Jul 8th 2023

Families and freedom: Why East Asia needs a social revolution

The world this week

Leaders

The future of war

A new era of high-tech war has begun

Technology has transformed the battlefield. Democracies must respond accordingly

East Asia’s lopsided revolution

The new Asian family

East Asian governments must try to manage a momentous social change they cannot prevent

An enduring error

“Greedflation” is a nonsense idea

Inflation is the result of economic policy mistakes and war, not corporate avarice

Britain’s water mess

The real problem with Britain’s water companies

Blame financial blunders and timid regulation, not privatisation

Supreme sort

Why affirmative action in American universities had to go

And why what comes after could be better

Deep-sea mining

The world needs more battery metals. Time to mine the seabed

Getting nickel from the deep causes much less damage than getting it on land

Letters

On Denmark’s Social Democrats, vaping taxes, the Indian diaspora, Daniel Ellsberg, Sierra Leone, the Multiverse, Douglas Adams

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Affirmative action

Lee Bollinger laments the ruling by America’s Supreme Court against affirmative action

China and Russia

Alexander Gabuev on China’s strategic calculations after the turmoil in Russia

Privatisation

Thames Water may be troubled but privatisation has served Britain well, argues Michael Howard

Briefing

Neighbourhood botch

Why China should be friendlier to its neighbours

If it wants to challenge America’s global leadership, it will need their backing

Asia

Modern families

East Asia’s new family portrait

Blocked and reported!

India, an aspiring digital superpower, keeps shutting down the internet

Banyan

Sri Lanka is uncovering mass graves but not the grisly truth of its civil war

China

Firm control

China’s Communist Party is tightening its grip in businesses

Scrutiny on the bounty

Hong Kong puts a price on the heads of democracy activists

Glorious mamas

Challenging the stigma associated with single mothers in China

Chaguan

China’s message to the global south

United States

Right at the end

What to make of the Supreme Court’s tumultuous term

Major League Cricket

Can baseball fans be won over by the world’s second-biggest sport?

Quant, um

Chicago hopes to become a world centre for quantum research

MAGA mummies

Republican presidential candidates canoodle with Moms for Liberty

Citizenship

Dick Ravitch, New York’s fiscal superman

Affirmative inaction

How American universities will react as race-based admissions end

Lab monkey shortage in America

America has a shortage of lab monkeys

Middle East & Africa

Middle East diplomacy

What MBS wants from Joe Biden

Another battle for Jenin

Israel launched its biggest raid on the West Bank in over 20 years

Shake it up

Nigeria’s new president acts fast

Sensible Sall

Senegal’s President Macky Sall says he won’t stand for a third term

Civil war in Sudan

Genocide all over again?

The Americas

Dumping the Trump of the tropics

Jair Bolsonaro is barred from office for eight years

Little boy blues

This year’s El Niño will hit Peru especially hard

The worms return

Cuba’s Communist government taps the diaspora for cash

Europe

Russia, Europe and Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots

Bomblets away

Why Ukraine needs American cluster bombs

Europe’s defence

The Baltic states fear that NATO is being complacent

Europe’s worst performer

Can Sweden’s two-track economy avoid a recession?

Charlemagne

The burning of the banlieues

Britain

Privatisation in Britain

How to understand the woeful state of Britain’s water utilities

Class struggle

Labour’s cabinet would be Britain’s most state-educated since 1945

Britain’s national health service

The NHS in England gets a plan for fixing its broken workforce

Rural shows in Britain

Britons love country fairs. Why?

Roger Scruton

Why right-wing Europeans are flocking to an English thinker

Not yet stopping the boats

Britain’s tough asylum plans are held up in court and by the Lords

Bagehot

Britons turn into Borat when it comes to health, housing and avocados

International

Shaping up and tooling up

NATO is drafting new plans to defend Europe

Special report

Lessons from Ukraine

The war in Ukraine shows how technology is changing the battlefield

Electronic warfare

The latest in the battle of jamming with electronic beams

Military logistics

Why logistics are too important to be left to the generals

Total war

Technology is deepening civilian involvement in war

Russian adaptation

How Ukraine’s enemy is also learning lessons, albeit slowly

Naval warfare

How oceans became new technological battlefields

Best practice

Western armies are learning a lot from the war in Ukraine

Battlefield lessons

Video: How we studied the lessons of Ukraine

Warfare after Ukraine

Sources and acknowledgments

Business

Punch-up in the public square

The Musk-Zuckerberg social-media smackdown

Full metal straitjacket

In its tech war with America, China brings out the big guns

The long hydrogen sunrise

Can a viable industry emerge from the hydrogen shakeout?

Bartleby

How white-collar warriors gear up for the day

Schumpeter

A Lego-lover’s guide to preparing for the AI age

Finance & economics

Price wars

Economists draw swords over how to fix inflation

A belated victory

How to win the battle against inflation

Coming a cropper

Copper is unexpectedly getting cheaper

Party cooler

Does it pay to be a communist in China?

The city sleeps

How far will Wall Street job losses go?

Buttonwood

Can anything pop the everything bubble?

Free exchange

Erdoganomics is spreading across the world

Science & technology

Raiding Davy Jones’s locker

Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world’s battery-metal shortage

Digging up the jungle

New technology could cement Indonesia’s dominance of vital nickel

Hitting peak peak

A gigantic landslide shows the limit to how high mountains can grow

The Fred Flintstone diet

A Belgian company wants to create woolly-mammoth burgers

Culture

Built to order

Governments are using culture to spur economic regeneration

Man of dishonour

A new book revisits the trial of Philippe Pétain in 1945

Weaving magic

Mary Jackson has turned sweetgrass basketry into a fine-art form

Home Entertainment

Forough Farrokhzad gave voice to Iranian women’s despair and defiance

The Economist reads

How to write

What to read to become a better writer

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

One size does not fit all

Prescription rules for obesity drugs may unfairly exclude non-whites

The Economist explains

Why Hong Kong is criminalising a song

The Economist explains

Can Russia’s navy thwart attacks by repainting its ships?

Obituary

Through the dark clouds shining