The city that never slips: Beijing and covid

As attention has focused on war in Iran, Israel sees an opportunity to crush a weakened Hizbullah in Lebanon. Our correspondent says it would be far better for the Lebanese state to do so. As south-east Asia is modernising, Islam is counterintuitively gaining greater primacy in c ...  Show more

A rash entry into a war of choice exposes President Donald Trump in a number of ways—and he may prove more dangerous as he becomes weaker. Turkey’s foreign entanglements mask the democratic backsliding at home; that is bad news for an opposition figure whose trial just began. And ...  Show more

After backing Russia’s grievances against NATO, China now finds itself treading a <a href="https://www.economist.com/china/2022/02/26/xi-jinping-drew-closer-to-russia-on-the-eve-of-war-in-ukraine?utm_campaign=a.io&utm_medium=audio.podcast.np&utm_source=theintelligence&utm_content ...  Show more

A growing number of Chinese women are pushing for control over family-planning decisions. That can cause discomfort in a society where traditional households are still the norm and where there are many legal barriers to becoming a single parent. But, faced with a shrinking popula ...  Show more

Warnings from the Americans went unheeded, police took too long to respond, and now the Kremlin has found a way to link it to Ukraine. Could this tragedy be used to <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/03/24/vladimir-putin-begins-operation-blame-ukraine?utm_campaign= ...

Panzhihua used to be a state secret. The steel-making city, buried deep in the mountains of Sichuan, formed part of Mao Zedong’s Third Front, a covert plan to move core industries inland in case America or the Soviet Union attacked. David Rennie, The Economist’s Beijing bureau ch ...  Show more