Unipolar or bipolar?

My father once told me that when the world was bipolar, Indonesia had one of the strongest military in the southern hemisphere. Then, I could not understand why that was the case because I was born and spend my entire life in a unipolar world. Recent events however have made me understand things better.

To put it quite simply, you cannot play one power against another in a unipolar world but can do so in a bipolar world. When one does not want to provide you with assistance, you always have the alternative option of engaging the other. The lack of military assistance provided to the East Timorese by the Australian has led them to request for assistance from China. In a unipolar world, there will be no gunboats and army barracks for the East Timorese. Additionally, in light of the delay in the funding promised by several developed nations to the Libyan Transitional National Council, one wonders if the ongoing visit by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil to China has got anything to do with this.

Whether the desired wishes of countries are good or bad remain open to debate. What is clear is that these wishes are more likely to be fulfilled in a bipolar world.

China’s migrant workers: In search of prosperity or is it?

In search of better lives for themselves and their families, many people who live in rural China become migrant workers and work in large cities. While the practice of rural-urban migration is common across countries, the presence of traditional registration system that is still operating in China meant that it is not possible for the children of these workers to follow their parents to the cities because they will not be able to have access to services such as education and healthcare. As such, families break up and the children are usually taken care by the elderly in the villages.

At first glance, this seems to be a perfect arrangement. After all, it is unlikely that one’s parents will ill-treat one’s children. With this in mind, migrant workers move to the cities with the sole objective of earning enough money that they hope will get their families out of the cycle of poverty.

But is this true? Perhaps not. While money is important, it is not the only ingredient to get out of the cycle. In the words of an economist, money is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. While money can grease your way out, you need to have the capabilities and the right qualifications to be able to obtain jobs that can get out of your subsistence condition.

When migrant workers leave their children, they inadvertently take parents’ care away from their children and this is not really wise to do when children are in the stage of growing up. This may then affect them psychologically and start to have collateral effect on their education for example. With no good qualifications, the entire cycle seems likely to repeat itself for the next generation.