Aug 3rd 2024

Chinese business goes global

The world this week

Leaders

Going global

Chinese companies are winning the global south

Their expansion abroad holds important lessons for Western incumbents

Ever closer

The Middle East must step back from the brink

That still means starting with a ceasefire in Gaza

High and mighty

Genomic medicines can cost $3m a dose. How to make them affordable

The treatments are marvels of innovation. Their pricing must be inventive, too

Daylight robbery

Can Nicolás Maduro be stopped from stealing Venezuela’s election?

Peaceful protests and judicious diplomacy offer some hope

Labour’s growth plan

Is the big state back in Britain?

The risk is not too much interventionism, but too little audacity

The travel boom

How to make tourism work for locals and visitors alike

Holidays don’t have to be hell

Letters

On the Secret Service, Paraguay, Boeing, central banks and supply shocks, trust, data, business reading

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Artificial intelligence

Keep the code behind AI open, say two entrepreneurs

Artificial intelligence

Not all AI models should be freely available, argues a legal scholar

Thai politics

Thailand’s thwarted election winner on the move to ban his party

Briefing

Going out

Chinese firms are growing rapidly in the global south

Western firms beware

Asia

Less Nimitz, more MacArthur

America recreates a warfighting command in Japan

Double act

America remains Asia’s military-exercise partner of choice

Urbanisation

Indian cities are utterly unprepared for what is about to hit them

Banyan

How Asia’s wild west shakes up the modern world

China

Sunken treasures

China is itching to mine the ocean floor

Flipping talented

Which Olympic sports is China good at?

Slowing down, trading up

To revive the economy, China wants consumers to buy better stuff

Chaguan

When China hides disasters in a memory hole

United States

Death by a thousand slides

The demise of an iconic American highway

Campaign calculus

The Kamala Harris effect on the polls has been dramatic

Swing states

Can Donald Trump win back suburban voters?

Red alert

America is not ready for a major war, says a bipartisan commission

POTUS and SCOTUS

How the election will shape the Supreme Court

Middle East & Africa

Two knocks in the night

Israeli strikes on Beirut and Tehran could intensify a regional war

After Ismail Haniyeh

Will Hamas turn from war to politics?

Ransom notes

Ethiopia is in the midst of a kidnapping epidemic

Under the hump

Somaliland’s camel herders are milking it

The Americas

Venezuela’s regime digs in

After protests over a stolen election, the goons crack heads

Help needed

The plight of Brazil’s indigenous groups worsens

Mexico’s drug gangs

Will El Mayo’s arrest slow the spread of fentanyl?

Europe

Devil and the deep blue sea

Will a new “pact” of ten laws help Europe ease its migrant woes?

Paradise cost

Vienna’s social housing, lauded by progressives, pushes out the poor

The water’s mostly demined

Amid the bombs, Ukrainians rediscover the beach

Allez les bleus

The Olympics are teaching the French to cheer again

Westward ho!

Humiliated by Azerbaijan, Armenia tacks towards the West

Britain

Transition of power

What will Great British Energy do?

A tragedy, then a riot

A riot in Southport shows how the British far right is changing

Fiscal feuding

How deep is Britain’s fiscal “black hole”?

A fatter controller

Britain’s railways go from one extreme to another

Short-termitis

The disease that most afflicts England’s National Health Service

Tory story

The race to become leader of Britain’s Conservatives

Cutting loose

Was the Bank of England right to start lowering interest rates?

Bagehot

British voters care less about tax rises than politicians think

Business

Feeding the machine

What could kill the $1trn artificial-intelligence boom?

Semi-successful

Can Samsung get its mojo back?

Screened out

Dumb phones are making a comeback

Two wheels good

India’s electric-scooter champion goes public

Bartleby

What is the point of industry awards?

Schumpeter

What Chipotle and McDonald’s say about the consumer slowdown

Finance & economics

Hotting up

What the war on tourism gets wrong

Beat the crowds

Which cities have the worst overtourism problem?

Buttonwood

Investors beware: summer madness is here

Seeking security

Gary Gensler is the most controversial man in American finance

Modi’s missteps

India’s economic policy will not make it rich

Keeping the flame alive

China’s last boomtowns show rapid growth is still possible

Free exchange

EU handouts have long been wasteful. Now they must be fixed

Schools brief

Artificial intelligence

The race is on to control the global supply chain for AI chips

Science & technology

A hop, snip and a jump

Gene-editing drugs are moving from lab to clinic at lightning speed

I predict a riot

How America built an AI tool to predict Taliban attacks

On your marks

GPT, Claude, Llama? How to tell which AI model is best

Culture

Spine-tingling

How long would it take to read the greatest books of all time?

The empire strikes back

A moving memoir probes the contradictions of modern China

Finding the beat

The Paris Olympics are breaking’s one shot to become a global sport

Biology

A primer on RNA, perhaps the most consequential molecule of all

World in a dish

Tinned fish is swimming against the tide

A mountainous legacy

Few writers have seen America more clearly than James Baldwin

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Obituary

The Country Girl