Wednesday, August 4, 2021

China's Long-Term Ambition


The long game: China’s grand strategy to displace American order
https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-long-game-chinas-grand-strategy-to-displace-american-order/

China’s Five-Finger Punch
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-xi-resurrects-mao-five-fingers-strategy-by-brahma-chellaney-2020-07
“Tibet is the key to China’s territorial claims in the Himalayan region – and not only because of geography. As long as the Communist Party of China – and especially China's revisionist president, Xi Jinping – holds a monopoly on power, none of the country’s neighbors will be safe”. 

India, Like the U.S., Has Grown Impatient with China
https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-china-modi-xi-new-dehli-beijing-11626983609 

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Thought-Provoking Readings

What Should Conservatives Conserve?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/opinion/what-should-conservatives-conserve.html
 
How Liberalism Can Succeed
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/opinion/liberal-biden-infrastructure.html
 
HOW THE BOBOS BROKE AMERICA
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/blame-the-bobos-creative-class/619492/
David Brooks notes:
How could people with high-end powerboats possibly think of themselves as the downtrodden? The truth is, they are not totally crazy. The class structure of Western society has gotten scrambled over the past few decades. It used to be straightforward: You had the rich, who joined country clubs and voted Republican; the working class, who toiled in the factories and voted Democratic; and, in between, the mass suburban middle class. We had a clear idea of what class conflict, when it came, would look like—members of the working classes would align with progressive intellectuals to take on the capitalist elite.
But somehow when the class conflict came, in 2015 and 2016, it didn’t look anything like that. Suddenly, conservative parties across the West—the former champions of the landed aristocracy—portrayed themselves as the warriors for the working class. And left-wing parties—once vehicles for proletarian revolt—were attacked as captives of the super-educated urban elite.
 
‘Freedom,’ Florida and the Delta Variant Disaster
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/opinion/Covid-Florida-vaccines.html
Paul Krugman notes:
Why, for example, are conservatives so insistent on the right of businesses to make their own decisions, free from regulation — but quick to stop them from denying service to customers who refuse to wear masks or show proof of vaccination? Why is the autonomy of local school districts a fundamental principle — unless they want to require masks or teach America’s racial history? It’s all about whose privilege is being protected. 
 
America’s Collapsing Meritocracy Is a Recipe for Revolt
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/16/taiping-rebellion-addison-rae-meritocracy-exams-rebellion/
 
Equality and the elites
https://www.newstatesman.com/aristocracy-talent-meritocracy%20modern-world-adrian-wooldridge-review 

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China's Industry Preference

China Wants Manufacturing—Not the Internet—to Lead the Economy
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-wants-manufacturingnot-the-internetto-lead-the-economy-11628078155 

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Can Increasingly Angry Humans Cooperate with Each Other?

What if Humans Just Can’t Get Along Anymore?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/opinion/technology-internet-cooperation.html
Farhad Manjoo notes:
“… as the pioneering political economist Elinor Ostrom showed over a lifetime of research, there are countless examples of people coming together to create rules and institutions to manage common resources. People aren’t profit-maximizing automatons; time and again, she found, we can make individual sacrifices in the interest of collective good.
Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009. In her prize lecture she wrote that “humans have a more complex motivational structure and more capability to solve social dilemmas” than rational-choice economists have given us credit for. The key to unlocking these capabilities, she said, was building the right institutions”.
 
AMERICAN SHOPPERS ARE A NIGHTMARE
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/pandemic-american-shoppers-nightmare/619650/ 

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CDC Need a Better Communication Strategy

The C.D.C. Needs to Stop Confusing the Public
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/opinion/cdc-covid-guidelines.html 

Related:
Watch the U.K. to Understand Delta
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/watch-uk-understand-delta/619647/
The country lifted all its COVID-19 restrictions just as Delta peaked. What happens next will tell us how well vaccines are working.

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Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Profit Margins and Stock Valuations

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Covid Deaths

Authoritarian governments have ‘obfuscated’ true Covid death tolls, analysis suggests
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/authoritarian-governments-have-obfuscated-true-covid-death-tolls/
 
Tracking excess mortality across countries during the COVID-19 pandemic with the World Mortality Dataset
https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336 

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