Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
By Parag Khanna, Random House, 496 pages, $30
Is the Chinese dragon mutating into an octopus?
This is the feeling that I was left with as I finished reading “Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization” by Parag Khanna. While the title sounded intriguing, most of the book is essentially a chronicle of China’s incessant march across continents, to build supply chains from the remote mines of Africa and beyond to feed its factories, to be shipped again to consumers across the world.
Doesn’t sound that interesting, does it? Well that’s what I felt too, once I finished it. Yet it wasn’t supposed to be this way as the book began rather interestingly. Khanna, who is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, traces connectivity from its origins in antiquity to the modern days of intercontinental tunnels. He regales readers with how one can circumnavigate the world without getting on an aircraft, the only missing link being a tunnel under the Bering Strait.
As we progress further into the book, however, the book unfortunately fails to maintain the rather good start. Khanna correctly stresses the need for modern governments to invest heavily in building infrastructure that will help improve connectivity across continents. However, I think he oversimplifies things when he reduces everything to a demand-supply paradigm. While supply chains are definitely now the most critical and visible aspect of globalisation, Khanna’s conclusion that political borders are being redrawn due to supply chain issues is almost akin to putting the cart before the horse. The latest example of this is the recent bankruptcy of South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping, which almost brought the entire world’s supply chains to a halt. This incident has proved that no chain is stronger than its weakest link.
While it is true that certain parts of countries are richer than the others, again, Khanna’s premise that we are going back to the ancient notion of city-states is, perhaps, too premature. The same is true for migration. According to Khanna’s data, while in 1960 only 73 million people lived outside their country of origin, the figure has now topped 300 million and is rising. However, this does not in mean in any way that the world is giving up its borders. We have witnessed the appalling situation of Syrian refugees being turned away in Europe, and the multiple deaths caused simply by the fact that someone wanted to lead a better life. Political borders are not going away anytime soon.
Also, political rhetoric is getting the better of the kind of hyperconnectivity that Khanna espouses. The US presidential election, among all the political issues, was unique in that both contenders spoke against globalisation and free trade pacts. There has been a lot of ground support, too, for such talk, as movements spring up across the globe against globalisation.
Let us not forget the Occupy movement and the theme of “We are the 99 per cent”. It has shown, as is evident all around us, that the trickle-down theory, in which it is assumed that the benefits of economic development will automatically disperse into the wider community, has not worked. All around the world, the very supply chain that Khanna eulogises has led to loss of thousands of jobs to the less-developed countries, leaving similar numbers jobless in the West. On the other hand, the addition of such jobs has not benefited the multitudes of people in the less developed nations, as the local population gets uprooted from their traditional lands and livelihoods, being taken over by the better educated people of the cities and towns, which in turn witness a rise in shantytowns that house the displaced. This results in further alienation, and often descends into violent movements. Khanna, unfortunately, leaves this particular stone unturned.
Khanna, to his credit, does take a pause from his unbridled rhetoric when he writes about the ruthless plundering of the planet’s natural resources and global warming. However, he loses sight again when he envisions global warming opening up new shipping routes across the Arctic and access new farmlands below the Greenland ice cap. While that may be good news for supply chains and food production, what of the irreparable damage to the rest of the world?
Overall, Khanna’s “Connectography” is a sobering read that reminds us of how the ruthless forces of global commerce are marching across the world. While it is sugar-coated with details of the benefits that such processes bring with them, unfortunately it leaves a slightly bitter taste as we don’t find any mention of those teeming billions who are losing out in this exercise.