Dec 3rd 2022

China’s covid failure

The world this week

Leaders

China and the pandemic

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

Will the cap fit?

The West’s proposed price cap on Russian oil is no magic weapon

The global energy system is far more flexible than you think

CoD and chips

Trustbusters should let Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard

Blocking the deal is as likely to harm consumers as it is to protect them

Lessons from the cyber-front

Why Russia’s cyber-attacks have fallen flat

Ukraine benefited from good preparation and lots of help

The wounds of silence

Sexual problems can wreck lives. Yet remedies are often simple

Doctors and schools should be franker about pleasure

Letters

On Qatar and the World Cup, Ukraine, Elon Musk, Janet Yellen, “Peanuts”

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Chinese politics

The Chinese government exercises control through local busybodies, explains Lynette H. Ong

Chinese politics

The protests in China may change the way Xi Jinping runs the country, says Minxin Pei

Briefing

China v covid-19

China’s failing covid strategy leaves Xi Jinping with no good options

Loosen up and deaths soar. Clamp down and the economy swoons

United States

And then there were three

How will America deal with three-way nuclear deterrence?

Academic sparring

America’s syringe exchanges might be killing drug users

To the winners, the spoilers

The Democrats muster an orderly leadership succession

Morticians

Women are revitalising funeral services in America

In vino veritas

A winemaker’s lawsuit against Napa County is about more than sour grapes

Lexington

Elon Musk is showing what a waste of time Twitter can be

The Americas

Oil be back

President Joe Biden starts to lift sanctions on Venezuela

Bello

Recent left-wing triumphs in Latin America may prove short-lived

Asia

When the chips are down

America’s Asian allies dislike its tech war on China

Taiwan’s election

Across the Taiwan Strait, another lockdown protest

Hail the new chief

Pakistanis turn against the army

Mongrel mobsters

Why New Zealand has such a high rate of gang membership

Banyan

Narendra Modi is about to fulfil a core promise to Hindus

No safe space

What two crimes reveal about violence against Indian women

China

Echoes of the past

What 1989 can teach us about the recent protests in China

Solidarity, of a sort

Harsh lockdowns have united the Chinese

Testing the party

Students are often at the heart of protests in China

Chaguan

Lessons from a Chinese protest

Middle East & Africa

Rial trouble

Iran’s regime is using threats, arrests and pay rises to silence workers

Numbers is just a book

As religious schools in Israel grow, maths is neglected

Ranch of government

A sofa stuffed with cash imperils South Africa’s president

Mine craft

How technology is helping reduce the menace of landmines

Brotherhood of bikers

Kenya’s boda-boda taxis are unruly in life—and death

Europe

Crimean war

A Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea would be bloody and difficult

Big Viktor is watching

How Hungary used citizens’ covid data to help the ruling party

Faded glory

Views of Angela Merkel’s 16 years in power have become harsher

Unreasonably blue

The Spanish are too grumpy about their politics

So goes the blow

Europol pulls off a massive cocaine bust

Charlemagne

America’s green subsidies are causing headaches in Europe

Britain

Wear and care

Britain’s social-care sector is in even worse shape than its health service

Few on pews

Christianity is a minority religion in England and Wales

Tory jarheads

The Conservative Party’s addiction to brawling

The new new things

Does Britain have a problem with R&D spending?

Royal erosion

The Elizabethan era is not yet at an end

Heated debate

Britain gets serious about sealing up its draughty homes

Bagehot

Emigration is in the air for Britons

International

Talking about it

The taboos around sexual health are weakening

Business

Who won the pandemic?

The new winners and losers in business

Game on or game over?

Microsoft, Activision Blizzard and the future of gaming

The hand on the tap

Meet the man who may decide the fate of German industry

Bartleby

The open questions of hybrid working

Schumpeter

If Ticketmaster is a greedy capitalist, so is Taylor Swift

Finance & economics

Crude weapon

How the West’s price cap on Russian oil could roil energy markets

Uncle Sham

Dubious green funds are rampant in America

Laundry softener

The EU’s top court has made it harder to uncover dirty money

Vault face

Why central banks are stockpiling gold

Fiscal feud

Developing countries take tax talks to the UN

Buttonwood

Has private equity avoided the asset-price crash?

Free exchange

A playbook from the 1980s for dealing with inflation

Science & technology

Cyberwarfare

Lessons from Russia’s cyber-war in Ukraine

Cyberwar and cybercrime

How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

Pollution and suicide

Air pollution can drive people to kill themselves

Treating dementia

A drug for Alzheimer’s disease that seems to work

A diving dinosaur

An amphibious dinosaur from the Cretaceous

Culture

The algorithm’s mercy

Two new books explore the upside of big data and AI

In the doge house

“La Serenissima” is an entertaining ode to Venice

Art against war

Ukraine’s Modernist art has defied censorship and missiles

Icelandic fiction

“Animal Life” is the latest book from a thought-provoking novelist

Johnson

The translator of the future is a human-machine hybrid

Social housing

The dream and nightmares of council estates

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Margins matter

The World Cup’s group stage bodes well for Morocco and England

The Economist explains

The Economist explains

Why has America’s army recruitment plummeted?

The Economist explains

Why are boys doing badly at school?

Obituary

An unlikely strongman