The Economist Politics PDF - Sept 7th 2024

Sept 7 Economist Briefing Politics 9/9/24, 8:48 AM Politics Sep 5th 2024 Photograph: David Guttenfelder/The New York Times/Redux/Eyevine Listen to this story. Enjo...

Sept 7 Economist Briefing Politics 9/9/24, 8:48 AM Politics Sep 5th 2024 Photograph: David Guttenfelder/The New York Times/Redux/Eyevine Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. -00:00 At least 50 people were killed when Russian missiles struck a military college in Poltava, a town in central Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky promised that “the Russian scum will definitely be held accountable” for the attack, and again pleaded for more air-defence systems from the West. Russia paid no notice, attacking Ukraine again and killing seven people in Lviv, a city close to the Polish border that has been relatively unscathed in the two-year conflict. Mr Zelensky overhauled the top echelons of his government, ousting Dmytro Kuleba as foreign minister. Earlier, the president sacked the head of the air force after an F-16 crashed, killing a pilot. https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/05/politics Page 1 of 5 Politics 9/9/24, 8:48 AM Vladimir Putin took a trip to Mongolia, the first visit by the Russian president to a member-country of the International Criminal Court since the court issued a warrant for his arrest 18 months ago. The ICC and Ukraine urged Mongolia to take Mr Putin into custody, but instead he was whisked away for talks held in a yurt. Mongolia gets almost all its petrol from Russia. One of the ICC’s current judges is Mongolian. In Germany the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) won its first-ever state election, taking 33% of the vote in Thuringia, which includes the town of Weimar. It will not be able to form a state government, however, as no other party will work with it. In Saxony, another former East German state, the AfD came a close second, with 31% of the vote, behind the Christian Democrats, on 32%. The two state elections were a disaster for the federal ruling coalition. The Social Democrats, Greens and liberals all saw their share of the vote fall to single digits. More than a dozen members of the nationalist Turkish Youth Union were arrested for assaulting two American marines who were on leave in Izmir, a city on Turkey’s Aegean coast. One of the marines had a hood put over his head. Risk calculation Twelve migrants lost their lives when their boat sank off the French coast. Another 30 migrants have perished attempting to cross the English Channel so far this year, while 22,000 have made it to Britain. Migrants make perilous journeys via several routes to get to Europe, the most dangerous being across the Mediterranean Sea from Africa (some of those crossing the channel previously traversed the Mediterranean). This year 1,300 are dead or missing, out of 110,000 who made it over the sea. Conservative MPs in Britain held the first round of a leadership contest to https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/05/politics Page 2 of 5 Politics 9/9/24, 8:48 AM replace Rishi Sunak, who was prime minister until he lost an election in July. Robert Jenrick, a former immigration minister, won the first ballot, followed by Kemi Badenoch, a no-nonsense anti-woke candidate. The remaining five candidates face further knockout rounds until the final two are put to a vote of party members. The bodies of six hostages were recovered from Gaza. Forensic evidence suggested that they had survived in captivity for around 330 days before being murdered by Hamas shortly before they were found by Israeli soldiers. The news prompted the biggest demonstrations in Israel since the start of the war, as protesters blamed the government for failing to secure the release of the hostages. Unions called for a general strike, though this was called off after a few hours by a court order. The US Department of Justice indicted senior Hamas officials, including Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza, on charges related to the October 7th attacks, such as conspiracy to murder Americans. The Pentagon’s Central Command said commandos had carried out an extensive counter-terrorism operation against Islamic State in Iraq (with the help of Iraqi forces) killing 15 of the group’s “operatives”. CENTCOM has warned that the number of IS attacks in Iraq and Syria is set to double this year. Tunisia’s electoral commission approved just two candidates to run in October’s presidential election against Kais Saied, the incumbent, who is accused of trying to restrict the opposition against him. One of the approved candidates, Ayachi Zammel, was then arrested. Robert Kyagulanyi, the Ugandan opposition leader better known as Bobi Wine, was injured in an altercation with police. His party says he was hit by a tear-gas canister. Mr Wine ran for president in 2021, losing a flawed election to Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986. https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/05/politics Page 3 of 5 Politics 9/9/24, 8:48 AM For the first time in 28 years, Nigeria is refining its own crude oil again. A refinery in Lagos, built at a cost of $20bn, will initially produce some 90,000 barrels of petrol a day, with an aim of ramping up to 330,000 barrels a day once it reaches full capacity. A former aide to New York state’s governor was charged with using her position to act on behalf of China. Linda Sun allegedly blocked Taiwanese representatives from meeting state officials, influenced statements to reflect China’s agenda and smoothed travel arrangements for Chinese officials to New York. She and her husband received millions of dollars in kickbacks, according to the Justice Department. Both deny the charges. A suicide-bomb in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, killed six people. Islamic State said it had carried out the attack (and claimed the death toll was 45) in response to the Taliban government’s transfer of prisoners to the Bagram security base, where America ran much of its operations when it had troops in the country. Canada’s New Democratic Party pulled out of an agreement that has kept the minority Liberal government of Justin Trudeau in power. The NDP accused the Liberals of not standing up to corporate interests. A general election is not due until October 2025, but Mr Trudeau may be forced to call one sooner. The lower chamber of Congress in Mexico passed a judicial reform that would subject all senior judges in the country to election. The upper chamber will vote next. The outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is seeking sweeping changes to the constitution before he leaves office at the end of the month. Investors are deeply worried. Seasonal beatings https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/05/politics Page 4 of 5 Politics 9/9/24, 8:48 AM Photograph: Reuters A Venezuelan judge issued an arrest warrant for Edmundo González (pictured), the opposition candidate in July’s presidential election. Mr González won the contest, though the election commission declared President Nicolás Maduro the victor. Mr González is accused of “usurpation”. Mr Maduro tried to distract Venezuelans from the election and thuggery meted out to protesters by bizarrely declaring that Christmas would fall on October 1st. https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/05/politics Page 5 of 5 KAL’s cartoon 9/9/24, 8:49 AM advertisement Menu Weekly edition The world in brief Search My Economist The world this week advertisement KAL’s cartoon illustration: kal Sep 5th 2024 Save Share Give Our regular illustrator, KAL, is away this week. We have chosen to re-run this poignant cartoon from 2016. KAL’s cartoon appears weekly in The Economist. You can see last week’s here. advertisement The world this week September 7th 2024 → Politics https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2024/09/05/kals-cartoon Page 1 of 3 The real problem with China’s economy 9/9/24, 8:49 AM The real problem with China’s economy The country risks making some of the mistakes the Soviet Union did Sep 5th 2024 https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/05/bad-information-is-a-grave-threat-to-chinas-economy Page 1 of 6 The real problem with China’s economy 9/9/24, 8:49 AM Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. -00:00 China’S giant economy faces an equally giant crisis of confidence—and a growing deficit of accurate information is only making things worse. Even as the country wrestles with a property crash, the services sector slowed by one measure in August. Consumers are fed up. Multinational firms are https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/05/bad-information-is-a-grave-threat-to-chinas-economy Page 2 of 6 The real problem with China’s economy 9/9/24, 8:49 AM taking money out of China at a record pace and foreign China-watchers are trimming their forecasts for economic growth. The gloom reflects real problems, from half-built houses to bad debts. But it also reflects growing mistrust of information about China. The government is widely believed to be massaging data, suppressing sensitive facts and sometimes offering delusional prescriptions for the economy. This void feeds on itself: the more fragile the economy is, the more knowledge is suppressed and the more nerves fray. This is not just a cyclical problem of confidence. By backtracking on the decades-long policy of partially liberalising the flow of information, China will find it harder to complete its ambition of restructuring the economy around new industries. Like the Soviet Union, it risks instead becoming an example of how autocratic rule is not just illiberal but also inefficient. More on this The Chinese authorities are concealing the state of the economy China is suffering from a crisis of confidence The tightening of censorship under President Xi Jinping is well known. Social-media accounts are ever more strictly policed. Officials are warier of candid debate with outsiders. Scholars fear they are watched and business people mouth Communist Party slogans. Less familiar is the parallel disappearance of technical data, especially if it is awkward or embarrassing for the party. Figures for youth unemployment, a huge problem, have been “improved and optimised”—and lowered. Balance-of- payments statistics have become so murky that even America’s Treasury is baffled. On August 19th stock exchanges stopped publishing daily numbers on dwindling foreign-investment inflows. As the economic dashboard dims, the private sector is finding it harder to make good decisions. Officials probably are, too. To understand the significance of this shift, look back to the mid-20th https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/05/bad-information-is-a-grave-threat-to-chinas-economy Page 3 of 6 The real problem with China’s economy 9/9/24, 8:49 AM century. Witnessing the totalitarianism of the 1930s and 1940s, liberal thinkers such as Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek argued that political freedom and economic success go hand in hand: decentralised power and information prevent tyranny and allow millions of firms and consumers to make better decisions and live better lives. The collapse of the Soviet Union proved them right. In order to maintain political dominance, its rulers ruthlessly controlled information. But that required brutal repression, starved the economy of price signals and created an edifice of lies. By the end, even the Soviet leadership was deprived of an accurate picture. As China grew more open in the late 1990s and 2000s, its leaders hoped to maintain control while avoiding the Soviet Union’s mistakes. For many years they allowed technical information in business, the economy and science to flow far more freely. Think of Chinese firms with listed share prices disclosing information to investors in New York, or scientists sharing new research with groups abroad. Technology seemed to offer a more surgical way to censor mass opinion. The internet was intensively policed, but it was not banned. China’s top leadership also redoubled its efforts to know what was going on. For decades, it has run a system known as neican, or internal reference, in which journalists and officials compile private reports. During the Tiananmen Square protests, for example, the leadership received constant updates. Techno-utopian party loyalists reckoned that big data and artificial intelligence could improve this system, creating a high-tech panopticon for the supreme leader that would allow the kind of enlightened central planning the Soviets failed at. It is this vision of a partially open, hyper-efficient China that is now in doubt. Amid a widening culture of fear and a determination to put national security before the economy, the party has proved unable or unwilling to limit the scope of its interference in information flows. Monetary-policy https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/05/bad-information-is-a-grave-threat-to-chinas-economy Page 4 of 6 The real problem with China’s economy 9/9/24, 8:49 AM documents and the annual reports of China’s mega-banks now invoke Xi Jinping Thought. Deadly-dull foreign management consultants are treated as spies. This is happening despite the fact that China’s increasingly sophisticated economy requires more fluid and complex decision-making. An obvious result is the retreat of individual liberty. In a reversal of its partial opening, China has become a more repressive place. Many Chinese still have liberal views and enjoy debate but stick to private gatherings. They present no immediate danger to the party. The information void’s other effects pose more of a threat. As price signals dim, the allocation of capital is getting harder. This comes at a delicate moment. As its workforce shrinks, China must rely more on boosting productivity to grow. That is all about using resources well. The country needs to pivot away from cheap credit and construction to innovative industries and supplying consumers. That is why capital spending is pouring into electric vehicles, semiconductors and more. Yet if investment is based on erroneous calculations of demand and supply, or if data on subsidies and profits are suppressed, then the odds of a successful transition are low. China’s admirers might retort that the country’s key decision-makers still have good information with which to steer the economy. But nobody really knows what data and reports Mr Xi sees. Moreover, as the public square empties it is a good bet that the flow of private information is becoming more distorted and less subject to scrutiny. No one wants to sign a memo that says one of Mr Xi’s signature policies is failing. After the horrors of the mid-20th century, liberal thinkers understood that free-flowing information improves decision-making, reduces the odds of grave mistakes and makes it easier for societies to evolve. But when information is suppressed, it turns into a source of power and corruption. Over time, the distortions and inefficiencies mount. China has big opportunities but it also faces immense problems. A fully informed https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/05/bad-information-is-a-grave-threat-to-chinas-economy Page 5 of 6 The real problem with China’s economy 9/9/24, 8:49 AM citizenry, private sector and government would be far better equipped to take on the challenges ahead. For subscribers only: to see how we design each week’s cover, sign up to our weekly Cover Story newsletter. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/05/bad-information-is-a-grave-threat-to-chinas-economy Page 6 of 6 Could Japan and South Korea finally become friends? 9/9/24, 8:50 AM Could Japan and South Korea finally become friends? Younger generations are less concerned with their countries shared history Sep 5th 2024 Photograph: Alamy Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. -00:00 National Liberation Day is traditionally an occasion for solemn celebration in South Korea, marking the country’s independence from its colonial overlord, Japan. Yet for many younger South Koreans, the holiday has become a day off like any other, and a chance to unwind. This year, on August 15th, scores of 20-somethings filled a pop-up bar in Seoul, the capital, for a party featuring drinks from around the world, including https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/05/could-japan-and-south-korea-finally-become-friends Page 1 of 4 Could Japan and South Korea finally become friends? 9/9/24, 8:50 AM Japanese sake. “I know it’s Liberation Day, but we decided to do something fun together,” says Min Young-ji, a 28-year-old who was there with her 27-year-old sister, Gyoung-im. As children they raised South Korean flags with their parents during the holiday, but these days “you see fewer and fewer flagpoles”, says Gyoung-im. Diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan have improved markedly over the past few years. That is in large part thanks to Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, who came to office in 2022 determined to repair ties with Japan following a period of bitter disputes over compensation for atrocities committed during the colonial era. Kishida Fumio, Japan’s departing prime minister, will visit Seoul this week for a final summit with Mr Yoon. But officials in both countries also credit generational change for helping to transform the relationship. Today’s youth are on far better terms with their neighbours than their parents or grandparents were. While just over 20% of South Koreans over 50 years old have a positive impression of Japan, over 45% of 18- to 29- year-olds do, according to Genron NPO, a Japanese think-tank, and the East Asia Institute, a South Korean one, which conduct annual studies of public opinion. Among Japanese, over 45% of 18- to 29-year-olds see South Korea positively, compared with 35% of those over 50 (see chart). In part, the passage of time has dulled the intensity of bitter memories. “History is very much alive for my generation, but not for the younger generation,” sighs Oh Gun-suk, whose grandfather was held at the notorious Seodaemun prison for taking part in an anti-Japanese resistance movement in 1919. As South Korea developed, the power dynamics also shifted. Young South Koreans, who came of age in a rich country, have no sense of inferiority and more pride in their own heritage. Mutual cultural affinities have bred legions of anime fans in South Korea and K-pop fans in Japan. https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/05/could-japan-and-south-korea-finally-become-friends Page 2 of 4 Could Japan and South Korea finally become friends? 9/9/24, 8:50 AM First-hand experience of each other’s country is widespread, too. South Koreans made up the largest share of foreign visitors to Japan last year, and Japanese the largest group of visitors to South Korea. “Japan has a certain attractive quality to it,” Gyoung-im says. “I’m not sure I should say such things today of all days, but it’s the truth!” Similarly, on the same day in Japan, the streets of Shin-Okubo, Tokyo’s “Korea town”, were bustling. Young Japanese swooned over photographs of K-pop stars and munched on Korean street food, from crunchy corn dogs to tteok-bokki, a sticky, spicy rice cake. “I’ve never been to Korea but I want to go,” says Suzuki Dai, an 18-year-old who is trying to learn how to read hangul, the Korean alphabet. Yet it would be a mistake to confuse fandom for fundamental shifts in the national narratives. Young Japanese may be more familiar with South Korean songs and shows but often lack knowledge of the darker chapters of their shared history. “I do see people talking about stuff on the news, but honestly I don’t pay much attention. It’s not something I’m conscious of,” Mr Suzuki acknowledges. Tucked beside shops selling Korean cosmetics in Shin-Okubo in Tokyo, the Koryo Museum of Korean history receives relatively few visitors. Young people come mostly to rent chima jeogori, traditional Korean dresses, sighs Ogihara Midori, a curator at the museum. While walking past displays about comfort women, the euphemistic moniker for Japan’s wartime sex slaves, “sometimes they go ‘Huh? what is this?’” Ms Ogihara says. “Then I explain and they go ‘Huh! I didn’t know that!’” Relations with Japan remain a politically charged issue in South Korea. Opposition parties spurned the government’s official Liberation Day events this year, to protest at Mr Yoon’s choice of a conservative historian to head the main independence history museum. “Things can look good on the surface”, but if historical disputes remain unresolved, relations can sour again, says Hong Joo-hyun of the Independence Activists’ Families Association, a South Korean outfit which supports the descendants of https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/05/could-japan-and-south-korea-finally-become-friends Page 3 of 4 Could Japan and South Korea finally become friends? 9/9/24, 8:50 AM activists. K-pop diplomacy For many in South Korea, resistance to Japanese aggression remains central to the country’s identity. Schools still take students to visit the museum at Seodaemun Prison; in Korean textbooks and in popular culture tales of the heroism of Korean nationalists and the brutality of Japanese imperialists are ubiquitous. On one of Seoul’s central avenues stands a 17- metre statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who helped defeat Japanese forces in the 16th century. Plenty of young parents still consider it a duty to teach their children about the colonial era. At a ceremony at Seoul’s Bosingak pavilion on August 15th, a choir of women and girls clad in white sang odes to independence fighters; the crowd chanted “Mansei”, a traditional independence call. Kim Min-ji went there with her two primary-school-age children. “I won’t accept an apology from Japan!” her youngest son exclaims. “Japan wants to get rid of Korea!” Ms Kim chuckles and corrects him: “That was a long time ago.” But, even so, it is still hard to forget. https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/09/05/could-japan-and-south-korea-finally-become-friends Page 4 of 4 The all-powerful judge taking on Elon Musk 9/9/24, 8:52 AM The all-powerful judge taking on Elon Musk Is the legal cure of banning X worse than the disease? Sep 3rd 2024 Anyone seen Elon?Photograph: Reuters Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. -00:00 IT REQUIRES A giant ego and plenty of courage to take on Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who owns X, a social-media network that can often seem like his personal megaphone. Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who on August 30th ordered X to be blocked in Brazil, has both. Mr Musk has likened him to Darth Vader and shared an AI-generated image of the judge behind prison bars. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/03/the-all-powerful-judge-taking-on-elon-musk Page 1 of 4 The all-powerful judge taking on Elon Musk 9/9/24, 8:52 AM The ban on X partly reflects Brazil’s severe laws on speech. But it also fits a pattern of controversial decisions by Mr Moraes, known for his relentless pursuit of high-profile cases. In hyper-polarised Brazil he was once cheered as a hero by liberals for taking on Jair Bolsonaro, an autocratic former president. Now even they worry that Mr Moraes may be overreaching his judicial powers. Mr Moraes did not always appear destined to be a target for memes from a world-famous right-wing billionaire. A former prosecutor, he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2017 not by a woke liberal but by Michel Temer, a conservative president of Brazil. In a previous role Mr Moraes had dealt with a hacker attempting to blackmail Mr Temer’s wife. The blocking of X is Mr Moraes’s most high-profile decision yet. It comes after Mr Musk refused to comply with his orders to take down accounts on X as part of an investigation into online misinformation. Instead, Mr Musk closed X’s local office. Without a legal representative in Brazil, the company is not permitted to operate there. That is a position few well-run firms would contemplate. Nonetheless, the judge’s punitive response hardly seems proportional. He has warned that anyone logging into X by using a virtual private network (VPN)—services that make it appear as if a device is in another country— will face daily fines of up to 50,000 reais ($8,700). He also froze the Brazilian bank accounts of Starlink, a separate satellite company founded by Mr Musk, supposedly in order to collect fines levied on X of nearly 19m reais. Part of the explanation for this draconian approach is Brazil’s interventionist laws on speech. These now seek to police “crimes against democracy”, such as falsehoods on social media that may jeopardise the electoral process, and “crimes against honour”, even when offensive messages are received in private. Although a single judge on Brazil’s 11- https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/03/the-all-powerful-judge-taking-on-elon-musk Page 2 of 4 The all-powerful judge taking on Elon Musk 9/9/24, 8:52 AM member Supreme Court can make binding decisions, these are sometimes reviewed by the full or partial bench. On September 2nd a panel of five judges including Mr Moraes upheld his rulings on X with small modifications. Yet Brazil’s laws are only half the story. Mr Moraes also has form: he is a man who likes and understands power. He has extensive contacts in the police, military and intelligence services. “Alexandre is a sherifão,” says a source close to the judge, using slang for “super sheriff”. “If you put a problem in front of him, he will go to the ends of the earth to complete his mission.” His most celebrated moment involved confronting Mr Bolsonaro. When the covid-19 pandemic struck, Mr Bolsonaro supported quack cures. Before the presidential election in 2022 he spread lies that voting machines were rigged. On January 8th last year, one week after Mr Bolsonaro’s opponent was inaugurated, bolsonaristas ransacked Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court. Mr Moraes opened a probe against the rioters. In 2023 an electoral tribunal that he presided over barred Mr Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years for spreading falsehoods about voting machines. Other campaigns have made the court look authoritarian. In 2019 Mr Moraes was put in charge of investigating misinformation about the Supreme Court and threats against the court’s members. These had spiked after the election of Mr Bolsonaro. The “fake news” inquiry was contentious from the start. Normally investigations are opened by the public prosecutor or the police. By giving itself the power to initiate investigations the Supreme Court became victim, prosecutor and judge all at once. No time limit was set, there is no legal definition for disinformation in Brazil and Mr Moraes has not made public which accounts he has ordered to be shut and why. He later opened a related inquiry into “digital militias”, a worryingly woolly term. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/03/the-all-powerful-judge-taking-on-elon-musk Page 3 of 4 The all-powerful judge taking on Elon Musk 9/9/24, 8:52 AM Some decisions seem even harder to defend. In 2019 Crusoé, an investigative outlet, published an article suggesting that another Supreme Court judge was mentioned in emails from 2007 about a corrupt permit for a dam. Mr Moraes deemed the article “fake news” and ordered it to be taken down. Only after public outcry was the order reversed. In another case, businessmen who exchanged loose but passive talk about preferring a coup to the main left-wing party on a private WhatsApp chat had their homes raided, their bank accounts frozen and their social-media accounts suspended. Mr Moraes is undoubtedly brave. As the public face of the crusade against bolsonarista fanatics, he has received numerous death threats. Yet today there is a wider sense that his mission has veered off track. In December 2022 almost a third of Brazilians said the court did a “good” or “excellent” job. In May only 14% did. Pushback is mounting. The day he shut X Mr Moraes demanded that Apple and Google prohibit downloads of X and VPNs, but revoked the order hours later after a public outcry. Luiz Augusto D’Urso of the Fundação Getulio Vargas, a university in São Paulo, calls the VPN order “absurd”. The decision to freeze Starlink’s assets “violates the fundamental rights” of the firm, says Ricardo Sayeg, a lawyer. Many farmers and soldiers depend on Starlink for internet in remote areas. The takedown of X and Mr Musk’s angry response is stirring up Brazil’s hard right, which feels that it is persecuted. Mr Moraes’s legacy may be to strengthen the very elements he sought to curb. Correction (September 4th 2024): Alexandre de Moraes was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2017, not 2016 as we originally wrote. This has been corrected. Sign up to El Boletín, our subscriber-only newsletter on Latin America, to understand the forces shaping a fascinating and complex region. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/03/the-all-powerful-judge-taking-on-elon-musk Page 4 of 4 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM Liberalism is far from dead in China Despite an intense clampdown, it may even be drawing more adherents Sep 5th 2024 Illustration: Ben Jones Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. -00:00 Walk into the All Sages Bookstore in north-western Beijing, and you enter a different world. Not here the collections of speeches by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that greet visitors to state-owned bookshops—rows of covers with the same face, the same beneficent smile. The founder of All Sages, Liu Suli, served 20 months in prison for his role in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. His shelves are filled with the works of free thinkers: economists and political scientists, historians and legal scholars. The potential market could be bigger than it was during the build-up to https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 1 of 8 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM Tiananmen. Mr Liu says China’s liberals are becoming ever more numerous. That view jars with the impression conveyed by another, far more conspicuous, trend: the rise of Chinese nationalism. In public forums online, it is usually hard to find liberal views. The internet is filled with the voices of West-hating cheerleaders for the regime who pounce on the few who dare to challenge them. The nationalists enjoy a wide-open field thanks to Mr Xi’s relentless efforts to silence liberals. In contrast with the 1980s, the intellectual landscape of China can seem drearily homogenous, sucked of vitality by a party re-energised and strengthened by Mr Xi. Yet liberalism is surprisingly resilient. In subtle ways, as Mr Liu believes, it may even be drawing more adherents. This is not to say that active dissent is spreading. Far from it. Mr Xi’s clampdown has made it all but impossible for anyone who persistently and openly criticises China’s political system to remain free. With the help of high-tech surveillance and a massive domestic-security apparatus, the party appears in firm control. It is hard to imagine another Tiananmen. But liberals are not necessarily dissidents (nor are they necessarily left- leaning, as the label is often taken to mean). They may even support the party, seeing its collapse as a recipe for chaos. They are people who want more personal and economic freedom. They are supporters of individual rights, even when these clash with the government’s wishes. They admire the values that Western democracies say they uphold, even if they see faults in the way the West works. Though not synonymous with dissent, liberalism can be a wellspring of it. Its influence explains why Mr Xi focuses so much on fighting it. On August 31st, as a new academic year got under way, the Communist Party’s main theoretical journal, Qiushi, republished a speech given by Mr Xi in 2018. In it he warned of persistent efforts by the West, targeting young people, to https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 2 of 8 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM foment a “colour revolution” in China. “The fight over young people is a long and severe battle,” said Mr Xi. “We cannot afford to lose, and we must not lose. We must stay vigilant!” Studies by scholars abroad provide some insights. The opinions of Chinese citizens are “more diverse and liberal than one might expect”, wrote Scott Kennedy and Ilaria Mazzocco of the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies in 2022, citing data collected over several years by Jennifer Pan and Yiqing Xu of Stanford University. “There are plenty of nationalists, but there is also a silent majority in favour of economic reform and political liberalism.” In a review last year of such research, Sungmin Cho, then at the Asia Pacific Centre of Security Studies in Hawaii, said that while the majority of Chinese citizens welcomed the stability provided by party rule, “their support of democratic norms and values has also increased over time”. Some researchers are less sure. In “China as Number One: The Emerging Values of a Rising Power”, a multi-author work published this year, John James Kennedy of the University of Kansas wrote that a poll in 2018—the latest in a series by an international project called the World Values Survey —suggested a “more conservative trend” had emerged in Chinese views on issues such as gay rights, gender equality and respect for authority. Much has changed, however, since 2018. In the first two years of the pandemic, the party clearly enjoyed a surge of support as China successfully contained the spread of covid-19, while Western countries floundered. China’s propagandists made hay of this, heaping scorn on the weakness of Western democracy. Many Chinese appeared to agree with the government’s spin. But in 2022 the mood appeared to shift. Mr Xi’s determination to pursue his zero-covid strategy, despite the difficulty of containing the Omicron variant of the virus that swept the world that year, stirred anger among the millions of people who were forced to stay at home for days or weeks on end. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 3 of 8 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM For the first time since Mr Xi came to power a decade earlier, multi-city protests erupted. The demonstrations that November were small, but brave. Participants demanded an end to the lockdowns and also aired political grievances. They criticised censorship, holding up blank sheets of paper to make their point. Some called for the overthrow of Mr Xi and the party. If only briefly, the liberal wellspring gushed. The “white-paper movement”, as the protests came to be dubbed, revealed that Mr Xi was not wrong to worry about dissent. In the following weeks, police swung into action, tracking down those involved, warning many and detaining dozens. In this climate of fear, few liberals would dare to speak out. But conversations with young urban Chinese in several parts of China suggest that the white-paper movement was a big moment for liberals, and the country’s sudden, chaotic exit from zero-covid—thought to have resulted in more than 1m deaths, mainly of elderly people—was a wake-up call for some supporters of Mr Xi’s brand of authoritarianism. Cynicism about the way China is run appears more widespread. That does not mean many now want an immediate end to one-party rule. But gloominess is palpable. It is being compounded by the economy’s lacklustre performance. In Beijing, Mr Liu’s bookshop is a rarity. Perhaps the authorities reckon that to close it would anger many and achieve little. The works of Isaiah Berlin, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises (among Mr Liu’s bestsellers) can be found online and in libraries, after all. But look at the flow of young people to less oppressive cities in China, or abroad, and you can detect a liberal yearning. “I think the covid restrictions triggered a lot of Chinese people to have that kind of thought: to emigrate to other countries,” says Zhang Jinping (a pseudonym), who recently completed a master's degree in Beijing. “We can see the leadership is not listening to its people.” Digging for the truth https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 4 of 8 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM For Ms Zhang the turning-point came in 2019, when pro-democracy protests engulfed Hong Kong. On the mainland, nationalist fury erupted against the demonstrators. The party portrayed them as CIA-backed separatists. Many young Chinese bought that line: internet censorship allowed no other to prevail. But Ms Zhang tunnelled through the “great firewall” and found a different story. Her confidence in the government dropped from 100% to 80%, she says. The final months of zero-covid turned her into a far greater sceptic. “I would say Chinese people have learned the hard way how the Chinese leadership is.” Her faith in the party is now “very low”. The south-western city of Chengdu is a popular destination for young, liberal-minded Chinese who want to get away from the capital’s suffocating politics. It is no nirvana for dissent. Outspoken critics of the party are still targeted by police. But there is a little more freedom—in its cafés and counterculture of underground music; and in a laid-back lifestyle nurtured by a mild, subtropical climate that is a welcome respite from Beijing’s fierce extremes. Here there are several liberal-oriented bookshops. A shelf in one contains multiple copies of two translated works. The first is “The Plague” by Albert Camus, published in 1947. It describes a city ravaged by disease in a way that seemed prescient about the horrors of zero-covid. The other is George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty- Four”. In Chengdu it is easy to join small gatherings known as shalong (derived from “salon”), at which people discuss books and current affairs—though not, as one shalong enthusiast points out, anything specifically related to lao da, or the big boss. (Even in Chengdu, few dare openly to criticise Mr Xi.) Organisers say such events are becoming more common. At one, about three dozen people, most of them in their 20s or 30s and many unknown to each other, assembled in a brightly lit exhibition space. They had been drawn by an announcement, circulated on WeChat— https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 5 of 8 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM China’s closely monitored equivalent of WhatsApp—of a debate on the motion “Israel’s war against Hamas has gone beyond the scope of self- defence”. The discussion was calm—a far cry from the stampede in official media and online to portray the violence as a product of American meddling, ignoring Hamas’s atrocities. Neither side was declared the winner. As one organiser stressed, it was a victory for orderly discussion. “Chinese don’t have freedom of speech,” says one participant. “It’s great to have this opportunity to speak.” Illustration: Ben Jones Beijing is more stifling, but liberal thinking is common in the capital, too. One striking sign of it is meetings of women, particularly the young and well-educated, to discuss problems related to their sex. Mr Xi has cracked down hard on feminist activism. Officials see it as a front for anti-party dissent. There has been barely any organised campaigning related to women’s issues since 2015 when five high-profile activists were detained just before International Women’s Day. In 2018, in response to the #MeToo movement, Chinese women took to the internet to air their own grievances. But the government has moved to silence them, too. In June a https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 6 of 8 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM prominent #MeToo activist was sentenced to five years in prison for subversion. Online and offline, however, women still gather to encourage each other in their struggle against discrimination and abuse. Demand for feminist books shows how interest in this subject is surging. The works of Ueno Chizuko, an honorary professor at the University of Tokyo, are among the most popular. In 2019 she spoke to new students about gender inequality in higher education. She attacked expectations in Japan that girls be kawaii, or cute, and that women hide their academic achievement to avoid being seen by men as a threat. Amid a campaign by Mr Xi to promote conservative family values, emphasising the role of women as mothers, Ms Ueno’s speech struck a chord among Chinese women. It went viral on social media. A video of it has garnered more than 1m hits. Chinese publishers rushed to bring out translations of Ms Ueno’s books on feminism. More than 20 are now on sale. They have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. “In recent years, feminist ideas have spread rapidly in China and have influenced many young people,” says Jiang Xue, a Chinese journalist who left China in 2022 after harassment by state-security police. “This inevitably includes thoughts about personal rights.” As for campuses, much research by Chinese academics suggests that free-thinking attitudes remain attractive, at least to some. Of more than 1,400 students who were surveyed in 2019 at four universities in Henan province, more than 40% said they believed that liberalism was influential among students. The researcher, Cao Chong, said such thinking had “undermined the mainstream values of college students and blurred the standards of morality and justice”. In the 1980s the spread of liberalism at universities was in part encouraged by politics. Reformers in the leadership wanted China to move further away from Maoist totalitarianism by easing the party’s grip on the https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 7 of 8 Liberalism is far from dead in China 9/9/24, 8:50 AM media and academia. No such reformers are visible today. Mr Xi has silenced them. A journal that had their backing, Yanhuang Chunqiu, was ended in 2016. Amid soaring unemployment, property-market wobbles and a slowing economy, the police will be on heightened alert for unrest. Two American scholars, Scott Rozelle and Martin Whyte, have analysed data concerning attitudes towards inequality. They found that most people once believed a lack of ability explained why some people were poorer. Now they are more likely to blame the system. But don’t expect them to demonstrate. Liberals see no end in sight to the clampdown. There is no sign that Mr Xi, who is 71, plans to step down. And whoever emerges as his successor is likely to share his anxiety about the party’s possible collapse, should it relax its ideological grip. In the 1980s it was partly thanks to paralysis in the party, as reformers and hardliners squabbled, that demonstrations were able to grow. It is possible that, post-Xi, the party may experience such rifts again. If so, there could be another gushing of liberal-hued dissent onto the streets. But it could be a long wait. Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china Page 8 of 8 Germany’s party system is coming under unprecedented strain 9/9/24, 8:52 AM Germany’s party system is coming under unprecedented strain Forming governments after the eastern state elections looks nightmarish Sep 5th 2024 Photograph: Getty Images Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. -00:00 IT COULD HAVE been even worse. That was the only consolation for opponents of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (afd), which on September 1st secured its first-ever state-election win, in Thuringia, and in neighbouring Saxony ran the centre-right Christian Democrats (cdu) a close second. At least many anti-afd voters lent their support to the cdu to bolster opposition to the radicals. The Brandmauer (firewall) against the https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/05/germanys-party-system-is-coming-under-unprecedented-strain Page 1 of 4 Germany’s party system is coming under unprecedented strain 9/9/24, 8:52 AM afd remains intact, ensuring it cannot take office. But few could avoid the conclusion expressed by Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, that the results were “bitter”. Nor the anxiety that attends the start of a lengthy period of coalition talks in the two eastern states. It was not supposed to be like this. West Germany’s post-war institutions, extended to the east after reunification in 1990, were designed to see off the chaos of the pre-Nazi Weimar years. Strong “people’s parties” like the cdu and the Social Democrats (spd) were encouraged, to weaken fringe outfits. Parties’ role in politics was even anchored in the constitution. Other safeguards included a rule that parties had to win 5% of the vote to enter parliaments. Courts were permitted to ban parties that violated democratic principles, although none has done so since 1956. For decades the system yielded strong parties and coherent coalitions. Two factors have eroded it. The first, familiar to many democracies with proportional voting, is a fragmentation of the party system. Seven party groups now sit in the Bundestag. At the last election, in 2021, the cdu (along with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) and the spd between them got less than half the vote for the first time. Germany’s 16 states are run by a rum array of coalitions. Independents without a party affiliation are growing in local politics, especially in the east. Fragmentation alone did not undermine coalition politics. The addition of the Greens to parliament in the 1980s, for example, in time simply expanded the coalition options available to the spd. But then came the growth of parties that sit beyond the firewalls. In other European countries these have eroded as, usually, centre-right parties have given up resisting the success of national populists: recent examples include Sweden and the Netherlands. In Germany, by contrast, the Brandmauer holds at national and state level. This applies chiefly to the afd, an outfit radical even by the standards of https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/05/germanys-party-system-is-coming-under-unprecedented-strain Page 2 of 4 Germany’s party system is coming under unprecedented strain 9/9/24, 8:52 AM European right-wing populism. But its strength makes the mathematics of coalition formation that much harder. In Thuringia, for example, the afd now commands 32 of the 88 Landtag seats. That leaves four parties, occupying a spectrum of hard left to centre-right, to assemble a 45-seat majority from 56 seats (see chart). And the cdu’s refusal to work with the Left party, owing to its communist heritage, in effect makes the formation of a stable governing majority impossible. Tricky negotiations, and perhaps the sacrifice of sacred cows, lie ahead. No wonder the Brandmauer risks crumbling. At the two states’ last elections, in 2019, the strength of the afd forced the cdu to ally with the spd and the Greens in Saxony, and to prop up a minority government in Thuringia. Now the only viable options in both states yoke the cdu to the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (bsw)—a “left-conservative” party set up by Ms Wagenknecht, an ex-communist, in January—and the spd in so-called blackberry coalitions (the parties’ colours supposedly resemble the fruit’s stages of ripeness). In simpler times the bsw’s stance on Ukraine (it wants Germany to cut aid) and other foreign-policy matters would also have rendered it untouchable for the cdu. This week several cdu grandees have urged their eastern colleagues not to work with Ms Wagenknecht. But when Friedrich Merz, the cdu’s national leader, suggested an anti-bsw firewall earlier this year his state branches forced him to backtrack. “It’s a huge dilemma for the cdu,” says Christian Stecker, a political scientist at the Technical University in Darmstadt. Should Ms Wagenknecht, who has her eye on next year’s federal election, prove an intractable negotiator—she has made security policies that lie beyond the remit of state governments a condition of coalition talks—the cdu could split, or government formation prove impossible. Even if coalitions can be formed, their conflicts could play out at national level in the Bundesrat, the upper house, which comprises representatives from state governments. https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/05/germanys-party-system-is-coming-under-unprecedented-strain Page 3 of 4 Germany’s party system is coming under unprecedented strain 9/9/24, 8:52 AM All this risks fulfilling the prophecies of figures in the afd such as Björn Höcke, head of the Thuringian branch (pictured), who expect the cdu to implode under the contradictions of the eccentric coalitions it is condemned to lead, enabling the radicals to ride to victory next time. The afd is entrenching itself at local level, and post-election surveys found that a growing number of voters were persuaded by its populist anti-immigrant message, rather than plumping for it out of protest. Meanwhile, many cdu foot-soldiers in the east long to cosy up to the afd. At municipal level across much of east Germany the firewall has long expired. These problems are magnified in the east, where voters are volatile and more open to extremists or charismatic individuals. But comparable forces are at work in the west, where 85% of Germans live. Since 2021 the federal government has been an awkward three-party coalition, Germany’s first for nearly 70 years. Its early promise soon gave way to endless in-fighting. The dismal results of all three parties on September 1st do not appear to have inspired a renewed attempt to find common ground. What to do? Mr Stecker thinks parts of Germany should consider less formal modes of governance, including minority or shifting coalitions. But the country does not appear ready for that. Depressingly, one likely outcome after next year’s election is yet another grand coalition of the cdu and the spd—precisely the sort of contraption that the afd has previously found it so profitable to oppose. To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/05/germanys-party-system-is-coming-under-unprecedented-strain Page 4 of 4