Globalisation and Westernisation

Masayuki Sato

You wear clothes made in China. You drive a Japanese-made car. You eat bananas imported from Philippines. You listen to the music sung by American musicians. Globalisation has a close connection to our life and we no longer spend our days without things from other countries. Sometimes, people say “westernisation” instead of globalisation because Western countries have big power on technology or culture etc. as affecting others. However, can you completely equal globalisation with westernisation? I feel not.
 
First of all, I need to define what globalisation is. In a dictionary, globalisation means “the fact that different cultures and economic systems around the world are becoming connected and similar to each other because of the influence of large multinational companies and of improved communication” As I stated in the opening sentence, many products except for Western’s are spreading to other countries worldwide nowadays. This is part of globalisation, I think. Japanese cars are used as brand cars all over the world and almost all the clothes we wear are made in China. It is the proof that I can say globalisation doesn’t equal westernisation. However, as for language, you can say globalisation equals westernisation because, as you know, English is the worldwide language and whenever you go to somewhere, you can see English words.
 
Western countries have been having a big impact on other countries as I said before, and many countries have been coming under the influence of Western’s. But I don’t think globalisation is the totally same as westernisation. Globalisation is related not only to Western countries but to all countries.