De-globalization: Features, Causes and Outlook

Globalization or de-globalization are fundamentally driven by three groups of factors: technology progress, policy and cost-benefit of globalization. The current de-globalization trend emerged as quite a while ago and has been aggravated to a new level by rising income disparities between economies and within economies. At the same time, the fourth industrial revolution characterized by AI, internets of things and robots will certainly make income distribution worse and ultimately lead to the end of globalization. Therefore, international institutions, national governments, NGOs and the research community must be prepared for this ending while China must give sufficient attention to the impacts on income distribution of BRI in order to counter the current de-globalization trend or lay the foundation for the sustainability of next round of globalization.