May 28th 2022

China’s slowdown

The world this week

Leaders

Ideology versus prosperity

How Xi Jinping is damaging China’s economy

Inflexible policies are trumping pragmatism

Learning from Uvalde

Why America should make it harder to buy guns

In many states, it is easier to own a gun than a dog. That is absurd

No time to go wobbly

Ukraine needs support, not timorous advice

Appeasing Vladimir Putin will not bring lasting peace

Kim Jong Understudy

Containing Eritrea, the North Korea of Africa

Sanctions should be reimposed on Issaias Afwerki’s regime

Prophets and profits

Why investors are increasingly worried about recession in America

And why the speed of the market correction offers a crumb of comfort

”The safest place in the world”

Britain should scrap its Online Safety Bill

It is both illiberal and impractical

Letters

On money-laundering, medieval history, Utah, shrinkflation, food oil, pandemics, digital twins, football

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Health care

Sir John Bell argues for a global genomic surveillance system to thwart pandemics

Finance and economics

Sonal Desai says the Fed has kept monetary policy too loose for too long

Russia and Ukraine

Andrey Kortunov offers three scenarios for the end of the war in Ukraine

Briefing

Fortified but not enriched

China is trying to protect its economy from Western pressure

The results are mixed

United States

Another mass shooting

The spate of gun violence shows American exceptionalism at its worst

Primary colours

Two Republicans Donald Trump tried to oust triumph in Georgia

Bentonville’s lessons

The home of Walmart wants to beat sprawl

The name game

New trade unions in America are successfully using company brands

Bordering on chaos

The Title 42 furore highlights America’s broken immigration system

The talent war

America has an opportunity to lure Russia’s tech talent

Lexington

Sex scandal and Southern Baptists

The Americas

The costs of inaction

A divided Colombia is poised to elect its first leftist president

Bello

A test of whether big mining is socially sustainable

Asia

Semiconductors and strategy

Taiwan is worried about the security of its chip industry

Quiet comfort

Joe Biden vows to deepen America’s ties with South Korea

Chadchart topping

An election in Bangkok heralds an optimistic new kind of politics

Avian idol

Songbird competitions are a popular pastime in Indonesia

Political weather

Australian voters have had enough of climate inaction

Testing situation

India’s exams are plagued by cheating

Banyan

Abe Shinzo still looms large over Japan

China

How to see Xi

Rumours emerge of disharmony within China’s leadership

A timely reminder

Hacked files reveal more details about Chinese abuses in Xinjiang

Testing out of unemployment

Many young Chinese choose graduate school over a grim job market

Corruption and disruptions

Trouble at the top and bottom of China’s financial sector

Chaguan

China’s intergenerational divide

Middle East & Africa

Issaias’s army

Inside Eritrea, Africa’s gulag state

Clicks and middlemen

How e-commerce looks different in Africa

Meet the new boss

The UAE’s new sheikh may jolt both succession and federation

Marriage makers

Qatar wants to become a leader in genomics

Europe

Thinking about the endgame

When and how might the war in Ukraine end?

The tide turns

As Russia’s invasion stalls, Ukraine’s refugees return home

So far, so good

The EU’s covid-19 recovery fund has changed how Europe spends money

The return of the king

Spain’s former monarch is a headache for his son

Charlemagne

Reheated plans for a multi-tiered Europe revive familiar suspicions

Britain

Neither black nor white

Sue Gray produces a patchy account of the Downing Street parties

The wind changes

Rishi Sunak unveils a new plan to ease Britain’s cost-of-living squeeze

Internet regulation

Britain’s Online Safety Bill could change the face of the internet

Tweak and ye shall find

Gene-edited food is coming to Britain

Retailer therapy

What John Lewis’s turnaround says about the British high street

Past tense

A new history curriculum will not cool the culture wars

Land of hops and glory

Britain celebrates a jubilee, again

Bagehot

How the Conservatives became an opposition in government

International

Spies like us

Anonymous tipsters, angry at Russia, help detect sanctions-busters

Special report

China in Africa

The Chinese-African relationship is important to both sides, but also unbalanced

Debt and infrastructure

Chinese loans and investment in infrastructure have been huge

Business and trade

How Chinese firms have changed Africa

Political links

The price of friendship

The media

China, meet Fourth Estate

Defence co-operation

Ace of bases

The future

Countering China in Africa

China in Africa

Sources and acknowledgments

Business

Secret sauce

The recipe for the outperformance of Swiss businesses

A postcard from the edge

Is this the end of Davos man?

Broader still

Will a chipmaking giant’s $60bn bet on software pay off?

Bartleby

The power of small gestures

A taste of things to come

Plant-based proteins are no longer a side dish in diets

Schumpeter

BASF’s plan to wean itself off cheap Russian gas comes with pitfalls

Finance & economics

Mood swings

Foreign investors are fleeing China

Reframed work

America’s new Asian economic pact: just don’t call it a trade deal

Home run

Wall Street’s housing grab continues

Bloody but unbowed

The credit market hasn’t cracked yet

Up in the air

Carbon markets are going global

Free exchange

How economic interdependence fosters alliances and democracy

Science & technology

Life, but not as we know it

How to improve the search for aliens

Seed banks

Ukraine’s agricultural research is threatened by the war

A new outbreak of disease

Monkeypox is not covid mk2, but it needs to be nipped in the bud

Culture

Archaeological revelations

Turkey’s temple mounds illuminate the birth of civilisation

The smell of success

The ingenuity of plants and people lies behind fragrances

Urban adventures

The charm and peril of Naples

Handlebars of history

The bicycle is humanity’s most underrated invention

Shark bait

“A merry life and a short one”: the pirate motto was half-true

Back Story

“Top Gun: Maverick” feels the need to speed into the past

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

From Main Street to Wall Street

Stimulus cheques have buoyed America’s stockmarket

Obituary

The barefoot laird