Impressed by alarming reports from many churches and conferences of churches in the two-thirds world, the 23rd general council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Debrecen, 1997) decided unanimously to "call for a committed process of progressive recognition, education and confession (processus confessionis) within all member churches at all levels regarding economic injustice and ecological destruction".¹ A direct echo of this decision was heard at the 8th general assembly of the World Council of Churches (Harare, 1999). After intensive discussion on the consequences of globalization for the poor indebted countries and the environment as a whole, the assembly expressed its "appreciation" of this Alliance initiative and decided unanimously to "encourage the WCC member churches to join this process".² On the basis of these two decisions, several contacts took place in 1999 between Warc and WCC staff to find out how they could implement these decisions jointly.

The urgency of the task

Warc and the WCC were moved to cooperate in this programme of work by a deep sense of urgency, rooted in their awareness of the painful consequences of economic globalization as it is now developing and influencing the daily life of almost all the citizens of the world.

The dominant view in the west is that globalization is a factual process of worldwide economic and technological development and increasing international trade, with benefits in which, in principle, all countries may share. Even more often, globalization is described as an inevitable and therefore neutral process of ongoing worldwide modernization to which there are simply no alternatives - so that it does not matter whether you are for it or against it.

For a number of years now, however, Warc and WCC member churches from the two-thirds world have been giving a very different picture of globalization. A stream of messages from the south signal the emergence of a new and bitter reality. This reality, as they report it, consists of:

many forms of deliberate exclusion of the poor and the weak,
ruthless competition by and between international concerns,
the progressive breakdown of education, health care and social welfare provisions, especially affecting women and children;
an ongoing and sometimes even brutal disrespect for the environment, and
a sweeping disregard for existing cultural values and social and political institutions.

For these churches, the supposed "neutrality" and "inevitability" of the present dominant global financial, economic and technological processes appears to be a flagrant lie, disguising the real and deliberate choices which are being made in practice:

the choice of an aggressive style of competition which is oriented to the principle of the survival of the fittest,
the choice of the self-aggrandisement of the already powerful, and
the choice of growing intervention in the political, social and cultural domains of other countries, in which the large transnationals and the wealthier countries are aided by the clear partiality of such institutions as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund.

These churches also mention repeatedly the growing dominance of the financial markets and the turbulence caused by massive capital flows. Capital, they say, can enter your economy freely, but also leave it overnight. It is as destructive as a hurricane, leaving in its wake a trail of bankruptcies, distorted projects, and rapidly increasing poverty, caused by growing unemployment and inflation. The extreme volatility of "global capital" is at the root of the Asian crisis which began in 1997 and continues to this moment. The free movement of capital forms, so to say, the spearhead of the present style of economic globalization. The main effect of this whole globalization project is to lower the barriers for the full entry of western interests and the western type of economy into other economies: in the ruling neoliberal perception of a global economy, all protection of domestic markets in the south has to be abolished. Many in the west see this as good and fruitful in itself, but these churches ask if this is really true. They point, for example, to continuous western commercial efforts to steer the minds of people in the south towards a whole number of new needs, while so many urgent existing needs remain unsatisfied.

Thus the preparatory documents for the 23rd Warc general council speak of a new "colonization of the mind", made possible by the new western technologies of information and communication, and warn that this goes along with an increase of materialism, especially among young people.³ In a similar way, the report of the 8th assembly of the WCC points to how the present capital-led globalization, with its drive towards limitless economic expansion, increases the poverty of the poorest and most indebted nations, and intensifies the conquest of nature in a merciless attack on the integrity of creation.⁴

So two very different and even conflicting pictures of globalization now exist side by side: one positive and the other far more negative. Both are directly related to the daily reality of billions of people, and both clamour for acceptance, inside as well as outside the churches.

Already that simple fact has to alert all Christians around the world. What is really going on here? It seems a historical task for all churches to find out for themselves what is really happening: to seek what is true, and to communicate their findings with all people of good will.

But, of course, there is more at stake. Insofar as it is true in this whole development the poor are excluded, not just accidentally but even deliberately, from the God-given goods of this earth and the minds of billions of people, north and south, are increasingly "colonized" just to give more room for the expansion of the economic interests of the already rich, then it demands a kind of awakening of the church itself. Churches should then see it as their calling to take a public stand in the deep spiritual battle which has to be fought in the world today, even if the opposition to this stand comes in part from within. For in that case the globalization project challenges the Christian faith of all ages, including long-standing confessions that the earth is and should remain the Lord's in its fullness, that the human spirit should be free and never be subdued to other interests, and that the fruits of the Lord's earth are there to be shared by all.

Even referring to this possibility, however, is clearly a matter of the utmost delicacy. That was why the 23rd general council decided not to take an immediate confessional stance on these issues. Instead, the council chose deliberately to invite Warc member churches to embark on a process of learning, involving steps of careful investigation, research, education and conscientization. The decision of the 8th assembly of the WCC to support this process was clearly related to a willingness to take the same path of searching and careful listening, so that this process would not only be in full accord with the principles of the conciliar process on "justice, peace and the integrity of creation" (JPIC), but could also be seen as implementing the solemn convenants which were made in the JPIC assembly (Seoul, 1990).

For the Bangkok and Seoul meetings this outlook implied from the beginning a double task. The first task was to gather the first elements or pieces of information, primarily from the afflicted and suffering people, which are needed by the churches to build up gradually a truthful, coherent and really ecumenical view of globalization and all its possible consequences. The choice of Bangkok for the first major symposium was thus not accidental, but deliberate. For Thailand in 1997 was the first country to be hit severely by the Asian crisis, followed by countries like Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia - a crisis which can be seen (and consequently studied) as one of the clearest expressions of the character of the present pattern of globalization. The second task, towering above the first, was to begin to address others. Not only to address some crucial actors in the global arena, like the IMF and the WTO, to make them aware of our findings, but also and even primarily to begin to address directly or indirectly all Warc and WCC member churches. For they have to get involved in the process, and should be stimulated from now on to take their full part in it. The intention of the general council in Debrecen was to deepen awareness step by step in a faith-laden process in and among all member churches, so that they see what is going on in our world today not as a "neutral" or "innocent" development, but as posing a challenge to the heart of our Christian faith. Churches in our time need be enabled to listen carefully to each other's voices, if they are to discern their true ecumenical role and to become obedient to God's calling in these critical moments of world history.

This second task appears almost impossible. But thanks to the remarkable results of these symposia in Thailand and Korea, it seems possible to say that a door has now opened before us and that we can indeed take steps forward. So we offer our report here with joy, hoping and praying that it will help and stimulate the churches to join wholeheartedly in this process of growing understanding, conscientization and reactivation.

The findings

In Bangkok, the poor and excluded were indeed the subject of the symposium. Their stories, their experiences, hopes and disappointments, were at the centre of the meeting, along with their desire to address others: global actors like the WTO and the IMF, but also the churches in the north. Most of the time was therefore spent in listening to what various groups of poor and excluded people had to say about their own experiences with the Asian crisis, together with what experts had to tell us about the origins of that crisis in the broader context of globalization.

Here follows a summary of our findings, condensed into four theses. This form is chosen to make it easier to use them in designing the symposia that will follow, and also to include the experiences of participants from other countries, along with some of the most important conclusions of the Korean symposium.

Thesis 1:While the usual statistical evidence indicates that the Asian crisis is over or in any case has passed its turning point, there are growing signs that the crisis is internally still deepening.

In Southeast Asia most countries' GNP grew between 6 and 10 per cent per annum from 1985 to 1995, a process which sometimes is described as "fast-track capitalism". Thailand played a full part in this process. At an early date, it decided on a full liberalization of its financial sector, maintained high domestic interest rates to suck in foreign capital (mainly "portfolio investments"), and pegged its currency (the baht) to the dollar to reassure foreign investors that there were no currency risks. This attracted billions in capital, leading to a boom in banking, building, and advanced industrial activities like the automobile and electronics industries. But, as Walden Bello recently wrote, and as was also confirmed by what we heard from the groups in Bangkok, that capital "never found its way into the domestic manufacturing sector or agriculture... these low-yield sectors that would provide a decent rate of return only after a long gestation period".⁵

When the economy overheated, and the balance of payments turned into a huge current account deficit (no less than 8% of GDP) in 1996, and consequently capital, in fear for a devaluation of the baht, began to move out of the country, it was possible to think that this would only harm the limited "modern" sector of the Thai economy, and that most other sectors would be able to go on as usual. And to expect that when the economy restored itself, exports grew again, and the currency was restabilized - as the statistics indicate: by the end of 1998 the current account again showed a surplus of 11%⁶ - then the crisis would be over, and the pain belong to the past.

The groups and people consulted in the Bangkok symposium, however, presented a completely different picture of continuing and even deepening misery, of growing suffering on the part of children, and of permanent social and economic damage. "The worst is still to come", Prof Leonor Briones, a highly respected expert from the Philippines, told the symposium. In Korea we heard similar voices.

But how can this be? The chief reason is that in addition to the economic "first-order" consequences of a crisis like this, which show up clearly in the statistics, there are also "second-order" economic and social consequences which only appear partially in the figures, and even serious "third order" consequences which escape almost all the statistics, because they are mainly qualitative in nature and take a long time to emerge. Facts illustrating each of these three categories were presented during the symposium.

First-order consequences include the flood of bankruptcies and layoffs because loans could no longer be paid, and a general rise in prices due to the strong depreciation of the baht. Fifty-six finance companies had to close down,⁷ and the number of workers employed in the construction sector fell within two years from 3 million to 2 million. The import-sensitive modern industrial sector was severely hit by the sudden rise of import prices. The government ran into a substantial deficit because of lower tax receipts, especially in corporate taxes (40% down), and there was a general decline in buying power and overall consumption.

A lot of suffering and distress is already hidden behind these figures. For what if you are suddenly unemployed and at the same time prices go up? Impoverishment is inevitable. Later on, statistics may indicate that employment is rising again and inflation going down, but it is usually the younger and most capable people who get the new jobs, while the older remain unemployed and in poverty.

This experience in Thailand was paralleled by reports from other countries, especially Indonesia and Malaysia. Both have a labour system which strongly promotes "labour flexibility" on the grounds of efficiency. This undermines what meagre provisions for work and income security still exist. Subcontracting, often exploitative, flourishes in this environment, and labour unions lose almost all their countervailing power (which in Indonesia is already minimal; strikes are usually broken with the aid of the military). In Indonesia, the value of the national currency (the rupia) fell during the Asian crisis to less than half its previous value. Many prices related to import products doubled, without any compensating change in wages for the poor. Poverty grew dramatically.

Second order consequences occur when policy makers begin to react to this new situation and programmes are developed for "rapid economic recovery". In most Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia was the exception), these programmes of "discipline and austerity" were imposed by the IMF as a condition for all kinds of financial aid.⁸ For Thailand, this meant severe restrictions on government expenditure, high interest rates (even after depreciation), and a significant rise in taxes on consumption (VAT). As a result, spending on social services fell in a year by almost 10%, spending on public health by almost 6%.⁹ Gross domestic product also fell.

Women living in the slums and the other poor districts in Bangkok (the Housewives Groups for Community Development, and Women Workers Group for Liberation) helped us to see what this really means. If many families in a neighbourhood lose their jobs and at the same time face sharp increases in prices and in rent, while cuts take place in social compensation, educational provision and public health care, it is as if society has just written off the whole neighbourhood. Any sign of protest is seen as political resistance. "Police come into our neighbourhood with dogs that bite us"; "we are seen as the people who make trouble" - this is what they told us.

During the visit to Korea, we heard similar things from the small Labour Union of Daily Workers. Because of the Asian crisis, the average income of urban daily workers in Korea fell by about 50% within two years, while at the same time the price of rice went up, their working-hours increased, and the contractors stopped the practice of payment in advance. Most workers were forced to borrow money just to be able to live, at a rate of 8.5% at the cheapest. "They changed our system," was their bitter complaint, "while others are at the same time enriching themselves, grasping all opportunities."

Both in Korea and in Thailand income inequality grew during the crisis. The rich minority in Korea increased its share of the national income from 22% to 24.5%. In Thailand, with a total population of 63 million, the number of people with an income below the poverty line grew from an estimated 7 million to an estimated 12 million today, while the share of the rich minority in the national income rose from 20.5% to 22.5%.

The third order effects are perhaps the most impressive and severe. They relate to what happens to people and to their environment in the medium and long term, when social and cultural consequences become clear. Several concrete illustrations were given in the symposium:

If people in the cities lose their livelihood by becoming unemployed, they sometimes see no way out but to commit suicide. In Thailand, the suicide rate jumped from 10 to 15 per 100,000. The symposium in Seoul heard that 2,288 Koreans committed suicide - sometimes as whole families - during the first three months of 1998, which gives a suicide rate of 25 people a day. Psychiatric hospitals recorded a growing number of patients as a result of the crisis; while in Thailand their level of expenditure was cut in the same period by more than 13%.¹⁰
In Bangkok, 38% of female workers lost their jobs. These women were often the only breadwinners in their families, and as a result many families could no longer send their children to school. The Thai ministry of education estimates about 100,000 dropouts from primary schools and 90,000 from junior secondary schools. The other side of this coin has been a substantial increase in child labour: about 350,000 more children on one estimate. A substantial number of those children now work in the prostitution sector. In a city like Pataya, which we visited, more than 200 child prostitutes approach foreign visitors every day.
When people in the cities lose their jobs, they often try to migrate back to the countryside. In Thailand, they migrated mainly to the north-east (67% of all migrants from Bangkok went to that region).¹¹ This increases the problems in poor rural districts (more than 70% of poor people in Thailand are rural poor). Poor fishermen spoke with us about those problems, which are aggravated by the enduring loss of their fishing grounds. Poor farmers reported to us a substantial loss of their lands because of a continuous reorientation of agriculture to the export sector, which is accompanied by a significant increase in the use of insecticides. Availability of and access to fresh water is diminishing rapidly for the growing number of poor people. References were sometimes made to the campaigns supported by the World Bank for the "privatization" of water.
During the symposium, the Thai women's section reported a rapid breakdown of trust in many poor communities, both rural and urban. This breakdown occurs especially when problems coalesce: growing unemployment, increasing indebtedness, increase in the use of drugs, more prostitution. There has been an alarming rise in violence against women - rape, harassment, domestic violence - with the age of the victims getting lower every year. These findings are remarkably confirmed by a recent case-study, supported by the World Bank, of the complete breakdown of community trust in a slum settlement in Khon Kaen (in Thailand). There is increased competition for jobs among neighbours who once cooperated and an increased incidence of theft, violence, drug-dealing and other crimes.¹²
In Indonesia, the steep rise in import prices hit the living conditions of the poor directly, but also led to an increase in ethnic and sometimes also religious tensions. Many shops in Indonesia are run by the Chinese minority, who are often Christians; when many retail prices doubled in a short period of time, they were seen as trying to enrich themselves in a period of trouble. Many Chinese women were raped, and churches were set on fire.

If we take this whole range of third-order effects together, then the inevitable conclusion is that the Asian crisis cannot be seen as an isolated financial crisis. It has spread like a cancer throughout the whole society, causing continuing damage at the level not only of "human capital" (deterioration in health, school dropouts), but also of social capital (loss of sense of trust, community, social peace) and natural capital (loss of care for the land, use of more aggressive fertilizers, sale of forests in Indonesia to international investors).

All this raises serious doubts, to say the least, about the net benefit of transnational capital for the countries of the two-thirds world - capital which can go out again just as easily as it came in. It casts serious doubt upon the "blessings" of the present pattern of enforced globalization and liberalization. What is ruined today in the name of supposed progress in the future?

Thesis 2.The role of the most important actors (the international agencies, the speculators, the political authorities) in the Asian crisis is open to severe criticism: partly because they acted so clearly in the framework of distorted and reductionist worldviews, and partly because of (strong indications of) unacceptable pressure or force.

During our symposia there was a consensus that the frequently negative facts presented did not spring from a kind of fate. We saw it as a common task to get as close as possible to the real causes, which in our view were human causes, including the worldviews in the heads and the hearts of the actors. Distorted or perverted ways of looking at reality lead to wrong types of behaviour. If, for example, the idea prevails that the global economy, with its related international financial circus, is mainly a world of anonymous and interacting market mechanisms, then words like "responsibility" or "accountability" simply lose their meaning. It may be for this reason that so many speculators and speculative power-groups cherish this view of the economy, but it remains a perverted view, hiding from the eyes of the public a part of reality which is in fact filled with power plays and all their related tricks and abuses.

Demasking evil and exposing illusions has always been seen as one of the most important tasks of the church: calling sin by its proper name. But how to do this concretely and (maybe even more difficult) honestly in this case?

We began by distinguishing possible actors, national as well as international, and studied their behaviour. Where possible we also listened to them: in the Seoul symposium, for instance, a high-ranking official defended the Korean government's policy during the Asian crisis. Several anomalies struck us in these reports.

Remarkably, countries like Thailand and Korea, which really suffered because of their vulnerability to the whims of international short-term capital, did not draw the logical conclusion that they had to review their policies in this regard. Their dependency on foreign short-term capital grew especially when both countries opened their capital markets to the free entry of capital - Thailand already in the eighties, and Korea especially since 1996, when it also became member of the OECD - but the Asian crisis did not lead to any diminution in their liberalizing efforts. One of our guest speakers, Ms Nicola Bullard (Global South), even said that Thailand now adheres to a greater degree of liberalization than before the Asian crisis. Is that a question of an unbroken, though distorted, faith in the benign working of market forces? Or is it mainly a question of fear - the fear of being left aside, of missing out on necessary credits in the future - maybe related to forms of international pressure or intimidation?
It was similarly strange, that the governments of both countries, while the balance of payments was already deteriorating (a clear sign of overinvestment) tried for so long to maintain the fixed external value of their currencies, which certainly aggravated the problems. Faith in free-market forces cannot have been the reason here, but - again - what about pressure - maybe also from within, from the new vested interests? There are strong indications of such pressure, in Thailand from the new import-dependendent business sector, and in Korea from the highly state-protected chaebols (whose output in 1996 amounted to about half of Korean GNP).
Even more striking is the role of the International Monetary Fund. It was asked for financial help and support, but, according to Nicola Bullard, its prescriptions turned the financial crisis into an economic recession. In both countries, the IMF "advised" high capital rates, and strong policies of austerity and restriction of government expenditure (mitigated in the Korean case by some social safety-nets), measures which could only result in a further decline of the domestic economy. Here no doubt the assumption has been that "servicing the external debt should be the overriding concern of crisis-stricken countries", instead of the view that priority should be given to "the domestic implications of the crisis".¹³ This assumption betrays a sacrificial tunnel-view of human societies, as if burdens have continually to be borne, especially by the very poor, in order to reach the light at the end of the tunnel later on: namely, at the moment when you again reach in your economy the high level of external credit-worthiness and competitiveness which is seen as necessary for each modern country in the global market. This seemed to us the, mainly hidden, basic philosophy of international institutions like the IMF. But it has to be rejected, for it is in fact a pseudo-religious philosophy which legitimates unjust burdens for the poor as necessary sacrifices.

Several experts in the symposia indicated that even more could be said about the background of economic interests. Although a change has taken place in the rhetoric of the IMF - it declared, for instance, that it places now "poverty reduction in the heart of its programme" - it can scarcely be denied that it has increased its role and influence in the world far beyond its original task - mainly, to assist countries in structural or temporary balance of payments deficit. "The IMF dictates," it was said in the Thai symposium; and in Seoul an IMF letter of intent was quoted in which some political measures were announced in the name of the IMF and the Korean government together: "we decided". What is the reason for this schoolmasterish attitude on the part of the IMF?

The IMF still refuses to see itself "as a part of the problem", said Prof Briones, the present treasurer of the Philippines; it can see itself only as (part of) the solution. Others formulated similar suspicions. Has the IMF ever given any advice which ran contrary to the economic interests of the big countries, especially the USA? Why did the IMF advise Korean banks to make strong mergers with well-known international banks? Is the USA not reaping huge benefits from the existing IMF programmes, programmes which serve so well the US corporations? "The financial crisis offered in any case a golden opportunity for Washington."¹⁴

During our symposia it was pointed out that a depreciation of the currencies of the countries of the south always makes it easier for all the rich countries to buy corporations and land in the poorer countries - as also happened in Latin America in the seventies. And the possibility that economic considerations like these sometimes play a role was also articulated with reference to the extreme proposals for further liberalization of capital foreseen in the multilateral agreement on investment (MAI), pushed by the USA and 28 other rich countries, but now temporarily withdrawn.

Suspicions like these should not be kept secret, but be stated and heard, so that the actors in question can defend themselves against these accusations if they find that appropriate. In any case, it would be wise for the churches in future years to test these suspicions. For if they are true, the process or project of globalization again loses its seeming innocence and supposed neutrality.

Thesis 3.The project of globalization and growing consumerism are deeply intertwined. Too little attention, however, is given to what a further stimulation of consumption in the already rich countries implies for the condition of the environment worldwide and the possible loss of human integrity, but also for the decline of possibilities to meet urgent basic needs in the countries of the two-thirds world.

Buddhism is the majority religion in Thailand. In the Bangkok symposium, a substantial input was made by a distinguished Buddhist monk and scholar, Pracha Hutanuwatr, in his lecture on globalization from a Buddhist perspective. He explained that from the Buddhist perspective the process has at its core the globalization of tanah, or "craving" - the root of all suffering - and is moreover rooted in the belief that the "progress" of humanity is linear and anthropocentric. "Through globalization," he stated, "the scale of suffering has vastly amplified around the world: vast masses of largely self-sufficient third world communities are being rapidly transformed into consumers of capital-intensive goods and services, mainly those provided by transnational corporations." He uttered a clear protest against the "creation of an almost total consumer monoculture (which) is evangelized through the global advertising agencies, the information highway, satellite and cable television and western studios", and thereby placed the issue of consumerism and its consequences in the heart of our discussions. "We are in the midst of galloping time, plastic time, in which the system is unstable and thus can dramatically transform," he said, quoting S. Inayatullah. "For 80% of the world's population, globalization means global poverty."

A deep discussion took place about possible differences in the place of consumption and wealth in the Buddhist and Christian view. The common conclusion was that neither of the two religions reject material wellbeing as such; the point is to recognize the limits of material wellbeing, so that we do not confuse the means with the end, as modern people tend to do. The correctness of that view was strongly underlined during the symposium in at least three different ways.

It was underlined by looking into the long-term environmental consequences of a continuing rise in consumption in the already rich countries of the world. Our speaker from the Pacific, Ms Suliana Siwatibau, spoke about the links between the intensive growth of production and consumption in the industrialized countries and the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to accelerating climate change and an alarming rise of the sea-level in the Pacific. "We feel like the canaries of the world," she said - referring to the practice, which still exists in places, in which miners take canaries with them into the galleries: if the canaries die because of the gases, the miners know that it is not safe to go further. Will the islands of Oceania be the first to die? And will the rich world really wait until that moment has come? "First cut down your greed before you cut down trees," she said.
Growing consumption in the north has enormous negative effects on the final availability of resources for the people in the south. Dr Amnuey Tapingkae, another distinguished Thai speaker, stressed that we are living in a single world with limited resources; Christians have to see "caring and sharing as our mandate". As the 5th assembly of the WCC (Nairobi, 1975) already said, "the rich should live more simply, so that the poor may simply live." The latest annual report (September 1999) of the United Nations environment programme (UNEP) states: "It is widely recognized, at least by many NGOs and the wealthiest governments in the OECD, that a tenfold reduction in resource consumption in industrialized countries is a necessary long-term target, if adequate resources are to be released for the needs of the developing countries." The priority to meet the basic needs of the poor implies that rich economies should learn to live with sufficiency, giving up the desire to become ever richer materially.
The Korean symposium made similar points in referring to the existence of two interrelated spirals in the world economy today.

First, there is the spiral of further enrichment in the already rich societies. It is a spiral built on the foundation of monopoly access to the creation of international liquidities, and it is sustained not only by the expansion of new monetary devices (derivatives), but also by the creation of new forms of scarcity. This is only possible through a continuous infiltration of the human mind by the new information and communication technologies. But it works, in the sense that in this "new economy" new desires are formed and new markets are hewn out - which gives rise to further "positive" expectations, and so necessitates a further creation of international liquidities. And in this way the spiral is indeed closed.

Second, and deeply intertwined with this, there is the spiral of growing impoverishment in the already poor and indebted countries. These countries have no direct access to the creation of international liquidities, and so have to borrow before they can expand. If their indebtedness becomes too heavy, they have also to "adapt" their economies downward. They can scarcely attract long-range capital to expand their domestic markets - the expectations of profitability are too low - with the result that they never have sufficient means to meet their economic needs.

The outcome of these two spirals in combination in the world economy of today is that the rich economies increasingly display a parasitic nature. They sap for their own growth the life and the energy of weaker economies. The possibility of meeting the multitude of already existing basic needs in the poor countries is, as it were, crowded out by the claims laid on resources by the newly created luxury needs. The new economy drives out all the old economies.
The third indication that present consumption patterns in the rich world are perverted comes from the bodily, psychic and even spiritual damage of a growing consumerism. As Dr Tapingkae put it, "people are taught by the advertisers to eat to death... they are just victimized by the media." Increasingly the human mind is manipulated to remain unsatisfied. Consumerism within a culture is therefore a sign of its imminent death, Dr Tapingkae said, just as Bangkok, which was once a city filled with real life, has become a city of death. The psychic damage done to children by aggressive advertising is, in fact, a way of murdering them. He concluded that "the means have now become an end in themselves", and that the church has to proclaim that we must choose here between God and mammon. His pointed intervention was one of the impulses which led to a letter written by the symposium to the churches of the north.¹⁵

Thesis 4.Remarkable new initiatives are taking place which could open or break the chains of injustice, and make clear at the same time that for the present style of globalization no alternatives are possible. Proposals to develop and enforce a further recognition of human rights look especially promising and need to be supported.

Globalization as such is not the enemy - so it was said several times during these symposia. In fact, the Christian church was global from its very beginning, related to the whole inhabited world (oikumene). The apostle Paul even speaks of God's own globalization, when he refers to his "administration" of times in the perspective of the coming of is H the shepherd king, his plan for the fullness of time to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth (Eph 1). From a Christian perspective what matters is the style of globalization, a style which should be characterized not by the survival of the fittest, but by the survival of the weak.

Here too concrete suggestions were made. They were often related to the social and economic strength of communities, where people decided to work together and to sustain each other by building up cooperation and taking common concerns seriously. The patterns of economic growth in those communities are usually very different from that in modern tunnel-economies: they are of an inclusive nature, not overburdening the environment, and related to the idea of sufficiency.

Examples were given of initiatives and actions of resistance and protest.

The Korean Taegu Round is a group of social scientists, business people, and representatives of labour unions and civil movements that came together to study the origins and consequences of the Asian crisis and decided together to work towards public accountability; Prof Lee Chan-Keun, the chairman of the group, was also present in Bangkok. The group came to remarkable conclusions: "We demand," reads their manifesto of October 1997, "that all global institutions, particularly the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, be held accountable to internationally agreed human rights standards, in conformity with their member governments' UN treaty obligations."

In that line also, public support was given to the legal action by the Korean Federation of Bank and Financial Unions, which decided to take the IMF to court on the grounds that it had violated "the social and economic rights of the Korean people by the destructive impact of its programmes".

The general feeling in the Bangkok meeting was that the significance of actions like these can scarcely be underestimated. Not so much in terms of their chances (probably low) of immediate success, but more because they lay bare the one-sidedness of the dominant view of globalization as the neutral, impersonal outworking of unchangeable economic laws. So long as this view prevails, actors will not be called to account for their actions and all (good) alternatives will be seen as unrealistic and utopian. Above all, they pave the way for mobilizing the enormous potential for change and correcting abuses which is hidden in the various UN treaties on human rights - for instance, the treaty on the rights of children. These solemnly declared nation-binding treaties should be made fully effective in the present chaotic field of economic globalization. For example, the UN human rights subcommittee declared in its Resolution 1999/12 that "the integration of human rights in an international financial institution's policy cannot be restricted to adding social programmes to macroeconomic policies", and affirmed the "centrality and primacy of human rights obligations in all areas of government and development". That principle can become a crowbar to prise open structural adjustment programmes and similar policies which in the name of economic survival attack the rights and living conditions of the weakest.

During the Bangkok symposium we found ourselves in agreement that, because every socioeconomic system is always the expression of an underlying culture, every culture should be seen as entitled to express itself in its own socioeconomic system; this in opposition to the idea that the western economic system at the heart of today's globalization efforts, and exemplified above all in the USA, should be seen as the natural path for the whole world. This brings us back to our opening remarks in this fourth thesis. The false universalism of the present globalization project is in sharp conflict, both theoretically and practically, with the attempt to enforce in practice human rights which are now generally recognized to be universal.

The consequences

The main conclusion to be drawn from the Bangkok and Seoul symposia is that, under cover of a supposedly necessary further globalization, several economic and financial processes are taking place which are, in fact, evil - because their outcomes are so often destructive and unjust, and because they are internally related to delusion, seduction and a culture of sacrifice.

Now public evil, however it may show itself, can never be accepted or tolerated by Christian faith. It has to be fought on all possible levels: legal, political, structural, cultural and even spiritual. International institutions need to be reformed and restructured. Cultural tendencies to overconsumption and economic aggression need to be attacked. And next to this there is the spiritual challenge to fight against those delusive views which suggest that we should just go on trusting the idols of our time and believing in the spontaneously benign outcome of the play of market forces.

This seems, however, just an impossible task, and not only because of all the work which then has to be done. The heart of the problem is that our churches themselves, especially the churches of the north, are not ready. Of course it is possible for us to find ways to protest together against social and economic evil, and even to charge key actors with what they are doing wrong. But how are our churches to act if the opposition also comes from within - from all those Christians, for instance, who see no connection between their own luxurious lifestyle and the dwindling possibilities of life for so many other people on the globe? A confession of faith which ignores its practical consequences can hardly be called a confession at all.

So a process is indeed needed, not just of external action, but - first and foremost - of building up a new awareness in the worldwide Christian community. A common awareness that sharing with the other and caring for the earth in fact adds to the happiness of all, as signs and expressions of a regained maturity (Bonhoeffer's concept of worldliness, Mundigkeit). From such a renewed outlook we may discern better - and maybe for the first time - how evil can and must be challenged to sustain life for all on this earth.

Four theses have been formulated above as a result of our two symposia. They have the character of initial hypotheses, which need to be tested with a view to verification or falsification. New facts have to be gathered, new information has to come in, before we in the churches can really take a stand on these and comparable issues. Further study and reflection are also needed - preferably in the form of interdisciplinary teamwork - to come to trustworthy statements which can be used to enter the debate and convince others within and without the church community.

This gathering of further evidence and deepening of insights - in which the testing of the initial hypotheses is included - is one of the important tasks of further ecumenical symposia or hearings in relation to globalization in general and economic injustice and environmental destruction in particular. These meetings should see it as a moral obligation to react to, and where possible to build on, the fruits of the previous meetings in the series; also adding their own hypotheses to the list if they wish. In that way, they become links in a chain of events, steps in a journey of ecumenical cooperation at the beginning of this new millennium. Two further recommendations in this context. The value of each meeting increases if the highest forms of available expertise are used. Those who understand the world of banking, business, international policy, should be invited to come in, alongside social scientists and theologians. All this is needed to enlarge and guard the quality of the process, so that it involves more than repeating the same arguments or using always the same, often vague labels ("neoliberal", "capitalistic", etc.). It is also strongly advised not to exclude, but to include fully nongovernmental movements which have similar concerns and are willing to take part in this worldwide ecumenical process.

Every good process has an appropriate range of activities as well as a horizon or perspective within which to work. The two, of course, are interrelated. If our aim is to bring forth real changes in the present globalization project, especially where it leads to economic injustice and environmental degradation, and to demonstrate that there are other ways - then a range of conferences, busy with testing earlier hypotheses and developing new ones, is not enough. The community of churches as a whole has to be involved and to become involved. The Debrecen call was addressed to "all churches... at all levels" of their life. Churches involved in this process need to be encouraged not just to remit the question to a committee or specialized working group, but should make a strong effort from the beginning to include their grassroots groups and ecumenical networks.

The core of the harshness of the present pattern of globalization appears to lie in the often selfish behaviour of international corporations, agencies, governments, banks and investors that are mainly of western origin. So it has to be expected that the strongest resistance will also come from the west - many rich western citizens included. Therefore, it seems wise to build up a kind of tension in space and time. First, some further meetings or hearings need to be organized outside the west. In this way, pressure is built up which in the end may help to lead to some real structural and cultural changes in western attitudes and policies. At least one concluding hearing or conference could then take place in the heart of the west. This could face the challenging theme: what kind of programme of structural and cultural adaptation is now needed in and by the west? After all, the west has always been good at developing structural adjustment programmes for others; is it now also able and willing to do the same for itself? What changes are needed for the lifestyles and the institutions of the west to become again serviceable to the world as a whole, and what are the implications of that for the international monetary system?

Notes

1. Debrecen 1997: Proceedings of the 23rd general council, ed. Milan Opocensky (Geneva: Warc, 1997), p.198.

2. Together on the Way: Official report of the eighth assembly of the World Council of Churches, ed. Diane Kessler (Geneva: WCC, 1999), p.183.

3. "Toward an Economy of Life", Update vol.6 no.2 (June 1996), p.2; "Reformed Faith and Economic Justice", in Break the Chains of Injustice: Study texts for the sections and subsections of the 23rd general council, p.44.

4. "Resisting Domination - Affirming Life: The Challenge of Globalization", in Together on the Way, pp.254-61.

5. Walden Bello, The End of the Asian Miracle, Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute in Bangkok (analysis and action programme, "Focus on the Global South").

6. Sauwalak Kittiprapas, "Social Impacts of the Thai Economic Crisis", in Social Impacts of the Asian Economic Crisis in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, p.26.

7. Idem, p.20.

8. This is the phrase used by Amaret Sila-On, chairman of the financial sector restructuring authority of Thailand, in his article, "Thailand: Path of Financial Restructuring", in Jan Joost Teunissen, Regulatory and Supervisory Challenges in a New Era of Global Finance (The Hague: Fondad, 1998), p.224.

9. Sauwalak Kittiprapas, p.25, table 2.

10. Idem, p.41.

11. Idem, p.36.

12. Idem, p.42.

13. Charles Wyplosz, "Globalized Financial Markets and Financial Crisis", in Jan Joost Teunis-sen, ed., Regulatory and Supervisory Challenges in a New Era of Global Finance, p.82.

14. Walden Bello, op.cit., p.3.

15. See Update vol.10 no.1 (March 2000), p.4.