Even more importantly, this time globalization went beyond Europe, North America and other traditionally advanced economies, unleashing powerful forces for economic development in much of continental Asia, for instance, and contributing to an astonishing reduction in global poverty.
After embracing globalisation, each in its own way, the two largest countries in the world started a process of convergence with advanced economies that scarcely anybody would have thought possible fifty years ago. Many other economies did the same. Institutions and the rules for multilateral cooperation, strengthened after the end of the Cold War, accompanied and supported this process.