5 takeaways from Xi Jinping’s speech during 40th anniversary visit to Shenzhen Chinese president full of praise for people of southern tech hub on visit to mark 40th anniversary of it becoming China’s first special economic zone ‘This is a global development miracle that the Chinese people have created together,’ he says
President Xi calls on more young Hongkongers to work, study, live in mainland China in speech holding up Shenzhen as model city Xi gives Shenzhen a mission to revitalise ‘one country, two systems’ as he launches new era of integration for southern China President appeals to Hong Kong’s youth to experience life on the mainland to ‘bring their hearts closer to the motherland’
Progressives don’t love Joe Biden, but they’re learning to love his agenda “The most transformative presidents in our nation’s history — Lincoln, FDR, LBJ — were not ideologues.”
Barrett, Declining to Detail Legal Views, Says She Will Not Be ‘a Pawn’ of Trump President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee refused to weigh in on critical matters that could come before the court, including health care, abortion rights and a possible election dispute.
China Got Better. We Got Sicker. Thanks, Trump. With a different leader, the United States could have contained the coronavirus. ......... the out-of-control antics of an incoherent American president, a man clearly desperate to stay in office because losing could mean his prosecution, humiliation and liquidation all at the same time. ............. Alas, we aren’t who we think we are. Covid-19 was supposed to be China’s Chernobyl. It’s ended up looking more like the West’s Waterloo. .......... Some of China’s facial recognition technology is so good, you don’t even have to take off your face mask. Your eyes and upper nose will do. ............. we have a uniquely individualistic culture, a highly fragmented local-state-federal power-sharing system, a frail public health system, a divided body politic, a Republican Party whose business model has long been to cripple Washington, and so many people getting their news from social networks that amplify conspiracy theories and destroy truth and trust. ............. we now have a president whose political strategy for re-election is to divide us, to destroy trust — and to destroy truth — and to declare any news hostile to his goals as “fake.” And without truth and trust in a pandemic, you’re lost. ............. a strategy of “total harm minimization” that would have protected the elderly and most vulnerable, while gradually feeding back into the work force the young and healthy most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or mildly — and let them keep the economy humming and build up some natural herd immunity as we awaited a vaccine. ............. what ails us today is something that cannot be cured by a Covid-19 vaccine. We have lost the trust in each other and in our institutions and a basic sense of what is true — all necessary to navigate a health crisis together. We had them in previous wars, but not today’s.
Don't Ignore the Good News On Covid-19 From Asia There’s light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, provided the right lessons are learnt. ........... The U.S. looks to have given up on controlling the pandemic until a vaccine arrives. ........... The strategies pursued by South Korea, Vietnam, China and others do still seem to be paying off. While the total Covid-19 death toll is between 500-700 per million people in France, the U.K., Spain and the U.S., in China and South Korea it is below 10 per million. Cases are a less perfect measure, but there’s a similar observable gap. Wuhan, once the epicenter of Covid-19, is welcoming tourists again. ................. If the key to avoiding more lockdowns is finding a way to “live with the virus” — through widespread testing, tracing of contacts and isolating positive cases to slow transmission — Western countries have made structural, not cultural, errors. .............. Even the famously organized Germans failed to halt the second wave. ............... South Korea tested early, and often, using walk-in centers and drive-throughs. In Wuhan, the authorities tested 11 million people over 2 weeks. The share of tests coming back positive in South Korea and Vietnam is below 1%; in France and Spain it has risen to 10%.
Jack Ma's Blunt Words Just Cost Him $35 Billion China just showed the billionaire who’s boss in derailing fintech giant Ant Group’s monster IPO. Regulators might do better to heed his words instead. ........... In that speech, apart from labeling the global banking Basel Accords as an “old people’s club,” Ma said “systemic risk” is not the issue in China. Rather, China’s biggest risk is that it “lacks a financial ecosystem.” Chinese banks are like “pawn shops”, where collateral and guarantees are the hard currencies. As a result, some decided to go so big they are not allowed to fail. “As the Chinese like to say, if you borrow 100,000 yuan from the bank, you are a bit scared; if you borrow a million yuan, both you and the bank are a little nervous; but if you take a 1 billion yuan loan, you are not scared at all, the bank is,” Ma said.
