This is how I try to understand the Global Economy. The Global economy is group of various economies around the world..That is very obvious.
They are standing next to each other like circle of Dominoes. In regular Dominoes ,all the tiles are of same size and roughly at the equally spread distance. One falls all other fall too in succession, pretty awesome to watch.
Now imagine these dominoes are of different heights and unequal distance between them.
The height of the Domino represents the size of the Country's economy and distance between them represents the inter-dependency of each country's economy.
So, the taller the domino the greater the impact of this domino on other dominoes in this circle. Same way, when smaller dominoes are placed close to each other , they impact of one domino will propagate quicker to other dominoes.
In this scenario smaller economies are like European countries , and larger economies such as Japan, USA or China are bigger player and may impact more countries when face with poor economic situation.
There are however other economies in this circle, which are of medium size and placed little far from these larger and cluster of small economies.
These economies have better chance in surviving during global economic meltdown. Simply because they are not so dependent on other economies. The impact is either very small or may felt by these countries bit late.
For the social development and economical growth a country shall participate in global economy, however it shall maintain it's degree of dependency such that in the wake of global economic meltdown , it is capable of sustain on it's own.
