Category: The Economist

FAKE BIRTH certificates have long been a hot (if niche) commodity in China. In past decades couples would seek them out in order to get around the one-child policy. They could legally have two children if they were twins—or if their counterfeit documents stated as much. The one-child policy was loosened in 2016. But fake birth certificates remain in demand. Several hospitals are suspected of selling them. Some believe human traffickers are the buyers. But investigators seem to be focusing on another group: people who have babies via surrogates. Surrogacy…

MANY RESIDENTS of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, have grown so used to air-raid warnings that they pay little heed. They prefer to think, or pray, that the common pattern will prevail: that the city’s air-defence systems will work, more or less, or that the alerts will prove merely precautionary. But for those who do take shelter, the tunnels of the underground railway network are an obvious choice. Thanks to Chinese equipment, there is some relief to be found there during what can be a long and tedious wait for the…

MANY RESIDENTS of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, have grown so used to air-raid warnings that they pay little heed. They prefer to think, or pray, that the common pattern will prevail: that the city’s air-defence systems will work, more or less, or that the alerts will prove merely precautionary. But for those who do take shelter, the tunnels of the underground railway network are an obvious choice. Thanks to Chinese equipment, there is some relief to be found there during what can be a long and tedious wait for the…

On the eve of her 27th birthday this month, Agnes Chow updated her Instagram feed for the first time in two and half years. The former activist (pictured) was jailed in 2020 for taking part in pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong a year earlier. Upon her release on bail in 2021, national-security agents in the city confiscated her passport. She is still under investigation. On Instagram she said that she lived in fear, avoiding politics and struggling with anxiety and depression. She also outlined the extraordinary steps that the authorities…

Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. IN MUCH OF the world the death of Henry Kissinger on November 29th elicited pained debate. Was the former American diplomat a towering statesman—or a war criminal? Much ink has been spilt making the case either way. But in China, there is no argument. A day after Mr Kissinger’s death the country’s official news agency, Xinhua, said he was “best known in China and all over the world for the…

Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. China and the European Union could not have set expectations much lower for their summit on December 7th in Beijing. Before Xi Jinping hosted Charles Michel, president of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, EU officials warned that substantive agreements on trade, climate change or geopolitical differences were unlikely. The EU visitors were expected to raise China’s closeness to Russia and to ask…

TO WEAN THEIR country off imported oil and gas, and in the hope of retiring dirty coal-fired power stations, China’s leaders have poured money into wind and solar energy. But they are also turning to one of the most sustainable forms of non-renewable power. Over the past decade China has added 37 nuclear reactors, for a total of 55, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body. During that same period America, which leads the world with 93 reactors, added two. image: The Economist Facing an ever-growing demand…

On China’s fever-prone social media, netizens have been sweating with anxiety as hospital waiting rooms fill up. On November 29th a provincial newspaper posted a message on Weibo, a microblog service, describing an unnamed hospital in the north. The waiting area, it said, was filled with the sound of coughing and the crying of children. After receiving confirmation that her daughter had tested positive for a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, one woman, having waited hours, still had 300 people ahead of her in the queue for a consultation. The…

Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. IF PLACES COULD be diagnosed with long covid, then Shangqiu—a sleepy city of 3.7m people, in central China’s wheat belt—would be a good candidate. A full year after the chaotic, ill-planned collapse of China’s “zero-covid” policies, evidence abounds of lingering harms done to Shangqiu’s economy, and to residents’ morale. Local finances were strained even before China began nearly three years of lockdowns and mass virus-testing drives. Shangqiu, in Henan province,…

THOUGH HE LAY dying of brain cancer, Tu Changwang had one last thing to say. The Chinese meteorologist had noticed that the climate was warming. So in 1961 he warned in the People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, that this might alter the conditions that sustain life. Yet he saw the warming as part of a cycle in solar activity that would probably go into reverse at some point. Tu did not suspect that the burning of fossil fuels was pumping carbon into the atmosphere and causing the climate to…