Month: November 2024

These have been heady times for players of China’s stockmarkets. After the government began ramping up measures in late September to inject new life into a flagging economy, share prices soared, before settling back a bit as investors waited for details. Senior legislators revealed more stimulus measures on November 8th. But public anxiety about the economy’s long-term prospects may prove hard to dispel. That was true even before Donald Trump, who is threatening massive tariffs on Chinese goods, became America’s president-elect. The Economist

For Communist Party leaders, Donald Trump’s electoral success confirms their deepest prejudices about the decline of America and the decadence of its democracy. Towards the end of Mr Trump’s first term, Chinese officials privately shared their judgment that he did not know much about the world—and that all he really cared about were his own interests. They ascribed his victory in 2016 to populism, driven by inequality and the heartlessness of American society. His re-election is unlikely to shake those views. The Economist

As he prepares for a second term, Donald Trump will receive the same simple message from all 18 of America’s intelligence agencies: Russia may be causing mayhem in Europe, but only China has the wherewithal to mount a global challenge. “Beijing is accelerating the development of key capabilities,” said the co-ordinating body for American spooks last year. Those capabilities, it added, are ones that China “believes the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needs to confront the United States in a large-scale, sustained conflict”. The Economist