far less than the United States needs for Europe. At least Europe no longer needs the American umbrella to meet its own defense needs. In terms of population, output, trade, manufacturing and so on, in a word, in terms of market size, the EU has surpassed the United States. With the establishment of the euro and the unified central banking system, the gap between Europe and the United States in the allocation and enjoyment of global financial resources in the once weak areas, that is, the world currency and financial markets, has also been greatly narrowed. The operation and expansion modes of the euro zone and the European Union, as well as their overall attitudes and methods in handling international disputes (although there are differences among European countries), have greatly contributed to the accumulation of their "soft power", which shows that the unilateralism pursued by the United States is out of date or "helpless". Even from the perspective of cooperation and competition between Europe and America, a multipolar world has actually emerged. In the long run, the pole that is most likely to be on an equal footing with Europe and the United States in the future is Asia, in which China, Japan and South Korea are in a key position. Global issues and global governance issues are more severe and urgent than ever before, and they need and must be solved through coordination and cooperation among as many countries as possible. Global problems mainly refer to those long-term and universal problems involving the well-being of all mankind, which can be roughly classified into the following six categories: (1) establishment and implementation of trade and investment rules; The global financial system is stable; Transnational crimes such as terrorism, corruption, money laundering and illegal immigration; Human health, especially the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases such as AIDS and the management of genetically modified organisms; Environment and resources, including climate, pollution, biodiversity and tropical rain forest protection; Security includes preventing regional conflicts, multilateral peacekeeping and controlling weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. What is particularly worth mentioning here are two long-term factors that affect the global pattern: global governance and related immigration policies and population issues. All countries need to contribute to the provision of global public goods. But it is difficult to find an effective way to achieve this goal. Today's superpower, the United States, while enjoying hegemonic interests, has failed to fulfill its obligation to provide global public goods fairly and fully. Almost all global governance institutions are facing the problems of lack of legitimacy, transparency and weak sense of responsibility. Today, factors of production such as capital, technology and management knowledge can flow freely across borders, except for the free flow of labor. Many fanatics of free market principles have also avoided the idea of letting labor flow freely on this planet. The obstruction of the free flow of labor force implies the limitations of economic globalization at a deeper level. At the same time, Europe, Japan and other developed countries have begun to step into an aging society, and absorbing a large number of immigrants has become a very realistic problem facing these countries. The social, political and economic impacts brought about by a large number of immigrants entering developed countries will inevitably affect the foreign policies of these countries and even the world pattern.