Category: The Economist

On May 21st J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, described the development of artificial intelligence as an “arms race” with China. If America paused out of concerns over AI safety, he said, it might find itself “enslaved to PRC-mediated AI”. The idea of a superpower showdown that will culminate in a moment of triumph or defeat circulates relentlessly in Washington and beyond. This month the bosses of OpenAI, AMD, CoreWeave and Microsoft lobbied for lighter regulation, casting AI as central to America’s remaining the global hegemon. On May 15th president Donald Trump…

Though the trade war has been a hot topic of debate on Chinese social media over the past month, the Chinese public appears to have been just as exercised about an old-fashioned sex scandal at one of the country’s most elite hospitals. The scandal has morphed into a full-blown debate about privilege, ethics and (the lack of) fairness in Chinese society. The Economist

Charles lieber had few options. On April 28th the renowned former Harvard chemist took up a new post at Tsinghua University’s Shenzhen campus. Mr Lieber had been looking for a perch after he was convicted in America in 2021 for hiding ties to Chinese research funding. He is one of a handful of senior Western scholars who have recently taken up posts in China. Others have done so more from a position of choice. The Economist

The leaders of the Communist Party might be surprised to find they are indebted to a bouncy 20-year-old livestreamer from Ohio called Darren Watkins junior. He goes by the screen name IShowSpeed and has in one visit done more for China’s image abroad than any amount of turgid party propaganda. On a two-week trip in March and April he showed his 38m followers the country’s rich history (with a backflip on the Great Wall), friendly people (he joked with China’s finest Donald Trump impersonator) and advanced technology (he danced with…

Xiao ting wears a short-sleeved white shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans. He has wavy, coiffed hair and big brown eyes, and smiles gently with the air of a high-school heart-throb. From morning to evening he attends to Ms Zhong, his 32-year-old girlfriend. They do everything together, from discussing the news and playing games to sharing deep thoughts and giving life advice. The Economist

“China was being hurt very badly.” According to Donald Trump, the 90-day trade truce between America and China is a win for his administration and its tactics of kamikaze trade escalation. The view inside China is the exact opposite: America, faced with tanking markets and upset consumers, blinked. The truce is seen as a national triumph that has secured concessions, confirmed America’s low pain tolerance, raised gdp forecasts and made China a hero in the global south. The Economist

“China was being hurt very badly.” According to Donald Trump, the 90-day trade truce between America and China is a win for his administration and its tactics of kamikaze trade escalation. A common view inside China is the exact opposite: America, faced with tanking markets and upset consumers, blinked. The truce is seen as a national triumph that has secured concessions, confirmed America’s low pain tolerance, raised gdp forecasts and made China a hero in the global south. The Economist

As president xi jinping stood shoulder to shoulder with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, watching Russian and Chinese soldiers marching across Red Square on May 9th, they could have been mistaken for equals. The commemorations of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in the second world war painted a picture of the two Eurasian neighbours locking arms against the West and the international order that followed that victory. Mr Putin boasted that their strategic co-operation was built on the “unshakeable principle of equality”.  China’s president praised their “everlasting” friendship. The…

TO HONG KONGERS, Li Ka-shing is a 97-year-old “Superman”, the tycoon who can turn any crisis into a business opportunity. To pro-Beijing media in the city he is the “Cockroach King”, a traitor who spurns his “patriotic” duties. And Donald Trump seems to consider him an agent of Chinese imperialism: a facilitator for the “soldiers” who are “lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal”, the American president insists. The Economist

It has been a long time coming. On May 5th a soft-spoken, left-handed 28-year-old named Zhao Xintong (pictured) raised the famed trophy in the legendary Crucible Theatre in the northern English city of Sheffield, and was crowned men’s snooker champion of the world. He had defeated a three-time winner, Mark Williams, by 18 frames to 12, thereby pocketing £500,000 ($660,000) in prize money. “This is going to take snooker to another level,” Jason Ferguson, chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (wpbsa), the sport’s governing body, told the…