Corporate Imperialism - Essay Example

From the article “Shooting an elephant”, which was written by Orwell, imperialism is presented as plain robbery. The British controlled everything: resources, rules, and the whole Burmese (Orwell p2). Nowadays, plain imperialism has lost its standing in the world because under the peace and developed science world, violence is killed. However, although violence does not work anymore, invasion of a country by another can never be stopped. People have stopped using violence in invasions but have adopted new methods of invasion.

For instance, to make an entrance in other countries, people create multinational companies, which then set their factories into these countries. Through these factories they are able to control the politics and the economy of these countries. This behavior of the multinational companies is referred to as corporate imperialism. Corporate imperialism by the multinational companies not only depredates other countries resources, but also brings a different culture that could confuse the minds of the local people.

Pure imperialism and corporate imperialism are twin brother and sister; they have the same nature-plunder other countries’ resources. The only difference is that pure imperialism uses weapons to invade countries, and corporate imperialism uses business as its invading weapon. . The way they make more profit is that they set factories into these countries, and hire the indigenes that are paid low labor fee to handle the factories and cheaply make their the products from the local materials. For example, the reason why you could see “Made in China” everywhere now is because the factories have taken advantage of the Chinese low worker’s labor fee to produce more products in the market.

Like Chitra Divakaruni presented in her article “Live Free and Starve”, once the U.S raised a ban on goods made by indentured or forced child labor, the children would be unemployed and they could die anytime due to lack of food. Without the jobs they could not purchase supplies to live. Therefore, in this way the U.S controlled their economy system, because without the jobs, they could not take care of their lives (Chitra). This is just like pure imperialism; people are controlled by intruder’s rule.

In other words, simple rule, the more the resources can be got, the more profit can be made. Like playing a tactic game, the more base you have, and the more chances you can win the game. When your base is getting out of resources, invade others. English now becomes a national language because European and American companies are all over the world. When multinational companies set into other countries, they also set their culture into the countries. Again, like pure imperialism, corporate imperialism also brings its own culture to the local people in order to control their mind.

The cultures affect them to an extent that they could be crazy about foreign things and obsequious to foreigners. For instance, take a look at Hong Kong, before it was returned, it was controlled by