Sunday, December 04, 2022

4: China

China invented covid-19 lockdowns. During the first weeks of the pandemic, the government of Xi Jinping corralled tens of millions of people to stop the disease spreading out of Wuhan. Almost three years later, lockdowns have become China’s undoing. A combination of protests and rising cases means that Mr Xi will have to navigate between mass lockdowns and mass infection—and possibly end up with both. The coming months will pose the biggest threat to his rule since he came to power in 2012 and the biggest threat to the authority of the Communist Party since the protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989. ........ Last weekend in Beijing protesters called for “freedom”; in Shanghai they demanded that Mr Xi step down. The crowds were small, but in a place as heavily policed as China it is remarkable they ever formed. ........ The zero-covid policy started as a stunning success, by sparing millions of Chinese lives. At first, less disease also meant less economic harm. For the past three years, most Chinese have got on with things. Month after month, state media trumpeted that this proves Mr Xi and the party are competent and humane, unlike decadent Western politicians presiding over mass death. .......... These words have now turned to ash. Mr Xi’s policies have left China ill-protected against an endemic virus that is becoming harder to control. ........ The party is willing to lock down millions for weeks on end, but it has failed to deal with vaccine scepticism among the elderly......... Unless China changes course, its resilience to covid will fade. The latest subvariants are more infectious than Omicron, which is more infectious than Delta. Protection from serious disease and death decays much faster in those who have only been vaccinated than it does in those who have been infected as well. ........ In a world with plenty of vaccines and antivirals, the benefits of Mr Xi’s zero-covid policy are no longer accruing, even as the economic and social costs continue to mount. The number of domestic flights in China is down by 45% year on year, road freight is 33% lower and traffic on city metros has fallen by 32%. Urban youth unemployment is almost 18%, nearly double what it was in 2018. ........ a sharp increase in restrictions as infections took hold across the country........... By making the zero-covid policy into a test of loyalty, Mr Xi has turned a health crisis into a political one. By imposing the daily apparatus of detection and enforcement, he has cut against the idea that his covid policy puts “people first” and instead

brought an unbending authoritarian state into every home

. By sticking with zero-covid despite the effects on the economy, he has cast doubt on one of the party’s chief claims to power—that only it can guarantee stability and prosperity. .......... In the best scenario China will experience an exit wave of deaths and disease, and economic disruption........ whether the system of surveillance and control that the party has laboured to create is able to withstand mass dissent. ........ During his first ten years in power Mr Xi exerted increasing control over politics and the economy without paying a price. Covid throws all of that into doubt.



Narendra Modi is about to fulfil a core promise to Hindus But building a temple at Ayodhya is easier than building an economy ...... Ayodhya, a town on a tributary of the Ganges, is believed to have been the birthplace,

7,000 years ago

, of Lord Ram ........ The temple, which is being paid for with public and private money, is scheduled to open in early 2024, a few months before India’s next general election. A vast monument constructed in marble, sandstone and teak, it will contain three storeys and 392 pillars. ...... Locals complain that the town lacks basic services such as clean water, medical facilities and garbage disposal.

Xi Jinping’s zero-covid policy has turned a health crisis into a political one Caught between raging disease and unpopular and costly lockdowns, he has no good fix .......... China invented covid-19 lockdowns.



The Man Who Inspired C.S. Lewis Without George MacDonald, we may not have had C.S. Lewis. ........ Clive Staples Lewis ...... The discovery of George MacDonald was the catalyst that began a chain of events in Lewis’s life that eventually led him out of atheism and into Christianity. ....... It might seem strange that fantasy could lead a man to God, but Lewis writes that MacDonald’s fantastical realms acted to “convert, even to baptize my imagination”. As Lewis read more of MacDonald’s work, he began to understand that “new quality” he could never quite put a finger on wasn’t separate from MacDonald’s faith, but rather was an essential part of it......... Fantasy literature has the unique ability to take a real-world concept and divorce it from its familiar moorings. Real wars become imaginary quests. The lust for power takes the form of an irresistible magical ring. Human greed becomes a dragon. And so readers can learn about the most incredibly complex, beautiful, or frightening shades of humanity without every truly realizing it. ........... Consider the parables of Christ—stories that convey truth about the nature of God through stories about the natural world. .......... Fantasy is just as capable of illustrating the mystery and beauty of God and what lies beyond death, but it does so by arresting our attention with stories of the fantastic rather than the natural. .......... Unable to resist these new ideas about the divine, C.S. Lewis finally capitulated in 1929, when

he knelt and accepted God as God

. Within a few years of his conversion, Lewis published “The Pilgrim’s Regress,” the first a 30-year stream of Christian apologetics works. ........... MacDonald was a man fascinated with God’s ability to love. .......... between 1851 and 1897, MacDonald authored over 50 books across a variety of genres—novels, sermons, essays, fairy tales, and plays ........ he felt that ornate ceremony and rote rituals just got in between mankind and a personal encounter with God. ........ he believed that the Christian Church was not the only thing that revealed God, but rather that all creation reveals God all the time, that there is divine mystery inherent to everything. ............

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

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10 Awesome Facts About the Bible The Good Book is always captivating. ........ around 2.5 billion copies were printed between 1815 and 1975 ....... "Christianity is the world's largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31 percent) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth." ....... The Bible is available in 426 languages and the New Testament is available in 1,115 languages, but there is more work to be done according to christianresearch.org. There are "Over 4,500 languages still wait for even one book of the Bible. This means millions either have no access to the Bible at all or can only encounter it in something other than their heart language." .

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