Category: The Economist

FOR CHINA’s finest barbarian-handlers—an elite corps of diplomats, technocrats, trade envoys and foreign-policy scholars—this is a told-you-so moment. Such Chinese voices have spent years urging foreign governments, especially those with deep ties to America, to fuss less about democratic values and other fuzzy notions, and to focus on cold, hard national interests. Now, they argue, the times are proving them right. In China’s telling, America stands exposed as a hypocrite, quick to accuse China or Russia of breaking international law and abusing human rights, while supplying bombs used to kill…

On March 27th, when Xi Jinping met American business executives in Beijing, it was a rare opportunity for these corporate bigwigs to interact with China’s leader on his home turf. The meeting followed the China Development Forum, an annual economic conference held amid the lakes and willows of a tranquil state guesthouse in the capital. The economic backdrop to the meeting was less serene, thanks to a faltering economy, depressed stockmarket and sporadic regulatory crackdowns. Foreign direct investment has slumped (see chart). Chart: The Economist In the past, such meetings…

IN ONE OF the best-known commentaries attributed to him, Confucius said that at the age of 15 he set his mind on studying. At the ages of 30, 40, 50 and 60 he reached successive new levels of maturity and understanding. But it was only at the age of 70 that he had learnt how to follow his heart’s desires without overstepping boundaries. Today, 2,500 years since the great sage held forth, Chinese society continues to grapple with ethical questions about the appropriate balance between leniency and accountability for juvenile…

Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. The book is full of technical jargon, with copious references to particle accelerators and nanotechnology. The story, about Earth preparing for an alien invasion, is dark. Nevertheless, “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin has been a huge hit in China since it was published in 2008. It was translated into English in 2014 and quickly gathered awards and fans in the West, too. Most readers rejoiced when Netflix, an American…

When calling out China, Western governments sometimes like to stand together. On March 25th and 26th America, Britain and New Zealand did so in a co-ordinated blast against Chinese cyber-espionage. American prosecutors accused China’s cyber-spooks of waging a campaign for years against a wide range of targets in the West, including critics of the Chinese Communist Party. Britain’s deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, said China showed “ongoing patterns of hostile activity targeting our collective democracies”. New Zealand blamed state-linked hackers in China for a cyber-attack on the country’s parliament. Both…

ASMALL NUMBER should haunt the sleep of China’s leaders: 1.1. That is the number of children that, given prevailing trends, each Chinese woman is expected to have on average during her child-bearing years. China’s total fertility rate (TFR), to use the demographers’ term, has fallen far below the 2.1 children needed for a stable population. Sure enough, in 2023 China’s population declined for the second year in a row. Communist Party bosses may cling to a (thin) comfort. This disaster has many causes, only one of which is their one-child…

There is nothing unusual about the sight of Chinese policemen oafishly blocking the lens of a television-news camera, or bundling reporters away from the scene of a big event. It happens to foreign journalists all the time. But many were stunned this month when reporters from China Central Television (CCTV), the country’s leading state-run broadcaster, got the same treatment. Even the anchor of a live telecast could not hide her on-air surprise when colleagues reporting from the site of a deadly explosion were shoved away. The blast occurred at rush…

Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. THERE SEEMS to be no end to official anxiety over social media in America. The idea that TikTok, a popular Chinese app, might be used as a tool of Communist Party propaganda has terrified politicians. On March 13th the House of Representatives passed a bill that would force the platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app or else face a ban in America. Five days later the Supreme Court…

AS A SYMBOL of China’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, the national-security law known as Article 23 takes some beating. The measure, which grants the authorities more powers to clamp down on dissent, was passed unanimously by the city’s legislative council, or Legco, on March 19th. That is hardly surprising. Since 2021 members of the body have had to swear allegiance to the central government in Beijing. Opposition politicians have been disqualified, thrown in jail or forced to flee abroad. Still, the swift passage of a bill that few Hong…

SO MUCH WINE has gurgled up in Australia in recent years that analysts have been measuring the surplus in terms of Olympic-size swimming pools. The last reading suggests the plonk would fill hundreds. Some 4,000km away, in Hong Kong, something similar is now happening. Cases of Australian wine are sitting in the city’s warehouses, much more than Hong Kongers can imbibe (safely). Grudge-holding officials in Beijing are fermenting this trouble—but perhaps not for much longer. China’s case of sour grapes dates to 2020, when Australia’s government called for an international…