Tag: internal-sub-only-nl

What Statistics Can’t Capture About the Global Baby Bust

Chin@Strategy

It’s a story that you can almost set your watch by: Every few months, new data or a new report will show that the birthrate in a country or region is too low to sustain economic growth, and that efforts to convince people to have more babies have failed. It’s a story that, in many ways, is made for the Interpreter, and one that I’m very much in the middle of as a busy working parent. That perhaps explains why analyzing this issue makes me feel like I am teetering…

The Problem(s) With China’s Population Drop

Chin@Strategy

China’s population declined last year, for the first time since the mass deaths associated with Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1960s. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that China has announced that its population declined. Many observers are skeptical about Chinese data; I’ve been at conferences when China released, say, new data on economic growth, and many people responded by asking not “Why was growth 7.3 percent?” but rather “Why did the Chinese government decide to say that it was 7.3 percent?” In any…

The Chronic Illness Debate Is More Mainstream — But Still Mysterious

Chin@Strategy

But the stereotype of people refusing to accept a mental health diagnosis seems like an odd fit for contemporary American society. From our ever increasing rates of antidepressant prescriptions to our therapeutic style of spirituality, neither our medical system nor our culture writ large seems meaningfully resistant to psychiatric diagnoses or mind-body treatments. If anything, the medical system’s bias often runs the other way: If your blood tests come back negative or your symptoms don’t yield a simple diagnosis, you’re very likely to be told to consider seeing a mental…

Biden and Xi Break the Ice

Chin@Strategy

The leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies are meeting this week in Indonesia. What they decide will go a long way toward shaping the global climate of the near future — and with it, the destiny of us all. The Group of 20 represents 80 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet. The main headline: China and the U.S. are back on speaking terms. The White House announced that the United States and China would resume their climate talks. The news came after a three-and-a-half hour meeting…

Can China’s leader deliver?

Chin@Strategy

The world’s most important non-change in leadership is happening right now in China. At a Communist Party congress this week, Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader for the last 10 years, is all but certain to secure another five years in the job. Xi’s recent predecessors each left office after about a decade to protect China from abuses of power like those during the chaotic Mao era. Xi is expected to cast this precedent aside, taking the country down a more authoritarian path as economic growth teeters and tensions flare…

Xi Jinping Is the Second Coming of Mao Zedong

Chin@Strategy

Mao is widely regarded today in the West as, at best, a flawed patriot and, at worst, a brutal dictator. The Great Leap Forward of 1958 to 1962, his misguided attempt at rapid industrialization, contributed to a famine that killed tens of millions of Chinese. So intent were ordinary Chinese on raising steel production that they melted down hoes, plows and other iron implements in crude backyard furnaces, leaving them nothing to work the fields. Less than a decade later, Mao instigated the Cultural Revolution: Students turned in their teachers…

China doubles down on coal

Chin@Strategy

3. No one likes power cuts, least of all authoritarian governments. Many Chinese provinces ran critically short of electricity last fall. Factories suddenly went silent. High-rise office buildings had to be evacuated before their elevators stopped. Chemical factories lost power and, with it, their ability to control the heat and pressure in potentially hazardous operations. In March, President Xi Jinping underlined that he would not let his country turn away from coal without making sure that reliable replacements were in place. “You can’t throw away the eating utensils in your…

Is China in Big Trouble?

Chin@Strategy

These are scary times in America, with one of our major parties careening into authoritarianism and the other having difficulty moving forward thanks to two uncooperative senators. Most of what I write, inevitably, focuses on the troubled prospects for our republic. But everyone needs a break. So today I want to talk about a happier topic: The risks of an economic crisis in China. OK, not exactly happier. But a change in subject, anyway. Warnings about the Chinese economy aren’t new — but until now the worriers, myself included, have…