What Changed and Who Gained

The enabling changes

Three technical and institutional shifts did most of the work:

• Container shipping — cut the cost of moving goods so far that it became viable to manufacture a product thousands of kilometres from where it is sold.
• Telecommunications and computing — allowed a firm to coordinate production across many countries in real time, which is what makes a global supply chain possible at all.
• Trade liberalisation — GATT and later the WTO lowered tariff barriers; regional agreements did the same within blocs.

The distributional question

The exam does not reward "globalisation is good" or "globalisation is bad". It rewards an answer about distribution.

Two facts sit together and must both be stated:

• Inequality between countries fell — hundreds of millions in East and Southeast Asia moved out of extreme poverty as manufacturing relocated there.
• Inequality within many countries rose — both in wealthy countries losing industrial employment and in developing countries where gains concentrated in coastal cities and skilled sectors.

The pattern is explainable: gains went to whoever held the scarce input — capital, skills, or a location in the chain — while those whose main asset was routine labour faced competition from a suddenly global supply of it.

Other major developments

Decolonisation completed; the Chinese economic reforms after 1978 moved hundreds of millions into industrial employment; women's participation in paid work and education expanded substantially, though unevenly; the green revolution raised agricultural yields while increasing dependence on inputs; and global institutions expanded in number without a matching expansion in enforcement power.