The Economist (20210213) - Calibre

Thursday, February 11, 2021
The world this week 3

Leaders 5
Letters 1
Briefing 3
United States 7
The Americas 3
Asia 6
China 3
Middle East & Africa 5
Europe 6
Britain 8
International 1
Special report 9
Business 6
Finance & economics 7
Science & technology 4
Books & arts 4
Graphic detail 1
Obituary 1
Economic Indicators 1
Sections Leaders
The world this week

Politics this week Business this week KAL’s cartoon
. . .
Sections Leaders
Articles Sections Next
Politics this week

Feb 11th 2021 |
The impeachment trial of Donald Trump got under way in the Senate. Six Republicans joined Democrats in
voting to reject the defence’s argument that Mr Trump should not be tried as he has left office, but it is unlikely
that the prosecution will get the two-thirds majority of votes needed to convict Mr Trump of inciting the mob
that stormed the Capitol on January 6th. The proceedings are expected to be quick, certainly not as long as the
three weeks of Mr Trump’s first impeachment trial a year ago.
Darker Summers
The Senate approved a budget blueprint for Joe Biden’s $1.9trn stimulus bill. The vote was 50-50 along party
lines; Kamala Harris cast her first tie-breaker as vice-president. The House is crafting the details of the
legislation. Democrats, meanwhile, were furious at Larry Summers, a former economic adviser to Barack
Obama, who warned that the bill’s hefty spending tag might lead to “inflationary pressures” and financial
instability. See article.
In his first big foreign-policy speech, Mr Biden said he would end American support for the Saudi-led campaign
against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. His administration also moved to delist the Houthis as a terrorist
organisation, making it easier for aid to reach areas under their control. The war, now in its seventh year, has
caused a humanitarian disaster. See article.
Libyan delegates at UN-sponsored talks chose a new interim government. Muhammad al-Menfi, a former
diplomat, will head a three-man presidency council, while Abdulhamid Dbeibeh, a wealthy businessman, will
become prime minister. Their main task is preparing the country for elections in December. See article.
Thousands of people gathered in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, to mark the killing in 2013 of Chokri Belaid, a
popular politician, and decry police abuses. It was the country’s biggest protest in years.
Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent women’s-rights activist in Saudi Arabia, was released from prison after
serving three years for supposedly harming national security. Her release was seen as an effort by the kingdom
to curry favour with the Biden administration.
A deadlock between clan leaders and the government in Somalia meant that a deadline passed to elect a
president before the end of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s term in office. The country was meant to hold its
first direct elections in 50 years last year, but these were postponed because of a jihadist insurgency and the
covid-19 pandemic.
Ethiopia gavethe UN permission to allow 25 foreign staff to provide humanitarian aid to the northern region of
Tigray. Ethiopia has barred outsiders from the region since fighting started in November. Millions of Tigrayans
are hungry.
Allowed to settle
Colombia is togive protected status for ten years to 1m migrants from Venezuela. Some 5.4m Venezuelans
have fled their country’s economic disaster; 1.7m are in Colombia. The UN high commissioner for refugees
called the decision a “historic gesture”.
Andrés Arauz, an ally of Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa, led the first round of a presidential
election. He will advance to the second round in April. Mr Correa, a left-wing authoritarian, has been convicted
of corruption. See article.
Cuba’s communist government expanded the scope for private enterprise. An old list of 127 professions open
to entrepreneurs has been replaced with a list that reserves 124 activities for the state, allowing entrepreneurs to
enter the other fields. The state still bars them from professions they were eager to enter, such as accountancy.
See article.
Haiti’s government ordered the arrest of at least 23 people whom it accused of attempting to stage a coup
against the president, Jovenel Moïse.
Chinese officials formally arrested an Australian journalist, Cheng Lei, about six months after she was detained
in Beijing. Ms Cheng, a presenter on CGTN, a Chinese state broadcaster, has been charged with supplying state
secrets to “foreign forces”.
Crowds gathered in cities across Myanmar to protest against the army’s coup and to demand the release of
Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the ruling party. The security services used water cannons and rubber bullets to
disperse the protesters. See article.
After the Indian government started legal action against it, Twitter reimposed blocks on some 500 accounts,
including those linked to ongoing farmers’ protests. But it refused to impose blocks on journalists and media
firms, which the government had requested.
Assailed from all sides over its lax covid-19 checks on international arrivals, the British government announced
that passengers returning to Britain who have visited any country on a “red list” will be required to pay for a
“quarantine package” costing up to £1,750 ($2,420). This mandates ten-day isolation at a designated hotel and
covers transport costs and two covid-19 tests. Fines reaching £10,000 or up to a decade in prison will be put in
place for those who disobey. It is unlikely that any court will impose such a draconian term. See article.
Coronavirus briefs
The World Health Organisation recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine for all adults, even in places where
more virulent strains of the disease have appeared.
Earlier, South Africa’s health minister said he might try to sell or swap the AstraZeneca vaccine for other
types, after a paper found that it gave “minimal protection” against mild-to-moderate cases of the South African
variant.
The number of Americans in hospital with covid-19 and the number of patients in intensive care dropped to
their lowest levels since November. New cases continue to fall.
Diners in New York state are able to eat inside restaurants again from February 12th. The date was brought
forward to accommodate romantics looking for a Valentine’s Day meal. Canoodling couples can expect more
privacy; restaurants are only allowed to operate at 25% capacity.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-

week/2021/02/11/politics-this-week

Previous Articles Sections Next
Business this week

Feb 13th 2021 |
Bitcoin surged to a record high, after Tesla revealed that it had bought $1.5bn-worth of the cryptocurrency and
would accept it as payment for its cars. Elon Musk’s recent musings on digital money have bolstered the claims
of bitcoin backers that it will one day be mainstream legal tender. Tesla’s investment in such a volatile market is
a risky bet, however, and blemishes its green credentials. The amount of computer energy needed to mine
bitcoin accounts for 0.56% of the world’s total electricity consumption, according to the Cambridge Centre for
Alternative Finance.
Oil prices were at their highest level in over a year. Brent crude rose above $60 a barrel; in April last year, the
early days of the coronavirus crisis, it had dropped below $20. Prices have been on a steady ascent since
October, fuelled in part by more curtailments to Saudi Arabia’s output and a pick-up in demand from China; oil
imports there are thought to have jumped by a third in January, from December. See article.
Kuaishou’s share price continued climbing, days after its IPO in Hong Kong raised $5.4bn, the biggest
stockmarket flotation in the tech industry since Uber. A rival to TikTok (known as Douyin in China),
Kuaishou’s stock rose by 160% on the first day of trading.
Meanwhile, court filings in America suggested that the Justice Department under the new Biden administration
is reviewing whether TikTok is a threat to national security, a claim the Trump administration made citing data-
privacy issues. There were reports that the sale of TikTok’s American operations to Oracle and Walmart would
not go ahead.
What do you say, Joe?
Huawei, a Chinese maker of network equipment, filed a new legal challenge to the American government’s
designation of it as a national-security threat, this time against the Federal Communications Commission. Ren
Zhengfei, Huawei’s boss, said he would welcome a call from Joe Biden to discuss the situation.
Higher rates to carry sea freight between Asia and Europe helped Maersk, the world’s biggest container
shipping line, to almost double its quarterly profit. Freight prices jumped amid a resurgence in global demand
for imports last year, and a shortage of empty containers to ship them in.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund reported a record quarterly profit, as the value of its investments in tech firms such as
Uber was lifted by rising stockmarkets. Despite booking losses from its colossal trades in derivatives, which
eventually led to it being dubbed the “Nasdaq whale”, the Japanese conglomerate made an overall quarterly net
profit of ¥1.17trn ($11.1bn).
A big jump in sales from Uber’s food-delivery business was not enough to offset a sharp drop in revenues from
its ride-hailing service last year, driving it to an annual loss of $6.8bn. Still, that was an improvement on the
$8.5bn it lost in 2019.
Ocado’s annual earnings shone a little more light on consumer behaviour during the pandemic. Based in
Britain, Ocado provides a logistics platform for online supermarket sales. Revenues rose by 35% for the year
ending November 29th. Because of capacity constraints, Ocado’s number of customers actually fell, but this
was offset by an increase in the average size of an order from £106 to £137 ($147 to $190). The company
believes that the pandemic has shifted consumers towards more online shopping “for good”.
Heineken decided to shed 8,000 jobs, or nearly 10% of its workforce, as lockdowns cut into sales, pushing the
Dutch brewer to an annual loss. In Britain beer sales drooped by 56% last year, according to the industry’s
association. It urged the government to remove restrictions on what and when pubs and bars can serve
customers when the current lockdown eases, or else thousands of pubs will be forced to close.
Vale agreed to pay $7bn to the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in compensation for the collapse of the
Brumadinho dam two years ago, which killed at least 270 people. The dam had held iron-ore waste from one of
the Brazilian company’s mines. The reparations settlement was described as the biggest ever in Latin America.
So how’s it going?
JD Sports, a British retailer, plans to open a new distribution centre in the European Union, because of what its
chairman described as worse-than-expected Brexit red tape that is causing delays to European shipments.
Britain’s Brexit negotiator, David Frost, said that the new relationship was more “bumpy” than he had hoped,
but blamed the EU for “niggling border issues”. Meanwhile, Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of
England, lambasted the EU’s inflexible attitude over post-Brexit arrangements for Britain’s financial services,
saying this was “unrealistic, dangerous and inconsistent with practice”. Negotiations with Brussels are
continuing.

week/2021/02/13/business-this-week

KAL’s cartoon
Feb 13th 2021 |

week/2021/02/13/kals-cartoon

The world this week Sections Letters
Leaders
The pandemic: How well will vaccines work? The world economy: Inflategate
. .
Human rights: How to talk about Xinjiang Reducing child poverty: An end to exceptionalism
. .
Life, the universe and everything: Alien dreams
.
The world this week Sections Letters
The pandemic
How well will vaccines work?

Covid-19 may become endemic. Governments need to start thinking about how to cope
Feb 13th 2021 |
EVEN MIRACLES have their limits. Vaccines against the coronavirus have arrived sooner and worked better than
many people dared hope. Without them, the pandemic threatened to take more than 150m lives. And yet, while
the world rolls up a sleeve, it has become clear that expecting vaccines to see off covid-19 is mistaken. Instead
the disease will circulate for years, and seems likely to become endemic. When covid-19 first struck,
governments were caught by surprise. Now they need to think ahead.
To call vaccination a miracle is no exaggeration. A little more than a year after the virus was first recognised,
medics have already administered 148m doses. In Israel, the world’s champion inoculator, hospital admissions
among those aged below 60, who have not received a jab, are higher than ever. By contrast, among the largely
inoculated over-60s they are already nearly 40% below their mid-January peak and they will fall further.
Although vaccines fail to prevent all mild and asymptomatic cases of covid-19, they mostly seem to spare
patients from death and the severest infections that require hospital admission, which is what really matters.
Early evidence suggests that some vaccines stop the virus spreading, too. This would greatly slow the pandemic
and thus make it easier to alleviate lockdowns without causing a surge of cases that overwhelms intensive-care
units. Those findings, and many more, will harden up over the next few months as more data emerge (see
article).
However, despite all this good news, the coronavirus is not finished with humanity yet. Covid-19 will continue
to circulate widely. There is a growing realisation that the virus is likely to find a permanent home in humans,
as “The Jab”, our new podcast, which launches on February 15th, will explore. That has profound implications
for how governments need to respond.
One reason the coronavirus will persist is that making and distributing enough vaccine to protect the world’s
7.8bn people is a Herculean task (see article). Even Britain, which is vaccinating the population at a faster rate
than any other big country, will not finish with the over-50s until May. To add to the burden, the potency of a
jab may fade, making boosters necessary. Outside the rich world, 85% of countries have yet to start their
vaccination programmes. Until the billions of people who live in them have felt the prick of a needle, which
may not bebefore 2023, they will remain fuel for the virus.
Another reason for covid-19’s persistence is that, even as vaccines are making SARS-CoV-2 less infectious and
protecting people against death, new viral variants are undoing some of their good work. For one thing,
successful variants are more infectious—anything from 25-40% in the case of B.1.1.7 which was first found in
Britain. Infection is governed by the dizzying mathematics of exponential growth, so cases and deaths
accumulate rapidly even if the variant is no more deadly. To get a given level of viral suppression, more
onerous social distancing is needed.
In addition, new variants may withstand current vaccines. The ones found in Brazil and South Africa may also
be defeating the immunity acquired from a previous covid-19 infection. The hope is that such cases will be
milder, because the immune system has been primed by the first encounter with the disease. Even if that is true,
the virus will continue to circulate, finding unprotected people and—because that is what viruses do—evolving
new strains, some of which will be better at evading the defences that societies have mounted against them.
And the third reason SARS-CoV-2 will persist is that lots of people will choose to remain a target by refusing
vaccination. A total of 10m Britons are vulnerable to the disease, because of their age or underlying conditions.
Modelling suggests that if just 10% of them declined to be vaccinated and if social distancing were abandoned
while the virus was still liable to circulate at high levels, then a tremendous spike in infections and deaths would
result.
In reality, the share of the overall population that remains unvaccinated is likely to be much higher than in that
thought-experiment (see article). Vaccines are not yet licensed for children. Minority communities in many
countries, which are most vulnerable to infection, tend to have less trust in the government and the medical
establishment. Even among some care workers, as many as half refuse vaccination, despite having seen the
ravages of covid-19 at first hand. With the new variants, about 80% of the overall population needs to be
immune for an infected person, on average, to pass on the disease to less than one contact, the threshold at
which the epidemic subsides. That will be a tall order.
For all these reasons, governments need to start planning for covid-19 as an endemic disease. Today they treat it
as an emergency that will pass. To see how those ways of thinking differ, consider New Zealand, which has
sought to be covid-free by bolting its doors against the world. In this way it has kept registered deaths down to
just 25, but such a draconian policy makes no sense as a permanent defence: New Zealand is not North Korea.
As vulnerable Kiwis are vaccinated, their country will come under growing pressure to open its borders—and
hence to start to tolerate endemic covid-19 infections and deaths.
Across the world governments will have to work out when and how to switch from emergency measures to
policies that are economically and socially sustainable indefinitely. The transition will be politically hard in
places that have invested a lot in being covid-free. Nowhere more so than China, where vaccination is slow. The
Communist Party has defined every case of covid-19 as unacceptable and wide circulation of the disease as a
sign of the decadence of Western democracies.
The new coronormal
The adjustment to living with covid-19 begins with medical science. Work has already started on tweaking
vaccines to confer protection against variants. That should go along with more surveillance of mutations that are
spreading and accelerated regulatory approval for booster shots. Meanwhile treatments will be required to save
more of those who contract the disease from death or serious illness. The best outcome would be for a
combination of acquired immunity, regular booster jabs of tweaked vaccines and a menu of therapies to ensure
that covid-19 need rarely be life-threatening. But that outcome is not guaranteed.
To the extent that medicine alone cannot prevent lethal outbreaks of covid-19, the burden will also fall on
behaviour, just as it has in most of the pandemic. But rather than national lockdowns and months-long school
closures, which come at a huge price, the responsibility should fall more heavily on individuals. Habits like
mask-wearing may become part of everyday life. Vaccine passports and restrictions in crowded spaces could
become mandatory. Vulnerable people will have to maintain great vigilance. Those who refuse vaccination can
expect health-education and encouragement, but limited protection. As our special report on the travel industry
makes clear, people’s desire to live their lives will ultimately be hard to resist, even in autocracies like China
that may be reluctant to leave zero-tolerance behind.
The persistence of acute infections and chronic, debilitating “long covid” means that the next stage of the
pandemic sounds grim. But even if covid-19 has not been completely put to rest, the situation is immeasurably
better than what might have been. The credit for that goes to medical science. ■
Dig deeper
All our stories relating to the pandemic and the vaccines can be found on our coronavirus hub. You can also
listen to The Jab, our new podcast on the race between injections and infections, and find trackers showing the
global roll-out of vaccines, excess deaths by country and the virus’s spread across Europe and America.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/how-well-will-

vaccines-work

Inflategate
How rising inflation could disrupt the world’s economic policies

The debate is hotting up
Feb 10th 2021 |
THE DEBATE about whether high inflation will emerge out of the pandemic is becoming more pressing. In
January underlying prices in the euro zone rose at their fastest pace for five years. In America some economists
fear that President Joe Biden’s planned $1.9trn stimulus, which includes $1,400 cheques for most Americans,
may overheat the economy once vaccines allow service industries to reopen fully. Emerging bottlenecks
threaten to raise the price of goods. Space on container ships costs 180% more than a year ago and a shortage of
semiconductors caused by this year’s boom in demand for tech equipment is disrupting the production of cars,
computers and smartphones.
Headline statistics on price rises will soon contribute to the sense that an inflationary dawn is breaking. They
will go up automatically as the collapse in commodities prices early in the pandemic falls out of comparisons
with a year earlier, and the recent rise in the oil price begins to bite—on February 8th Brent crude rose above
$60 a barrel for the first time in more than a year. In Germany the reversal of a temporary cut in VAT has already
helped year-on-year inflation rise from -0.7% to 1.6% in a month.
For most of the past decade the world economy’s problem, judged by central banks’ targets, has been too little
inflation, not too much. As a result it is easy to view the coming acceleration in prices as welcome. In fact, it is
worth worrying about, for several reasons.
One is that it weakens the hand of those arguing for more fiscal stimulus in places that need it. There is little
prospect of the euro zone sustaining higher inflation, for example. Its main rate of interest has not been cut
during the pandemic and its deficit spending remains inadequate given its economic outlook and lack of
monetary firepower. Much as the European Central Bank mistakenly raised rates in response to a temporary
burst of inflation in 2011, the danger this time is that a temporary acceleration in prices emboldens fiscal hawks
who are complacent about the dangers of a depressed economy. The same danger lurks in Japan, the archetypal
low-inflation economy. Its prices started falling during the pandemic. Japan will probably escape deflation this
year, but beyond that it looks destined to remain in a low-inflation trap, having seemingly given up on its brief
attempt to spring out of it in the mid-2010s.
Higher inflation could also cause gyrations in monetary policy in America, where rising inflation expectations
and a faster rebound mean price rises are more likely to prove persistent. Financial markets imply a one-in-five
chance that consumer prices will grow by at least 3% per year on average over the next five years. The Federal
Reserve has promised to keep interest rates low and to keep buying bonds because it wants inflation to
overshoot its 2% target, in order to make up for today’s shortfalls. But its new “average inflation targeting”
regime does not allow for an enduring or large overshoot. Eventually the central bank will want to raise interest
rates to bring inflation back down.
The faster prices rise this year, the sooner that tightening could come. Richard Clarida, the Fed’s vice-chairman,
has said that the central bank will make up only for inflation shortfalls that have occurred over the preceding
year, meaning the point at which catch-up is complete could come surprisingly quickly. On February 7th Janet
Yellen, the Treasury secretary, tried to reassure critics of Mr Biden’s stimulus by saying that America has the
tools to deal with inflation. But higher rates are not without consequence, and if the Fed finds itself pouring cold
water on an overheating economy, the risks of another recession will rise.
Higher rates also hold deep implications for markets. Almost everything about today’s financial landscape is
premised on central banks keeping interest rates low for a long time. Cheap money lies behind the idea that the
government can spend however much it likes—including, say, on Mr Biden’s planned infrastructure bill—and
underpins today’s sky-high stockmarket values and abundant credit. An abrupt change in the interest-rate
outlook would be painful, as it was in 2013 when the Fed’s hawkish comments led to what became known as
the “taper tantrum”.
On Wall Street higher rates would be a shock. In emerging markets they would be agonising. Many have been
experimenting with unconventional monetary policy and bigger budget deficits, following the rich world (see
article). But their efforts assume that global financial conditions will stay loose. Higher interest rates in America
to see off inflation would mean a stronger dollar and capital outflows from emerging economies, as in 2013.
This would imperil their finances and make it harder for them to fight the effects of the pandemic. There is a lot
to like about the idea of escaping the low-inflation, low-rate paradigm of the past decade. But higher inflation
will expose the world economy and financial markets to a bumpy ride. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/10/how-rising-

inflation-could-disrupt-the-worlds-economic-policies

The persecution of the Uyghurs
“Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

To confront evil, the first step is to describe it accurately
Feb 13th 2021 |
WHEN RONALD REAGAN cried “tear down this wall”, everyone knew what he meant. There was a wall. It
imprisoned East Germans. It had to come down. One day, it did. In the struggle between democracy and
dictatorship, it is crucial that democracies tell the truth in plain language. Dictatorships will always lie and
obfuscate to conceal their true nature. Democracies can tell it like it is. Bear this in mind when deciding what to
call China’s persecution of the Uyghurs. On his last full day in office, Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike
Pompeo, called it “genocide”. Although Joe Biden did not use that word this week in his first talk with Xi
Jinping, China’s president, his administration has repeated it (see article) and lawmakers in Britain are mulling
it (see article). But is it accurate?
By the common understanding of the word, it is not. Just as “homicide” means killing a person and “suicide”
means killing yourself, “genocide” means killing a people. China’s persecution of the Uyghurs is horrific: it has
locked up perhaps 1m of them in prison camps, which it naturally mislabels “vocational training centres”. It has
forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women. But it is not slaughtering them.
Calling it genocide depends on a definition rooted in a UN convention which suggests that one need not actually
kill anyone to commit it. Measures “intended to prevent births”, or inflicting “serious bodily or mental harm”
will suffice, if their aim is “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. How
large a part is not specified. In principle it is, alas, possible to imagine the destruction of an entire people by, for
example, the systematic sterilisation of all women. But if conventions are worded with unusual broadness, they
must also be used with special care. Until now, America’s State Department had applied the “genocide” label
only to mass slaughter, and even then it often hesitated, for fear that uttering the term would create an
expectation that it would intervene. It did not call Rwanda’s genocide a genocide until it was practically over.
America’s political rhetoric has thus undergone a dramatic shift, which has profound implications for the
world’s most important bilateral relationship. By accusing China of genocide, it is sending the signal that its
government has committed the most heinous of crimes. And yet at the same time it is proposing to deal with it
over global warming, pandemics and trade.
Some campaigners think the rhetorical escalation is nonetheless wise. It will stoke useful outrage, they argue,
rallying companies to shun Chinese suppliers and countries to boycott next year’s Winter Olympics. On the
contrary, it is more likely to be counter-productive. For a start, it accomplishes nothing to exaggerate the
Communist Party’s crimes in Xinjiang. Countless true stories of families torn apart and Uyghurs living in terror
appal any humane listener. When ordinary Han Chinese hear them, as a few did on Clubhouse, a new social-
media platform, which China has rushed to block, they are horrified (see article). By contrast, if America makes
what sound like baseless allegations of mass killing, patriotic Chinese will be more likely to believe their
government’s line, that Westerners lie about Xinjiang to tarnish a rising power.
Democracies face an unprecedented and delicate task when they deal with China, which is both a threat to
global norms and an essential partner in tackling global crises such as climate change (see article). To refuse to
engage with it is to endanger the world economy and the planet.
Mr Biden is right to decry China’s abuses, but he should do so truthfully. The country is committing crimes
against humanity. By accusing it of genocide instead, in the absence of mass murder, America is diminishing
the unique stigma of the term. Genocide should put a government beyond the pale; yet American officials will
keep doing business with the regime they have branded genocidal. Future genocidaires will take comfort. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/genocide-is-the-

wrong-word-for-the-horrors-of-xinjiang

An end to exceptionalism
Reducing child poverty in America

The White House and a prominent Republican senator propose copying a European scheme
Feb 13th 2021 |
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM takes many forms. One, alas, is a shockingly high rate of child poverty. According
to the OECD’s measure, which defines as poor those families living on less than half of median family income,
21% of American children are in poverty. This is double the rate in France and nearly triple that in Poland. This
grim statistic is cause to welcome two proposals to reduce child poverty, one from Joe Biden’s administration,
the other from Mitt Romney, a Republican senator.
Helping poor Americans involves balancing a complicated set of trade-offs. The more people who receive help,
the more money it costs. The solution to this is usually to means-test aid, which does the most good per dollar
spent. Yet help that is narrowly targeted at a small group of Americans can easily be dismissed as aid to the
undeserving, eroding the political support it requires to exist. Highly targeted schemes are also more
complicated to administer. Much of the help to poor families comes in the form of tax credits, which are
confusing and go unclaimed by many of those who are eligible to receive them.
It is so hard to get right that the last serious attempt at change was a quarter of a century ago. The Biden and
Romney plans both balance competing imperatives by making monthly payments per child ($350 at the top end
for Mr Romney, $300 for the White House version). The thresholds at which these payments are withdrawn are
set so high that most Americans with children would receive them. This helps with the politics and also avoids
punishing low-income people with high effective marginal tax rates if they receive a pay rise. Mr Romney’s
plan involves starting payments before a child is born, which ought to please pro-life conservatives, and it pays
for itself by cutting other programmes, which ought to please fiscal conservatives. Mr Biden’s plan does not pay
for itself with cuts elsewhere.
Mr Romney’s plan would probably cut child poverty by a third; Mr Biden’s by a half. One reason this can be
said with confidence is that many other developed countries already have similar schemes. Canada, a country
not too dissimilar from its southern neighbour, introduced a child benefit in 2015 that decreased poverty by 20%
in just two years. Many European countries began paying cash child benefits after the second world war.
Programmes enjoyed support from the left, which saw them as a plank in the expanding welfare state, and also
from the right, which saw them as strengthening the family (and, in pre-feminist days, as sparing women from
having to work). As the international comparisons attest, they still make a difference.
The main economic worry associated with child benefits paid in cash (as opposed to tax breaks) is the risk of
discouraging women, who tend to be the chief caregivers, from taking a job. In Germany a reform of 1996 that
made benefits more generous led many low-income women with partners to shift from full-time to part-time
work. In Poland the initial version of one scheme reduced women’s labour-force participation by one
percentage point. But that was largely because poor families lost eligibility for their first child when they
crossed the poverty threshold, reducing their income. When the programme was expanded to cover all first
children in 2019, the labour-force effect disappeared. Canada has seen very little drop-off.
Suffer the little children
In a country that has only a threadbare social safety-net and a political system which is plagued by extreme
polarisation, crafting good anti-poverty policies is a struggle. Against that background, the proposals for direct
monthly payments per child are a big step forward. They deserve to win broad support.■
See also: We are tracking the Biden administration’s progress in its first 100 days
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/reducing-child-

poverty-in-america

Life, the universe and everything
The search for ET may soon yield an answer

Whether there is intelligence out there is a different matter
Feb 13th 2021 |
MOST SCIENTIFIC research has practical ends. But some still pursues goals better described by the field’s original
name: “natural philosophy”. One of its most philosophical questions is, “Is there life elsewhere in the
universe?”
It is philosophical for two reasons. One is its grand sweep. If there is life elsewhere, particularly of the
intelligent sort, that raises the question of whether humans might ever encounter it, or its products (see article).
If there is not—if all the uncountable stars in creation waste their light on sterile, lifeless worlds—then life on
Earth must be the result of a stroke of the most astronomically improbable good luck. As Arthur C. Clarke, a
science-fiction author, is reputed to have said: “Two possibilities exist. Either we are alone in the cosmos or we
are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
The other reason the question is philosophical is that there has, historically, been too little evidence to settle it.
Arguments about life in the cosmos must extrapolate from a single example that is itself poorly understood.
Biologists still lack a bulletproof theory of how earthly life began. Other planets are far away and hard to study.
That leaves room for all sorts of theories. Perhaps life is rare. Perhaps it is common, but intelligence is not. Or
perhaps even intelligent life is common, but the technology that lifts it up ends by destroying it (a popular line
of thinking after the development of nuclear weapons).
This paucity of data will soon change. A variety of telescopes and spacecraft are, or soon will be, looking for
signs of life in places ranging from the moons and planets of the solar system to other stars in Earth’s corner of
the Milky Way (see article). In particular, this search will employ powerful telescopes to try to find chemical
signatures of life in the atmospheres of planets orbiting stars other than the sun. An alien astronomer looking at
Earth, for instance, would be struck by the persistence of both oxygen and something that it reacts with in the
atmosphere, and might conclude—correctly—that living organisms were responsible for keeping them there.
An unambiguous detection of alien life would count as one of the momentous discoveries in the history of
science. Exactly what would happen next would depend on what was found. News of a “biosignature” on a
planet dozens of light-years away would shake the world. It would be strong evidence that life is indeed
common in the cosmos. That conclusion could upend humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe.
A few adventurous scientists might suggest using a radio telescope to beam a message, in the hope that, if
anything intelligent lives there, it will, decades later, send a reply. Still, the sheer distances involved mean that
there would be few immediate, practical consequences. By contrast, finding life closer to home—beneath the
Martian regolith, say, or in the oceans under the frozen surfaces of the solar system’s icy moons—would lead to
a flurry of action. A sample-return mission would give biologists the ability to compare earthly life with the
unearthly sort, a process that could shed new light on the workings and origins of both.
And if nothing is found? That too would be a piece of data, albeit of a less dramatic sort. It would not prove that
no life exists elsewhere in the cosmos, but it would be evidence that it is, at least, rather uncommon.
Half a century ago, returning from the arid and sterile lunar surface, the Apollo astronauts found a new
appreciation for Earth’s joyous blooms of life and colour. If there are no aliens nearby, such sentiments might
grow stronger. A jewel is all the more valuable for being rare. ■
Dig Deeper
The search for life elsewhere in the universe is heating up and may even yield an answer soon. In addition to
our coverage, learn about Avi Loeb, the alien hunter of Harvard, in our sister publication, 1843, and read our
review of his book, Extraterrestrial.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/the-search-for-et-

may-soon-yield-an-answer

Leaders Sections Briefing
Letters
On Scotland, GameStop, markets, innovation, primaries, baseball, Rizlas: Letters to the
editor
.
Leaders Sections Briefing
On Scotland, GameStop, Jack Dorsey, markets, innovation, primaries, baseball, Rizlas
Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence
Feb 13th 2021 |
Letters are welcome via e-mail to letters@economist.com

Impatient nationalists
Rather than the patient strategists that Bagehot portrayed them to be (January 9th), the Scottish National Party
are constant opportunists. If nationalists were truly patient they would not be talking about plans for
independence during a pandemic. In 2014 they campaigned for separation from the United Kingdom based on a
high oil price, knowing that leaving the UK would automatically have meant leaving the EU. Now, with the oil
price less than half of what it was in 2014, they claim Brexit as the new reason for independence. The
circumstances change, but the SNP’s solution is always the same.
In the current nationalist narrative, there is no waiting to see how Brexit will pan out, no consideration that the
post-covid world might be very different, and no acknowledgment of a future change in the British government.
Even covid-19 is claimed as a reason for breaking away. John Swinney, Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy, recently
asserted that a second independence referendum is an “essential priority”. I am not sure these are the words of a
patient pragmatist.
ALASTAIR CAMERON
Director
Scotland in Union
Glasgow
As you say, in May the SNP will probably win a mandate at the Holyrood elections to hold a further
independence referendum (“Searching for the exit”, January 30th). If so, it would be the will of the Scottish
people and the Westminster government should not try to prevent a referendum.
However, it is absurd to think that a single vote could determine the outcome of such a significant constitutional
question. A narrow win for either side would simply lead to rancour, bitterness and division. It is common sense
that a matter of this magnitude should require at least 60-65% of the vote to settle the matter. Moreover, it
should be made clear at the outset how long before a further referendum can be held. After all, both nationalists
and unionists may have an interest in another re-run.
JAMES MAYBEE
Farr, Scottish Highlands
GameStop’s real winners
Greed is fine. It is the juice that keeps our financial system going. That’s why I find the narrative that
r/wallstreetbets and other armies of retail investors were sticking it to the establishment disingenuous (“Will the
GameStop?”, January 30th). Call me a cynic, but exactly which part of Wall Street was being punished? Was it
the private-equity stakeholders of AMC that converted debt into a profit of hundreds of millions of dollars? Or
perhaps BlackBerry executives who sold their shares at a five-year high? And let’s not forget Ryan Cohen,
whose stake in GameStop swelled to a billion dollars.
NISHAD TRIVEDI
New York
Big tech and censorship

* Your article on Uganda’s election (“The ghetto strikes back”, January 16th) might have called out the tone
deaf hypocrisy of Jack Dorsey and Twitter. When President Museveni shut down Facebook in the country,
accusing them of taking sides (Facebook said there were many government-sponsored fake accounts along with
fake news), Mr Dorsey grumbled that “public conversation on social media platforms is never more important
than during the democratic process”. This just days after he shut down (then) President Trump. His partisan
thinking and hypocrisy has never been more fully on public display.
JEFFREY RAM
Miami Beach, FL
The sage of Oologah
Buttonwood’s paraphrasing (January 30th) of the advice that Will Rogers offered on market timing did not fully
capture his impeccable logic concerning the arrangement of events in the correct order. Rogers said “Don’t
gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up,
don’t buy it.”
EMMETT GRINER
Potomac, Maryland
Three points on innovation
The role of innovation in economic growth evolves as markets and technologies change. Your briefing on
government investment in research and development provided useful pointers, but underplayed three important
changes in the landscape (“Molecules, missions and money”, January 16th). First, R&D creates and deepens
knowledge and the talent to use it in new fields: what economists call absorptive capacity. To be effective,
government R&D and investment in talent should align. Second, data analytics induces fundamental changes in
R&D, potentially speeding up innovation, creating new businesses. Artificial intelligence and data analytics have
become a universal part of the scientific infrastructure, requiring new investment and policies.
Third, universities became more entrepreneurial after the financial crisis in 2008. Students want to participate
with social purpose and stakeholders are rightly focused on impact. Governments that invest in talent, digital
infrastructure and entrepreneurial universities will gain a higher return from their R&D spending.
PROFESSOR DAVID GANN
Pro-vice-chancellor
Development and External Affairs
University of Oxford
Ditching party primaries
The suggestion from William Horns to reform party primaries by adopting non-partisan blanket elections
(Letters, January 23rd) has already been set in place in California. It is called a “top two” system where,
regardless of party, the candidates who come first and second in a primary for Congress face off against each
other in the general election. California also has a citizens’ commission to draw the boundaries of state
legislative districts. Though personally happy about the reform, I can’t say that it has made a lot of difference.
California is so solidly Democratic that Republicans barely have a voice. Most of the time the top-two vote
winners are both Democrats.
SUSAN GIEGERICH
Berlin
Fields of dreams
Minor-league baseball grew from the desire of people to have access to a community-based game, which
created a loyalty to and identity with their local club. The economics and demographics may have changed over
the years, but the clubs’ success is based on providing affordable family entertainment in a clean and safe
environment. An owner once told me that he believed 80% of people left his park after a game not having any
idea who won, but it didn’t matter. The fun and sense of community did.
The squeeze that major-league baseball is putting on minor-league clubs is an act of civic vandalism (“Trouble
on the farm”, January 16th). In its quest for control it is destroying years of identity-building in towns small and
large. Trenton is the best example of a kneecapped franchise now saddled with a questionable future that it did
not deserve. With all the problems in the country, I doubt this outrage will gain much attention.
BOB GOLON
Little Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey
Pass us a ziggie
Although Rizla is synonymous with cigarette rolling-paper in much of the world, asking for a pack in America
would be met with a blank stare (“Rolling in it”, January 16th). Zig-Zag dominates the American market. Its
parent company has just had its best quarter ever, in a country where tens of millions of people can smoke pot
legally, and have had plenty of time and reason to do so recently.
TONY RUTT
Portland, Oregon
Your article reignited memories of craving for a smoke when battling around the New Hebrides in the 1960s.
The rice-paper pages of the airmail edition of The Economist made an excellent substitute for Rizlas.
PETER GILLOTT
Sydney
* Letters appear online only
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editor

Letters Sections United States
Briefing
Vaccine efficacy: Obstacle course Vaccine hesitancy: Broken arrow
. .
Astrobiology: Come out, come out, wherever you are!
.
Letters Sections United States
Vaccine efficacy
When covid-19 vaccines meet the new variants of the virus

A lot depends on blocking transmission not just disease
Feb 13th 2021 |
ON FEBRUARY 1ST researchers around the world saw the tweet for which they had been waiting: “We say with
caution, the magic has started”. Eran Segal, a scientist at the Weizmann Institute, had been posting regular
updates on the course of Israel’s covid-19 epidemic since its mass vaccination campaign had begun six weeks
earlier. By February 1st he was seeing the number of hospitalisations dropping significantly among the over-60s
—a cohort in which the number vaccinated had reached 70%, seen as a crucial level, three weeks before. After
an expected but still somewhat nail-biting lag, the vaccine was doing its thing.
By February 6th about 85% of the over-60s in Israel—and 40% of the general population—had received at least
one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine (or in a few cases the Moderna mRNA vaccine) and 75% of the
over-60s had received their second dose, too. In that age group hospital admissions for covid-19 were about
two-thirds what they had been at their peak in January and still falling (see chart 1). At the same time, the
country as a whole was seeing its caseload rise.
The vaccine was not the only thing which arrived in Israel late last year. So did B.1.1.7, a highly contagious
variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for covid-19, which was first identified in Britain in September. It
set about filling up hospital wards in Israel just as it has done in Britain, Ireland and Portugal. Despite an
extended lockdown it is still doing so.
It is no surprise that SARS-CoV-2 has evolved new biological tricks over a year spent infecting more than 100m
people. But the near simultaneous arrival of not just B.1.1.7 but also B.1.351, which is now the dominant strain
in South Africa, and P.1, a variant first seen in Brazil, is making the roll-out of mass vaccination more
complicated and more confusing than might have been hoped when the first evidence of safe, effective vaccines
became available last November. How fast the various new variants can spread, how well today’s vaccines
work against them and how soon new vaccines better attuned to them—and to the other variants which will turn
up over time—become available will determine the course of the pandemic.
Testing the bounds
As of February 10th at least nine vaccines had been authorised for use in one or more countries. The
Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, first out of the gate, has now been authorised for use in 61, as well as for emergency
use by the WHO. The number of doses administered, 148m, now exceeds the number of confirmed covid-19
cases recorded over the entire course of the pandemic. All of the vaccines appear very good at preventing severe
cases of covid-19 of the sort that lead to hospitalisation and/or death; in trials which compared the vaccinated
with control groups the efficacy with which the various vaccines prevented these outcomes was 85-100%.
Their efficacy against all symptomatic cases of the disease found in trials has been lower, ranging between 66%
and 95%. Some of that range is down to intrinsic differences between the vaccines. Some is down to trials being
done according to different protocols and in different populations, sometimes against different variants of the
virus. It is hard to disentangle such effects. The general message, though, is fairly clear. The vaccines make
serious cases of all sorts very rare, and mild-to-moderate cases caused by the original strain of the virus a lot
rarer than they would be otherwise.
That is undoubtedly good news; it lessens the death toll, the suffering and the strain on hospitals. But the
situation is not perfect. For one thing mild and moderate cases can be worse than they sound. Many cases of
“long covid”, a debilitating form of the disease in which some effects last for months, follow original infections
that were not severe enough to require hospital admission. It is not yet clear whether long covid is less likely in
people who have been vaccinated.
What is more, this pattern of effects does not reveal what the vaccines are doing about transmission. As Natalie
Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, points out, there are two ways one can imagine a vaccine
bringing about the pattern of protection the covid-19 vaccines have been seen to provide (see chart 2). In one of
them the same number of infections occurs as would occur otherwise, but the consequences of these infections
are systematically downgraded. Thus almost all of the infections which would lead to severe cases lead to
moderate or mild cases, and many of the infections that would have led to moderate or mild cases produce no
symptoms at all.
The alternative is that the total number of infections is being reduced, but the ratio of severe to mild to
asymptomatic cases stays roughly the same. The already low number of deaths and hospitalisations shrinks to
something hardly there. The number of mild cases is similarly deflated (although, since bigger, remains
palpable). And so is the number of asymptomatic cases. Indeed, the main difference between the two scenarios
is that in one the asymptomatic cases rise, and in the other they fall.
The passing game
In the real world there is almost certainly a bit of both going on: lower infections overall and a lessening of the
symptoms that follow, with different vaccines offering different profiles. But considering the two extremes is
still instructive. Vaccines which do little more than downgrade the symptoms will be doing relatively little to
stop the spread of the virus. Honey-I-shrank-the-infections vaccines, on the other hand, will be making a big
dent in the epidemic’s now infamous R number—the number of new infections to which each infection gives
rise. If you imagine reducing what are known as “non pharmaceutical interventions”—masks, social distancing,
shelter at home orders and the like—that difference would begin to matter a lot.
Some people will not be vaccinated, either because of pre-existing conditions which make it dangerous for
them, because there isn’t enough vaccine for everyone, or because they choose not to (see article). If the
vaccines are basically downgrading symptoms, then these unvaccinated people will be at risk. If they are
making the virus less transmissible that risk will be lessened.
A covid-19 vaccine that is highly effective in preventing transmission will, therefore, be particularly useful.
According to a model by Imperial College London, all other things being equal, a vaccine that blocks 40% of
infections and thus prevents 40% of disease would have a similar impact on the number of covid-19 deaths as a
vaccine that got rid of 80% of disease but left infection untouched.
Epidemiologists are waiting with bated breath for results that will tell them how good existing vaccines are at
reducing asymptomatic infections and infectiousness. Data from Israel suggest that the viral load in swabs from
infected individuals is lower if they have been vaccinated. Clinical trials of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine
suggest that the jab may halve infections as detected by PCR tests. Such results suggest that covid-19 vaccines
are likely to reduce overall transmission of the virus. But understanding quite how much transmission is blocked
—and the degree to which some vaccines are better at blocking transmission than others—will take months.
And then there is the further complication of the new variants. Vaccines seem to have no particular problem
with B.1.1.7. It just complicates things by running through the unimmunised parts of the population that bit
faster. B.1.351, which has now been found in more than 30 countries, is of greater concern. At least three
vaccines—those from Oxford/AstraZeneca, J&J and Novavax—have been found to be less effective at stopping
it from causing disease than they are against variants elsewhere. There is increasing evidence that P.1, now also
reported in a number of countries beyond Brazil, also appears to be better at avoiding immunity created by prior
infection and by some vaccines.
Countries that have already vaccinated a lot of people could be brought back to square one by the spread of such
variants. Britain, where 13m people had been vaccinated as of February 10th, and millions more have been
infected and thus have some immunity (British studies have found reinfection very rare for at least five months),
is trying hard to keep B.1.351 from making inroads in the population. Health authorities are mass-testing
neighbourhoods where cases of B.1.351 have been spotted and are doing particularly meticulous contact tracing
when a case is found. Border controls have been tightened.
Eking out an advantage
Not all such new variants can be spotted and stopped at borders. Mutations can arise anywhere—sometimes the
phone call is coming from inside the house. But there may be a limited range of mutations about which people
need to worry. The new variants all differ from the original virus and from each other in various ways. But P.1
and B.1.351 both share a particular mutational quirk—technically called E484K but mercifully nicknamed Eric
or Eek—which makes a specific change to the spike protein on the outside of the virus. Eek has now been found
in some isolates of B.1.1.7. too. Researchers are beginning to think that the change Eek represents is what allows
those variants to infect people even if they have been vaccinated or previously infected.
It would be great if there were no vaccine-resistant strains. But given that there are, the possibility that they are
all using the same trick offers a bit of comfort. It suggests that Eek may be the best way for new variants to
avoid immune responses capable of dealing with the original strain, or at least the way evolution can most easily
find. If the variants have all converged on the same trick, tweaking vaccines to protect against one may protect
against all—and against any later variants to which natural selection teaches the same ruse. If the virus had
found a whole panoply of ways by which to avoid existing immune responses things would look a lot worse.
Whether or not Eek turns out to be crucial, new ways of broadening immunity are on their way. Some vaccine-
makers are developing booster shots designed to help people vaccinated with earlier versions of their jabs deal
with new variants. Others are developing vaccines intended to work for multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants straight
away. On February 3rd GlaxoSmithKline and CureVac, a German biotech company with an mRNA vaccine in
late-stage clinical trials, added their names to those developing such “multivalent” vaccines.
Tweaked covid-19 vaccines will not be required to go through large scale clinical trials to prove their efficacy,
any more than updated seasonal flu shots do; small trials that look for markers of immunity in the blood may
suffice. Britain’s National Health Service, which should be able to vaccinate all adults who choose to be jabbed
by the end of the summer, is already starting to make plans for a round of covid-19 booster shots aimed at new
variants in the autumn. Increased surveillance may yet provide advance warning of which variants need to be
dealt with by subsequent tweaks. It will take luck, diligence and hard work, but the magic that started at the
beginning of this year may be made to last for many years to come.■
Dig deeper
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/02/13/when-covid-19-

vaccines-meet-the-new-variants-of-the-virus

Fear, uncertainty and doubt
Vaccine hesitancy could put progress against covid-19 at risk

It is actively encouraged; it can be effectively fought
Feb 13th 2021 |
WHEN THE news finally comes it triggers a range of emotions. Most people told when and where they will
receive their first shot of covid-19 vaccine speak of their relief, delight, even their elation. One person danced
around the room, another “screamed a bit”, yet another felt giddy. “It feels”, says one, “that my life’s about to
begin.” But for some, there are other emotions in play: concern, fear, even anger.
Almost as soon as biomedical researchers began working on vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes
covid-19, people concerned with public health began to worry about “vaccine hesitancy”. It can sound trivial,
even foolish, but it regularly costs lives. Hesitancy is a large part of the reason that few young Japanese women
get themselves vaccinated against human papillomavirus, and thus are more likely than vaccine-accepting
young women elsewhere to contract cervical cancer. Widespread hesitancy during worldwide campaigns against
covid-19 could cost many lives, both among the hesitant and among their fellow citizens. Scott Gottlieb, who
led America’s drug regulator, the FDA, from 2017 to 2019 (and who is also on the board of Pfizer, a vaccine-
maker) argued in a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that the main challenge to vaccination efforts
in America could soon move from supply and logistics to individual reluctance to be vaccinated.
In Britain, a country generally quite keen on vaccination, about 15% of those offered a covid jab so far have
refused it. With 13m mostly elderly Britons vaccinated as of February 10th, that suggests almost 2m people who
could have been vaccinated have not been. When, eventually, social distancing measures are reduced, those
people will remain vulnerable to infection. What is more, that level of refusal, combined with the fact that
children are not being vaccinated and that new variants of the virus are less tractable to vaccination, means the
country may never see the “herd immunity” that population-wide vaccination programmes tend to aim for—the
state in which people neither previously infected nor vaccinated are so few and far between that the virus is hard
put to find them. And the level of refusal could grow in months to come; younger people, perhaps because they
feel in less danger, seem less keen on the vaccine.
Hesitancy is promoted and spread by a hard core of proselytising “anti-vaxxer” voices whose misinformation
and downright lies about microchips, infertility and damage to DNA have spread to the four quarters of the
internet. They have been helped by large online misinformation campaigns run by China and Russia seeking to
undermine confidence in Western vaccines. But hesitancy is a broader and more complex phenomenon than
that. Some are worried, not opposed; some reject specific vaccines while accepting various others; some are
adamant, some persuadable, some, in the end, willing to get vaccinated despite their reservations. People
interpret vaccines in the light of their own experiences, relationships and trust in authority. Such subtleties make
the molecular biology behind the vaccines seem simple in comparison.
There is nothing new about this complex set of fears. To introduce anything other than food into your body or
blood is always likely to be an emotionally freighted experience. When Edward Jenner, a British doctor, began
vaccinating people with cowpox to defend them against smallpox in the late 1790s there was immediate
disquiet. Critics said the idea of vaccination was repulsive and ungodly; cartoonists showed people who had
been vaccinated sprouting cow’s heads. But elite medical and political opinion fell in line. Thomas Jefferson
was a fan. Napoleon vaccinated his armies, writing that “Jenner...has been my most faithful servant in the
European campaigns.” In Sweden vaccination was compulsory in 1803, in Bavaria in 1807; both countries saw
smallpox rates plummet.
In 1853 vaccination was made compulsory for all infants in England and Wales with parents who failed to
comply liable to a fine or imprisonment. Opposition to this infringement on personal liberty promptly grew,
even more so after the law was strengthened in the 1870s.
Victorian anti-vaxxers spread misinformation eerily similar to today’s. In 1878 the National Anti-Compulsory
Vaccination Reporter told its readers that vaccination could cause diseases including diphtheria, abscesses,
bronchitis and convulsions. “On the whole”, it wrote, “it is a greater evil to humanity than smallpox itself!” In
echoes of today’s concerns about Big Pharma, the Reporter speculated that compulsory vaccination was a plot
by the medical establishment and averred that faithful obedience to the “sacred laws of health” would provide
superior protection. It is hard to put a sliver of organic carrot between this sanctimony and the notion that nasty
viral pathogens can be warded off by raising children “naturally” and using alternative medicines.
Nevertheless smallpox vaccination became near universal. And then in 1977, 177 years after Benjamin
Waterhouse, a Harvard professor and correspondent of Jefferson’s, published his pamphlet “A Prospect of
Exterminating the Small-pox”, it became obsolete. The disease was wiped out. No other human disease has yet
followed it to oblivion, though polio is close. But many death tolls have been slashed.
Vaccinations have become the most successful public health measure in history. About 85% of one-year-olds
around the world now receive all three doses of the combination vaccine that protects against diphtheria, tetanus
and pertussis. Public support for this is high; nine in ten people worldwide think vaccines are important for
children. But there are variations. Support for childhood vaccination is lower in North America, Europe and
Russia than in Africa, Asia and South America, and there are pockets where it dips dangerously. What is more,
the success of long-running childhood vaccination campaigns does not necessarily translate into acceptance of
novel vaccines for adults.
Against complacency
Towards the last quarter of 2020 polls on vaccine hesitancy spurred mounting concern among public health
officials. In September a significant number of British people said they were unlikely to get one. A month later,
in a STAT-Harris Poll in America, only 58% said they would—down from 69% a month previously. Though
Britain bounced back, other countries have seen worrying drops since (see chart 1).
But such polls come with caveats. One is what psychologists describe as the “intention-behaviour gap”; humans
are sufficiently complicated that what they say and what they do can be very different things. A second is that
polls are snapshots of a process in flux. Vaccine hesitancy is extremely fluid in time and space, subject to all
manner of influences. A poll is an instantaneous map of temperatures, when what you need is a moving
forecast.
One of the main vaccine-weather forecasters is Heidi Larson, a professor of anthropology, risk and decision
science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is also the founding director of the
Vaccine Confidence Project, which monitors global concerns about vaccines. Looking at her latest survey of
sentiment toward covid-19 vaccines in 32 countries Dr Larson sees storms brewing in Lebanon and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—two countries in which the political climate is tense.
Hesitancy in the DRC might seem surprising; novel vaccines recently helped quash an outbreak of Ebola there.
But Dr Larson says that unlike Ebola, which people have had to live with for almost half a century, covid-19 is
new and brings new distrust. Maître Donat, a lawyer in Kolwezi, a mining city in the south of the country, bears
out that case. “Here everyone thinks covid is a scam”, he says, “dreamed up by the whites, by Americans.”
Dr Larson worries about this because she has found that, in general, concerns about vaccines that arise in Africa
spread much more quickly than in higher-income countries: “It is quite explosive.” Last year a comment by a
French doctor about using Africa as a testing ground for vaccines spread like wildfire across Francophone
Africa. He apologised, but the damage was done. There are now reports of rising hesitancy, at least partly tied to
trust in government, in South Africa and Nigeria, where plans are being laid to start vaccination.
Just as there is variation over time, so there is in space. Even in countries where there is a rush to get vaccinated,
hesitancy can crop up in particular communities, particularly in marginalised groups: some groups distrust state
authority—sometimes, given the history of medical experimentation, for sound historical reasons; some seek
spiritual rather than temporal guidance on how to live their lives.
Naively, one might believe that education would be enough to change this. It is not. Take the reluctance of some
American health-care workers to get vaccinated. This is not down to a lack of information or a failure to
understand what vaccines offer. It can often reflect a lack of faith in their employers. As in many other parts of
the world, nurses, long-term-care staff and others in similar jobs report feeling badly treated over the past year.
They may have been put at risk of covid, or fallen ill, or struggled to obtain protective equipment. They will
have seen a lot of death. They will mostly have done so on low pay. And they have either not succumbed to the
disease or have survived it. This all disinclines them towards accepting the vaccines that their employers now
want them to take.
A December survey of 16,000 employees of a health system in Pennsylvania revealed concerns about unknown
risks and side effects. At the nadir 45% said they either did not want the vaccine at all or wanted to wait (see
chart 2). One-fifth did not trust the rushed regulatory review. Others worried they were not actually at high
enough risk for infection or disease. Hard refusals, though, soon began to wane.
In general, a feeling that the government is cutting corners seems to drive hesitancy up. When Donald Trump
appeared to be trying to rush approval along before the election Americans became more hesitant. Concerns
have risen in Indonesia and India at the same time as there have been controversies about aspects of government
vaccination programmes.
Another factor in hesitancy is peer-group sentiment transmitted through social networks. Parents who choose
not to vaccinate children have a much higher percentage of people in their social networks with similar views.
The same will be true of people who intend not to get vaccinated against covid-19.
Understanding how the hesitancy weather changes offers ways to modify it. Some are well known to
advertisers. People are encouraged by the sight of happy people eagerly lining up to receive vaccines, or by
politicians, royalty and celebrities rolling up their sleeves. They may also respond to the notion that something
is in scarce supply. Since scares about the H1N1 flu vaccine in 2009 the French have been very dubious about
vaccination. But since realising that their country has few doses to offer, their opinions have been changing. To
refuse is one thing; to be denied another. Marine Le Pen, a right-wing nationalist who had previously said she
would wait and see before getting vaccinated now says she will do so, a decision which is expected to be
influential (and which will better position her to attack Emmanuel Macron on the issue in next year’s election
campaign).
The bad news about changing the weather in this sort of way is that it can quickly change back again. Vinay
Nair, boss of Lightful, a tech firm that works in the charity sector to enhance its use of technology, says that
because vaccine sentiment is dynamic, so the response to it has to be too.
It is also important to reach vaccine-hesitant communities directly rather than through the media. In 2017
Patricia Stinchfield, a nurse practitioner at the Children’s Minnesota Hospital, told Modern Healthcare, a
magazine, about intervening this way among Somali-Americans in Minneapolis after their under-vaccinated
community suffered a serious measles outbreak. “We spend a great deal of time meeting imams in the
community and ask them to partner with us.” Even with the help of social-media campaigns aimed at younger
parents, it is slow, painstaking work. But it is effective.
Storm warning
Unfortunately, help through social media is far from the norm. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a
not-for-profit group, is tracking 425 anti-vaccine accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube that it
says spread covid misinformation; they have 59.2m followers between them, and the number is rising rapidly.
The organisation says that while a minority of these anti-vaxxers act on the basis of profoundly held beliefs,
about four-fifths have a financial motive as well, or instead. Half are entrepreneurs with businesses that promote
alternative or oddball remedies such as homeopathic immunisation or a bleach nebuliser “with a 100% success
rate”. The other half are conspiracists who profit from the online-advertising revenue their sites attract and the
merchandise they sell.
The work of these groups is a lot easier than that of public-health workers: fear and uncertainty are easier to
foster than trust and confidence, and inaction easier to encourage than action. In October last year
representatives of the CCDH were present at a private online conference held by influential opponents to
vaccination who, it says, saw a historic opportunity to reach larger numbers of supporters, and drive long-term
vaccine hesitancy. They outlined three basic tools with which to do so: sow doubt about the seriousness of the
threat posed by covid-19; spread concern about the safety of the vaccines; stress the untrustworthiness of
experts.
These three basic messages will be adapted with selective reporting—making sure, for example, that Brazilians
know that their president has said he will not be vaccinated—half-truths and lies. Ethnic minorities will be told
that covid vaccines are unsafe for them, or part of a plot or experiment—something that will resonate in
communities that remember stories of this in the past. Young people will be told taradiddles about fertility. The
religious groups will hear that vaccines are not halal or contain fetal material. (It is true that the vaccine
produced by AstraZeneca is grown in a cell line derived from material taken from a fetus in the 1970s; it is also
true that the pope has deemed the use of such cell lines morally acceptable.)
A recent study in Nature using data from 2019 created a network map of 1,300 Facebook pages carrying pro-
and anti-vaccine messages and their followers. Anti-vaccine pages were more numerous, faster growing and
increasingly connected to pages containing undecided users. If current trends continue, the researchers
predicted, anti-vaccine views will dominate online discussion in a decade. A new preprint by many of the same
authors reports that the strengthening of online bonds that has been seen during the pandemic has given
conspiracy theories greater access to mainstream parenting communities.
On February 8th, in the teeth of ongoing criticism, Facebook said it would remove false claims related to covid
vaccines (see article). Many think the move has come too late—and that to shift the balance of power decisively
will require further action. Mr Nair believes that tech companies need to amplify positive messages, stories and
campaigns
“A mix of factors will challenge our plans to defeat covid-19, from new variants to supply issues. But vaccine
hesitancy is a significant threat to population protection against covid-19,” says Dr Larson. And after emotional
contagion has taken hold it is difficult to tamp down. As the French experience with the H1N1 vaccine has
shown, once widespread a negative impression about a vaccine can be hard to shift.
At the moment, people are leaving vaccination centres happily, and tweeting and posting about their good
fortune and success. They proudly display the badges and stickers that show they have received the vaccine. For
now, public health is winning. But continued good news cannot be taken for granted; in this struggle, fair
weather has to be fought for, not counted on. ■
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hesitancy-could-put-progress-against-covid-19-at-risk

Astrobiology
The search for ET hots up

If life exists beyond the solar system, science may find it soon
Feb 13th 2021 |
TEEGARDEN’S STAR is a tiny, dim object in the zodiacal constellation of Aries. It has a tenth of the sun’s mass and
emits most of its light in the infrared part of the spectrum. That makes it too faint to see with the naked eye,
even though it is only 12 light-years away. So far, so unremarkable. But when astronomers at Calar Alto
Observatory, in Spain, started scrutinising it, they spotted tiny wobbles in its motion. In 2019, after three years
of careful measurement, they concluded that these are a consequence of the gravitational fields of two planets
tugging the star around. The innermost, Teegarden b, has roughly the same mass as Earth, receives a similar
amount of illumination from its host star and is probably rocky.
At the moment, Teegarden b tops the Habitable Exoplanets Catalogue (HEC), a list of planets beyond the solar
system maintained by Abel Méndez and his colleagues at the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo. They are
looking for Earthlike worlds which, among other things, lie in the zones around stars that might support
terrestrial-type life. This means, in practice, planets that are the correct distance from their parent stars to be
able to maintain liquid water on their surfaces without that water either freezing or boiling. For water, the
medium in which biochemical reactions take place on Earth, is assumed to be a precondition for the existence of
life elsewhere, too.
Warm bodies
The existence of the HEC, compilation of which began in 2011, is one manifestation of a renewed surge of
interest in answering, once and for all, the question of whether life is a phenomenon that exists only on Earth, or
is widespread. Until recently, that question was unanswerable. But astrobiologists, as the diverse band of
scientists now trying to do so describe themselves, are increasingly confident that an answer will be found
within a couple of decades.
There are, broadly, three ways of doing this. One is to look from a distance, using telescopes to examine
systems such as that orbiting Teegarden’s star. The second, if the object of interest is close enough, is to visit it,
as is happening with the arrival this month of Mars-bound craft launched by America, China and the United
Arab Emirates. And the third is to search for radio signals or other signs of technology, on the assumption that
at least some life elsewhere has followed the trajectory of life on Earth and generated technically adept species.
The first two exoplanets were discovered in 1992. Now, more than 4,000 are known. It seems likely that every
one of the billions of stars in the Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy, is the centre of a system that includes one or
more planets, and also that lots of these planets orbit in habitable zones. Because they are big, and therefore
easy to spot, a lot of the planets discovered so far are gas giants larger even than Jupiter. These seem unlikely
places for life to establish itself. But an increasing number of bodies close in size to Earth are turning up, too
(see chart).
A study published recently in the Astronomical Journal suggests that about half of the sun-like stars in the
Milky Way are circled by at least one rocky planet capable of sustaining liquid water on its surface. This
amounts to 300m potentially habitable worlds. That calculation implies the presence of at least four such
favoured orbs within 30 light-years of the solar system, with the closest at most 20 light-years away. There is,
then, plenty to study.
Just because a planet is a rocky world orbiting within its star’s habitable zone does not, though, automatically
make it a good candidate. Some such, for instance, are known to be “water worlds”, with deep oceans and no
continents. These might support life if it arrived from elsewhere, but the chances that biology could start from
scratch in such a place seem slim. How life begins is unknown. But it is a fair bet that it needs the concentration
of certain chemicals in a way that is difficult to achieve in the swirling volume of an ocean.
Similarly, just because an object could have liquid water on its surface in a habitable zone does not mean such
water actually exists. Earth’s moon, for example, is within the habitable zone of the sun and yet is almost
waterless.
An important task, then, is to understand not only where a planet is in its star system, but what it is made of—
whether it has an all-covering ocean, an ocean interspersed with continents, a covering of ice, or is all dry land.
Also, whether it has an atmosphere. And that will be done by a new generation of instruments.
Chart toppers
The first of these, the James Webb Space Telescope, is the creation of NASA, America’s space agency. It has a
mirror 6.5 metres across, which gives it a light-collecting area more than six times greater than that of the
Hubble Space Telescope, currently in orbit, which has a mirror a mere 2.4 metres in diameter. The plan is to
launch it into orbit this October and to use it for detailed spectrographic observations of exoplanetary
atmospheres. It will hunt, in particular, for molecules such as oxygen and methane that are produced by
biological processes on Earth.
Teegarden b is a prime candidate for such study, but is by no means the only one. Potentially habitable planets
within telescope range are turning up thick and fast. In 2020 alone, four new Earth-size exoplanets entered the
HEC top ten.
In January of that year, for example, astronomers using another NASA instrument, the Transiting Exoplanet
Survey Satellite (TESS), announced the discovery of that probe’s first entry into the HEC. This planet, TOI-700d, is
one of three orbiting a star called TOI-700, which has 40% of the mass of the sun and is 100 light-years away.
TOI-700d is 20% bigger than Earth, completes an orbit every 37 days and receives 86% of the energy from its
star that Earth gets from the sun. It currently sits in second place on the HEC list. And in March two further top-
tenners were added by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s instruments at La Silla, in
Chile. They were orbiting in the habitable zone of a star called GJ 1061, which, like Teegarden’s, is 12 light-
years from Earth.
The fourth of 2020’s additions to the HEC top ten was announced in April. It was the result of reanalysis of
measurements taken by Kepler, a now-defunct NASA space telescope (it operated from 2009 to 2018) that, in its
heyday, found more than 2,000 new planets. This re-examination uncovered a hitherto-overlooked body,
dubbed Kepler-1649c, which is almost the same size as Earth, takes 19.5 days to orbit its star, and receives 75%
of the light that Earth gets from the sun. Kepler-1649c jumped straight into the charts at number five.
Other top-tenners have been on the list for longer. One of particular interest is Proxima Centauri b (number six).
It weighs in at 1.3 times Earth’s mass and has an 11-day orbit around its star, Proxima Centauri, which, at a
mere 4.2 light-years away, is the sun’s closest stellar neighbour. But the most striking star to supply HEC
candidates is TRAPPIST-1. This is 41 light-years from Earth and is orbited by seven potentially habitable planets
of similar density to Earth, one of which, TRAPPIST-1d, is in the HEC top ten, at number four.
At its most recent update, the HEC listed 60 worlds, some two dozen of which are thought to be of rocky
composition and similar in size to Earth. The rest are so-called “super Earths”, which have masses larger than
Earth’s but less than those of the solar system’s ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. There are doubts about the
habitability of super Earths, since they probably have thick atmospheres and may even be composed almost
entirely of gas. For the moment, though, it seems sensible to keep them under scrutiny.
Because of the limits of current observing technology, which finds it easier to see signs of planets when they
circle dimmer stars, almost all these promising exoplanets orbit what are known as M-type stars—or,
colloquially, red dwarfs. Red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than F-, G- and K-types, known as orange and
yellow dwarfs (the sun is G-type). They are by far the most common stars in the Milky Way (some estimates
suggest they make up three-quarters of the total), so the easy success in finding so many potentially habitable
worlds circling them suggests that these sorts of planets are abundant.
Atmospheric conditions
Astrobiologists are already making simple follow-up measurements of some planets. In 2015 a super Earth
called K2-18b turned up. It is 124 light-years away, has nine times Earth’s mass and orbits its M-type star once
every 33 days. In 2019 the Hubble Space Telescope looked at starlight streaming through this planet’s
atmosphere. Spectroscopic analysis indicated the presence there of a fair amount of water vapour—a first for an
exoplanet in a habitable zone.
That was a useful start, says Giovanna Tinetti, an astrophysicist at University College, London who led the
study. But, as she observes, “current instrumentation is just not good enough really to go beyond saying, ‘Oh,
there is some water vapour in the atmosphere’.” That leaves plenty of questions. What type of object is K2-18b?
Is it a world covered by an ocean, or perhaps a thick layer of ice like the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn? Is the
atmosphere pure water vapour or mostly hydrogen with a dash of water and perhaps some other elements?
Future observations with the James Webb telescope will fill in some of these gaps. However, Dr Tinetti
highlights the need for catalogues of the properties of exoplanetary atmospheres, against which astronomers can
compare their latest finds. To this end she is working on ARIEL, a mission planned by the European Space
Agency (ESA) to characterise the properties of a set of around 1,000 diverse exoplanets.
Once a potentially habitable planet is found, life on Earth provides clues about how to detect life on it. For
example, as James Lovelock, a British chemist, proposed in 1965, the presence of gases in chemical
disequilibrium with their surroundings could be a sign of life. Oxygen is a reactive gas that would not build up
in Earth’s atmosphere in normal conditions. As a by-product of photosynthesis, however, it is being replenished
continuously. Given the presence of so much oxygen, the simultaneous persistence of methane in Earth’s
atmosphere is also inexplicable without lifeforms that keep producing the gas. Normal abiotic chemistry would
otherwise quickly deplete it.
Other gases likely to be biosignatures include nitrous oxide, methyl chloride, isoprene, ammonia and phosphine.
Indeed, Sara Seager, an astrobiologist and astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has
identified more than 14,000 small, volatile molecules, of which a quarter are produced by life and others
potentially so. This greatly increases the number of potential quarry for future astrobiologists to hunt.
Meanwhile, laboratory experiments and computer models that can characterise the sources and life cycles of
these gases in different types of atmospheres will help the understanding of future data collected about
exoplanets.
The edge of reason
Other biosignatures might come from a planet’s surface. On Earth, a phenomenon called the red edge is a sign
of oxygenic photosynthesis. Chlorophyll, the plant pigment that captures the light which provides the energy for
photosynthesis, absorbs most visible frequencies emitted by the sun but reflects the longer wavelengths of
infrared light. This sharp change in reflectance can be spotted easily from space.
With due acknowledgment that photosynthetic life on other planets would almost certainly employ other
pigments, tuned to absorb the electromagnetic frequencies emitted from their parent stars in the way that
chlorophyll is tuned to sunlight, this method could be adopted to look for “plants” elsewhere. Near an M-type
star, for example, some astrobiologists’ models suggest that planetary vegetation tuned to local conditions could
reflect yet longer wavelengths than those reflected by Earth. Alternatively, a planet might be dominated by
light-harvesting organisms similar to Earth’s purple bacteria, which thrive in anoxic conditions and produce
sulphur as the waste product of their photosynthesis, rather than oxygen. Yet other pigments, each with its own
spectral signature, might have jobs beyond photosynthesis, such as protection against harsh radiation.
None of this study will be easy, particularly when the molecules under investigation are dozens or hundreds of
light-years away. The James Webb telescope will begin by looking for biosignatures in the atmospheres of
planets around M-type stars, but may struggle to do the same for those orbiting brighter G-types. Examining the
surfaces of planets, understanding atmospheric dynamics, looking for continents and detecting surface
biosignatures will have to wait until direct-imaging technology is sensitive enough to reach across the light-
years and record something useful.
That might happen by the mid 2030s, when three ground-based telescopes with mirrors 25-40 metres wide,
which should start operating later this decade, get into full swing. These are the Giant Magellan Telescope, in
Chile, the Extremely Large Telescope, also in Chile, and the Thirty Metre Telescope, proposed for Hawaii.
Their observations may be complemented by images taken by two proposed NASA spacecraft, LUVOIR and
HabEx. If approved, these could fly in the late 2030s. LUVOIR would be a general-purpose successor to the
James Webb. HabEx would be designed specifically to take pictures of habitable planets.
Finding one particular chemical on another planet will never be a clear cut indicator of life. Volcanoes also
produce some of the molecules associated with biology, so the risk of false positives is high. Even oxygen is not
foolproof. It can be generated abiotically when water molecules are split into their constituents by high-energy
radiation from a parent star. Conversely, a planet with life on it may not yet have detectable levels of oxygen in
its atmosphere (which was indeed the case with Earth for much of its early history). For astronomers, this means
placing potential detections of biomolecules into the wider context of the planet under study.
Building catalogues of non-biological sources of gases will help to fine-tune models and give astrobiologists a
better chance of weeding out false positives. But Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at Edinburgh University,
says a more robust approach would be to collect spectrographic data from lots of exoplanets and thereby create
better statistical confidence in individual detections. If astronomers had atmospheric data from tens of thousands
of them, for example, and a thousand showed strong signals for oxygen, that would build confidence about the
oxygen being from biological sources, rather than the results simply being false positives.
This, though, is to assume the process of detection itself is robust. An instructive tale here is the recent debate
over whether or not there is phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus—for this is a gas which, on Earth, is created
only by living organisms (some of them, admittedly, human chemists). In September, a group of astronomers
announced that Venusian air contained 20 parts per billion of phosphine. Others who subsequently scrutinised
these results raised red flags. Some questioned the way the original team had processed the data. Some tried to
find evidence for phosphine in independent data sets, and failed. Partly in response to those criticisms, the
original team later reanalysed the data themselves, and concluded there was, after all, only a tentative detection
of one part per billion of phosphine present on Venus.
Venus sky trap
Spectroscopic analysis of Venus’s atmosphere in this way can be viewed as a test-bed for the harder task of
doing the same to the atmospheres of exoplanets. In the case of Venus, though, if the signs do end up looking
good, it will be possible to go and check directly—the second of the broad approaches to astrobiology. That the
Venusian atmosphere may have a biomarker in it came as a surprise even to those optimistic about finding life
elsewhere. Most such eyes are turned to Mars, with a side-bet on the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Mars has already generated a couple of intriguing results. One was from the so-called labelled-release
experiments carried on board Vikings 1 and 2, which landed successfully on Mars in 1976. These mixed
samples of Martian regolith with organic compounds of the sort consumed by microbes on Earth. Those
compounds were labelled with radioactive carbon atoms, and any gas evolving from the experimental mixture
was tested for radioactivity, to see if those compounds were being metabolised. The results suggested metabolic
activity in the regolith at both landing sites, which were over 6,000km apart. They were discounted at the time
as being the product of some unknown abiotic reaction, because other experiments showed no sign of organic
compounds in the regolith. But they have never been explained.
The other result that has not quite gone away was the analysis in 1996 of a meteorite blown off the surface of
Mars by an asteroid impact and collected in Antarctica. This contained several features, including putative
microfossils, unusual grains of magnetite of a type made biologically on Earth, and organic compounds, that
were taken at the time as possible signs of life. All are now known to have alternative, and more widely
believed, explanations. But, at the time, the meteorite’s discovery stimulated interest in the possibility of life on
Mars.
Wild rovers
And there has, indeed, been an intensive programme of investigation of the place since the 1990s, using
orbiters, landers and wheeled surface vehicles known as rovers. This has followed up the discovery by the
Viking missions of what looked like water-carved topography, by showing that parts of Mars are covered with
sedimentary rocks, and that these include clay minerals, which, on Earth, often form in the presence of water.
This demonstrates, to most people’s satisfaction, that the planet did once play host to bodies of liquid water.
NASA’s next Mars rover, Perseverance, scheduled to arrive there on February 18th, will look in some of the
rocks it encounters for fossilised remnants of microbial mats called stromatolites. It will also, by collecting and
bottling for future retrieval the most interesting samples it finds, be the first step in a decade-long multi-agency
mission to bring samples of Martian rock back to Earth. Then, in 2023, Perseverance will be followed by a
rover from ESA called Rosalind Franklin. This will drill a few metres under the Martian surface to search for
microbes, both fossilised and living.
The idea of life on Mars goes back at least as far as 1877, when Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer,
thought he saw dark lines on the planet, which he interpreted as water-carrying channels with vegetation
growing along their banks. These turned out to be optical illusions, but the idea stuck. That there might be life
on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn is a more recent suggestion, stimulated by the discovery by probes
sent to orbit those planets that some of their ice-covered moons appear to have subsurface oceans of liquid
water.
This thought is taken seriously enough for NASA to be laying plans for missions to Europa, a moon of Jupiter,
and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. The idea is to sample water in the plumes of geysers erupting from these
moons (see picture), and test it for chemicals that might indicate life. NASA also plans to launch a drone called
Dragonfly on Titan, another moon of Saturn, to search its surface for molecules that might be life’s precursors.
The geysers of Enceladus
If it turns out that somewhere else in the solar system either has, or had, life, one further question needs to be
answered. This is, is it the same as life on Earth? One school of thought, known as panspermia, suggests that
life might not have evolved in situ everywhere that it is found, but could instead spread from place to place.
This would be easier within systems of planets than between them. If organisms live on other bodies in the solar
system it should be possible to work out from their biochemistry whether they share an ancestor with those on
Earth—and it might even be possible to do this with fossils, if enough of their chemical structure is preserved.
Either answer to the panspermia question would be interesting. If any life on Venus, Mars or the Jovian or
Saturnian moons had separate origins from life on Earth, it would suggest that biology starts up easily. If it
started on only one of them, and then spread from place to place within the solar system, that would give a boost
to the idea of it spreading between star systems, too, since two examples are now known of rocks from
elsewhere entering and then departing from the solar system, either of which might have carried bacteria-like
organisms deep within it, in cold storage.
The third approach to astrobiology, besides looking for biosignatures and visiting promising planets and moons,
is to scan the cosmos for signs of technology elsewhere. This is, perhaps, the most flaky tactic. But it is also the
most far reaching. It is flaky because the history of life on Earth, at least, suggests that the path from primordial
soup to engineering prowess is a long and winding one. It is far reaching because such prowess might manifest
itself in ways such as radio signals that can be detected at greater distances than any natural sign of life.
People have been listening for radio signals from ET almost since the invention of radio telescopes. There have
been a couple of false alarms, but nothing definite. The use of lasers for communication on Earth has raised
suggestions of looking for signals from these, too—or even taking the initiative and beaming messages by laser
towards promising nearby planetary systems. And real optimists wonder whether super-advanced civilisations
might engage in engineering projects large enough to leave a footprint in the spectrum of their home stars.
Again, there have been false alarms provoked by this thought. But nothing concrete.
Hope springs eternal
For the moment, then, sheer weight of numbers suggests that the most likely place to find evidence of alien life
remains the Habitable Exoplanets Catalogue or some future, similar, compilation. Numbers increase the chance
of a lucky strike. They also allows the application of statistics to the problem, for it is likely that, rather than
looking for yes/no answers to the question of life elsewhere, researchers will have to search for probabilities.
This could mean measuring the levels of several gases, each with a different likelihood of having come from a
biological source, and combining those data with an understanding of environmental context. The hope would
be that life-bearing anomalies would stick out like sore thumbs, in the manner of Dr Cockell’s putative oxygen-
rich planets.
As to whether astrobiologists actually believe life exists elsewhere, that is not exactly a scientific question, but it
is pertinent to their motives. David Grinspoon, a veteran of the field who is part of the Planetary Sciences
Institute, an American research organisation, puts it thus: “I think there’s widespread belief in extraterrestrial
life now among scientists, even though we don’t have specific evidence for it.”
Dr Grinspoon observes that astrobiology is where exoplanetology was when he was a student in the 1980s—
patiently waiting for the right tools to become available. Exoplanets made the transition from belief to reality
with aplomb. Whether ET will follow suit remains to be seen.■
Dig Deeper
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et-hots-up

Briefing Sections The Americas
United States
Congress: Swing voters Social media and anti-vaxxers: Likes and protein spikes
. .
Election administration: Count-22 Presidential libraries: The shrining
. .
Oregon’s drugs policy: Trail blazers America and China: Genocide aside
. .
Lexington: Speak easy
.
Briefing Sections The Americas
Swing voters in the Senate
What are the prospects for bipartisanship?

Senate rules currently work against the cross-party compromise that most Senators say they want to see
Feb 11th 2021 | WASHINGTON, DC
WHEN IT COMES to actually passing legislation in Congress, intramural unity among Democrats will matter much
more than the bipartisan unity that President Joe Biden seemed to be seeking in the opening days of his
administration. As the impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump limps to its foregone conclusion in
the Senate, Democrats will also be muscling through Mr Biden’s ambitious covid-19 relief package costing
$1.9trn unilaterally, using a parliamentary manoeuvre that will require no Republican votes. There is little
reason to doubt that the same strategy will be employed to pass the second immediate aim of the Biden
administration, an enormous infrastructure package. Parliamentary quirks and partisan incentives mean that
conservative Democrats will matter much more to the White House than luring liberal-ish Republicans.
There are two conceivable routes to passing Mr Biden’s legislative agenda. The first is through normal
operating procedure, also called regular order. Such bills can be sweeping in scope or narrowly tailored to
attract Republican votes, most likely those of senators like Susan Collins of Maine or Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska (both of whom voted against repealing Obamacare) or Mitt Romney, who favours, like many
Democrats, expansive child benefits. The problem with bills proposed in the ordinary way is that they are
subject to the threat of a filibuster, effectively raising the threshold for passage from 50 votes to 60.
The task of luring another seven Republicans derails most major Democratic ambitions. Political scientists have
devised a quantitative score of how left- or right-leaning a legislator is, known as DW NOMINATE. The current
rankings show that the 60th most liberal senator is Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi—a pro-life, pro-balanced
budget sort of Republican not especially known for her bipartisan ways. There are perhaps a few areas where
some legislation could avoid a filibuster, like criminal-justice reform and paid family leave, but these pale in
comparison to Mr Biden’s dreams. That was clear in the president’s reaction to the counter-offer made by ten
Republicans offered to his proposed stimulus, which was about one-third the size of his. After giving a good-
natured, two-hour-long hearing to the senators at the White House, Mr Biden ultimately ignored their preferred
framework and advanced instead by the second route: reconciliation.
This is the special parliamentary procedure for passing budgetary legislation, which is immune from
filibustering and requires only a simple majority of senators to pass. In general, reconciliation can be used only
once per fiscal year. But because Republicans did not pass a budget resolution for the current fiscal year,
Democrats will probably have two opportunities in 2021. The first will be devoted to the stimulus, while the
second will probably be devoted to infrastructure and possibly include tax increases and revisions.
In theory, a 50-vote threshold ought to allow more cross-party coalitions. But the temptations of reconciliation
—the rare chance it offers of sidestepping a filibuster—mean that, in practice, it is not very conciliatory to the
minority party. The incentives are to instead stuff as many majority-party proposals allowable under the so-
called Byrd rule—the strict and complicated rule adjudicating which policies are allowed in reconciliation bills
—while the chance is available. “It’s very difficult for the minority party to support a reconciliation package,
just based on the structure of the approach, which is to diminish their involvement,” says Jason Grumet, the
president of the Bipartisan Policy Centre, a think-tank. Even if a senator like Mr Romney were supportive of
Democrats’ child-tax credit reforms, for instance, he would almost certainly balk at other features of the
legislation, like the proposed $350bn bailout of state and local governments, and vote against the entire
package.
For that reason, both of the last significant reconciliation bills—the Trump-era tax cuts and an Obamacare-
related law—received no votes from the opposition party in the Senate. In a sign of things to come, the budget-
resolution bill to start this round of reconciliation was passed on February 5th on strict party lines.
Reconciliation makes kingmakers of conservative Democratic senators, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and
Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. With them, Democrats can achieve a sizeable chunk of their agenda. Without them,
their efforts will go down to defeat just as Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare using reconciliation did.
Already they have started to flex their powers. Mr Manchin has pushed for the $1,400 cheques Mr Biden
promised to go to a more limited set of Americans. His scepticism of plans, dear to progressives like Bernie
Sanders, to eventually increase the federal minimum wage to $15 may end them too. With Ms Sinema and six
other Democratic senators, Mr Manchin also voted for an amendment barring stimulus payments to
undocumented immigrants.
Progressives have launched some efforts to berate them into changing. “Unfortunately our senator, Joe
Manchin, thinks he knows better than both our president and the Democrats in Congress. I guess Joe just don’t
know what it’s been like to live through the pandemic,” claims one radio ad airing in West Virginia from the No
Excuses PAC, a pressure group. So far, there has been no discernible budging. Mr Manchin, who once released a
campaign ad of himself shooting a hole through Barack Obama’s climate plans, will probably determine the
outer limit of the president’s clean-energy agenda too. He has favoured investments in energy innovation like
carbon capture, but remains lukewarm on Mr Biden’s other climate proposals.
The promised repeal of the Trump tax cuts, which may be proposed to pay for infrastructure spending, may also
prove hard. That is because it would require “268 of 272 elected Democrats [a majority in the House plus 50
senators] to agree on the same set of policy choices,” says Rohit Kumar of PwC’s national tax-policy group, a
former deputy chief-of-staff to Mitch McConnell. Because that degree of party discipline is hard to achieve, Mr
Kumar is sceptical that Democrats will agree to increase the corporate-tax rate from 21% to 28%, as Mr Biden
campaigned on, or to increase the tax rate on capital gains from 20% to 39.6%. Another likely result is that
traditional infrastructure spending on roads, bridges and broadband may survive, while the green-tinged bits on
retrofitting schools and houses and installing electric-vehicle charging stations, may be culled.
Politicos pouring over obscure senatorial rules (one coming attraction will be feverish discussion over the “Byrd
bath”) can sometimes miss that the rules restraining Mr Biden are self-imposed. Three Republicans could be
conceivably picked off on piecemeal bills, but gathering ten to avoid a filibuster looks impossible in most cases.
Eliminating the filibuster, by a simple majority vote is thus appealing to some. “Over my dead body,” Mr
Manchin recently told The Economist. Ms Sinema’s office has said quite definitively that she is “against
eliminating the filibuster and she is not open to changing her mind.” That will push Democrats towards a
parliamentary manoeuvre that is repellent to persuadable Republicans. So much for bipartisanship.■
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the-prospects-for-bipartisanship

Likes and protein spikes

Facebook tries to pre-empt regulation by squeezing anti-vaxxers
The social-media platform simultaneously does and does not want to be the arbiter of truth
Feb 13th 2021 |
“I JUST BELIEVE strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,”
Mark Zuckerberg, the social-media boss, said last year. Yet despite Mr Zuckerberg’s hope, that is what
Facebook has become. Like a power company, Facebook can illuminate certain voices, while pushing others off
the grid. The most high-profile example of the social-media firm wielding its might was in January, when
Facebook kicked Mr Trump off for stoking the riots at the Capitol. (Twitter also suspended him.) Facebook’s
decision is currently under review by the social-media firm’s internal jury, the Oversight Board, which advises
the company on thorny content issues, of which there are plenty more.
On February 8th Facebook announced that it was taking another stand on what could not appear on its platform:
falsehoods about vaccinations. The company will now remove posts and block groups that claim vaccines make
people ill or cause autism; previously the company had only demoted such claims, giving them less prominence
in users’ feeds and in search results. Facebook and other internet companies have been under pressure by
politicians and the press to do more to police anti-vax content since 2019, when measles outbreaks in New York
prompted a flurry of nonsense. Covid-19 has given the subject new urgency and attention.
In America social-media platforms are not only tools for spreading misinformation but also for co-ordination.
The anti-vax campaigners who briefly halted immunisations at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles used a
Facebook page to organise, says Allison Winnike, boss of the Immunisation Partnership, a non-profit that raises
awareness of vaccinations. Campaigners are also employing social media to push anti-vax bills in many
American states, says Joe Smyser, who runs Public Good Projects, a non-profit focused on public health. For
example, one proposed bill circulating in Kentucky tries to eliminate all vaccine requirements for employees.
Another aims to create a pre-emptive opt-out in case covid-19 vaccinations are ever required.
Just how much Facebook will actually curb vaccine misinformation is an open question. Showing users truthful
content in their feeds and searches will help, but removing problematic content could also drive users to other
platforms. After Facebook and Twitter cracked down on accounts promoting QAnon conspiracies, those users
just went elsewhere, says Renee DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory. “Social-media companies run the
risk of turning what should be something that could be easily addressed with a label into forbidden knowledge,”
she says. Nor is everyone comfortable with Facebook’s employees, contractors, Oversight Board and the 80
external firms that do various degrees of fact-checking suggesting what should be erased. “Censoring speech
and pretending you can make it go away is really problematic,” says Matt Perault, a former director of public
policy at Facebook who now runs Duke University’s Centre on Science and Technology Policy.
The decision to combat anti-vax propaganda may have as much to do with Facebook’s own public-relations
problems as its desire to cleanse its platform of life-threatening fabrications. In Washington, Democratic leaders
are putting the squeeze on platforms to do more to police content. In January three Democratic senators,
including Amy Klobuchar, sent a letter to internet companies demanding action to combat vaccine
misinformation.
Facebook may be reading today’s political mood correctly, since Democrats control the House, Senate and
White House. But its actions risk further alienating conservatives who are concerned about the censorship of
free speech, and revive discussion about antitrust enforcement among the many politicians who worry about the
dominance of big tech.
Already politicians and regulators are grappling with how and whether to change the liability shield that internet
companies have when hosting users’ content under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, an
internet law passed in 1996. By taking more proactive action to police content on its own platform, Facebook
may be hoping to head off discussions of tweaking or entirely doing away with section 230.
That is optimistic. Support for repealing section 230 was a rare point of agreement between Donald Trump and
Joe Biden, although they favour doing so for very different reasons. Rather than repealing section 230, though,
several Senate proposals are circulating to reform it. Facebook and other internet firms worry that tweaking
section 230 could lead to a deluge of lawsuits from people who consider them responsible for material posted
on their sites. Having once declared that Facebook should not be an “arbiter of truth”, Mr Zuckerberg is acting
more like one, and hoping that works in his favour.■
Dig deeper
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tries-to-pre-empt-regulation-by-squeezing-anti-vaxxers

Count-22
Why is New York so bad at running elections?

After 100 days of counting, suing and recounting, NY-22 has a congresswoman
Feb 13th 2021 | NEW YORK
ONE HUNDRED days after November’s election, New York’s 22nd congressional district (NY-22) has a
representative in Washington. On February 5th a state judge ordered Oneida County in upstate New York and
the state’s boards of elections to certify their results. Claudia Tenney, a Republican, beat Anthony Brindisi by
109 votes. It was the last undecided congressional race in the country. The lengthy delay meant the district’s
constituents did not have a voice in votes on impeachment and the House leadership or on a presence on
committees. Yet NY-22 is far from the only district with election problems. For New Yorkers across the state,
dysfunction at the board of elections is par for the course and a perennial problem.
Despite its conservative leanings, NY-22, which spans rural areas and rustbelt cities in central New York state,
was among the most competitive races in the country. That was mainly a reflection on Mr Brindisi, the
Democratic incumbent, who was fairly popular in an area where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats
by 30,000. His challenger, Ms Tenney, had a convincing lead at first, but Mr Brindisi narrowed the gap when
absentee and affidavit ballots were counted. Both candidates called for a judicial review of the ballots. After
Scott DelConte, the presiding judge, noted several errors, he ordered the district’s boards of elections to review
votes again. “It is more important that this election is decided right, than that it is decided right now,” he said in
December.
Errors were made in seven of the district’s eight counties. Oneida County’s mistakes were especially egregious,
said Mr DelConte. More than 2,400 electronic voter registrations in Oneida were not processed in time for
November’s election. Oneida labelled challenged votes with Post-it notes. The notes did not stick, making it
impossible to know which votes were disputed. Despite the record of voter suppression in Republican states,
David Wasserman of the non-partisan Cook Political Report says that “probably one of the most egregious
examples of voter suppression that I’ve seen this cycle was in [New York] a state that’s pretty firmly blue”.
Mr DelConte was scathing about election commissioners, who are responsible for administrating boards of
elections in each county. Commissioner selection “is the last vestige of patronage politics in New York state”,
says Luke Perry, a political scientist at Utica College. Some counties have deadlocked boards with Republicans
and Democrats sniping at each other. And every county has different standards. Susan Lerner of Common
Cause, a voting-rights group, says NY-22 has shown that “if you have eight different counties in a congressional
district, you have eight different ways to approach counting absentee ballots, and eight different ways to make
mistakes”. The covid-19 epidemic didn’t help—election officers across the state were overwhelmed and
overworked because of outbreaks and social distancing.
NY-22 is far from alone in its chaos. The New York Civil Liberties Union sued Rockland County in the autumn
to extend early voting hours. New York City is plagued with problems, from broken voting machines to long
queues. In 2019 the city’s board of elections bizarrely sued City Hall to stop it offering translation services at
the polls unless they were provided by the board. State government is little better. New York City has been
waiting a year to get approval for new vote-counting software.
On February 8th Mr Brindisi conceded, ending the uncertainty in NY-22. Had he pursued and won an appeal, it
is not clear if the court could have removed Ms Tenney from her Congressional seat once she had been sworn
in. “Sadly, we may never know how many legal voters were turned away at the polls or ballots not counted due
to the ineptitude of the boards of election, especially in Oneida County,” Mr Brindisi says. He hopes an
investigation will be conducted. “What’s so disturbing about what happened in Oneida County is that if it
weren’t for this incredibly close election, we would have not even known,” says Sean Morales-Doyle of the
Brennan Centre for Justice. What errors, New Yorkers may wonder, occurred in less competitive races? ■
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new-york-so-bad-at-running-elections

The shrining
America’s strange presidential museums

With the Obama centre greenlit, their number is about to swell
Feb 13th 2021 | CHICAGO
IN AUTOCRACIES, putting up mausoleums for ex-presidents is common. China, North Korea, Russia and Vietnam
all encourage visitors to gawp at embalmed bodies and tour museums that glorify their dear, dead leaders. In
most democracies that sort of thing is frowned on, making America’s passion for hagiographical presidential
museums unusual. Every occupant of the White House since Herbert Hoover has put up a monument to himself.
They are built with private cash, but their upkeep eventually falls to the federal government, which spends about
$100m yearly on 13 sites. The 14th is coming. Last week federal permission was granted for the Obama
Presidential Centre, a $500m complex on Chicago’s South Side. Work starts this summer. It should open in
2025.
Anthony Clark, author of a book on them, notes that over 2m visitors visit presidential libraries in a normal
year. After Dwight Eisenhower died, in 1969, 630,000 people made a pilgrimage to his library in Abilene,
Kansas. Now it typically fails to draw one-third as many. Fewer still pay homage to Herbert Hoover in rural
Iowa. In 2018 George H.W. Bush was buried at his library, in Texas, one of seven presidents interred at their
museum grounds.
Mr Clark sees such spots as “partisan shrines”. Their common message—that a few big men, imperial
presidents, steer America’s fortunes—looks dated. He dislikes, too, how ex-presidents in their “last campaign”
try skewing how history remembers them. Richard Nixon’s library long neglected mention of Watergate, for
example. Ronald Reagan’s lets visitors see Air Force One or a reconstructed pub brought from Ballyporeen,
Ireland, where Ronnie and Nancy once had a drink. It barely addresses the Iran-Contra scandal.
Jodi Kanter, who has written a book on presidential museums as theatre, is a bigger fan. They offer “romance
about individual achievement” she says. Scattered nationwide, they are more accessible than museums in
Washington. She expects Donald Trump to announce his own, as he won’t “resist having a monument to
himself”. But battles for land and donors could delay it; Nixon took 16 years to compete his.
Unusually, the Obama one in Chicago won’t house his official records (which will be digitised instead). Limited
space will go to exhibits on the Obamas’ time in the White House. Mike Strautmanis, who is working on the
project, says instead it is to be “a tool” for Mr Obama’s post-presidential work. The centre will host young
activists from America and overseas, training them in how to achieve social change. It will include a branch of
the Chicago library and let locals grow vegetables in its grounds. Mr Obama “is still a relatively young man”
eager to turn ideas to action, says Mr Strautmanis. And growing things beats embalming them. ■
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strange-presidential-museums

Trail blazers
Oregon decriminalises drugs for personal use

Portugal, the first country to do this, contains valuable lessons for America
Feb 13th 2021 |
GETTING CAUGHT with a small amount of drugs in Oregon is now like getting a traffic ticket. At the beginning of
this month, it became the first state to decriminalise possession of even hard drugs for personal use. Rather than
face criminal charges, those in possession of small amounts of drugs (defined as having less than 1 gram of
heroin or MDMA, 2 grams of methamphetamine or cocaine, 12 grams of psilocybin, 40 units of methadone or
LSD, or 40 pills of oxycodone) will face a $100 fine or a health assessment that could lead to rehabilitation rather
than jail time. Drug treatment will be funded by state tax revenue from legal marijuana sales, which reached
$133m in 2020.
The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission expects the new law to decrease the load on the criminal-justice
system. Going by 2019 estimates, they expect arrests for possession of controlled substances to drop from 6,700
to 615 in an average year, a 91% reduction. They also estimate that 1,800 fewer Oregonians will be convicted of
felony possession, and 1,900 fewer of misdemeanour possession. “That impact is going to be huge,” says
Bridget Budbill of the Office of Public Defence Services. “It’s an opportunity for overburdened public defence
systems to see a modest reduction in cases...so that these public defenders can focus their attention on […] more
serious matters.” This will have a particular impact on racial minorities, who get disproportionately arrested for
possession and then caught-up in the criminal-justice system, says Ms Budbill.
A handful of American cities have already decriminalised drugs harder than marijuana. More states could
follow Oregon. The cities focus on psychedelics, psychoactive substances such as psilocybin (also known as
“magic mushrooms”) and LSD. Ann Arbor, Denver, Oakland, and Somerville, Massachusetts, have all
decriminalised psychedelics. The District of Columbia also passed a referendum to do so in November, though
the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, has publicly opposed it.
America is inching towards the example of Portugal, which in 2001 became the first country to decriminalise
drug consumption for personal use (while continuing criminal prosecution for other drug offences, such as
trafficking). The country saw a reduction in drug-induced deaths and reduced rates of HIV infection. But, says
João Castel-Branco Goulão, Portugal’s National Co-ordinator for Drugs and Drug Addiction, decriminalisation
must be paired with other policies or else it will fail. “Decriminalising without doing anything else does not lead
to any improvement of the situation,” says Dr Goulão.
He warns policymakers that any plan to decriminalise drugs must consider four factors: accessible treatment,
prevention, harm reduction and reintegration. In Portugal, first-time offenders go before a panel at the Ministry
of Health and receive a warning. Subsequent violations within five years of the first offence incur either a fine
or other administrative sanction, such as community service. Punishment is individualised. Someone struggling
with drug dependency may receive therapy, while a recreational user battling with depression may receive
mental-health care.
Nora Volkow, director of America’s National Institute of Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health,
encourages decriminalisation alongside support policies and prevention programmes to protect children and
adolescents from addiction. “We need to be very aware of…how the decriminalisation is going to affect
accessibility,” she warns, “…because we know that the more accessible a drug is, the greater the likelihood
someone will pick it up.”■
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decriminalises-drugs-for-personal-use

Genocide aside
Can America’s government deal with China’s after accusing it of

genocide?
The Biden administration has declined to rescind Trump administration’s description of China’s Uighur policy
HAVING BRANDED China with committing the most heinous of crimes, the Biden administration is confronting
diplomats and multinational firms with a vexing question: how do you compartmentalise genocide? The term
was first applied by Mike Pompeo, the outgoing secretary of state, in his last full day in the job. The Biden
administration has declined to rescind it. Thus the question is likely to haunt Olympic sponsors and athletes too,
as next year’s winter games in Beijing draw closer.
The administration contends it can work alongside China on matters like climate change, while excoriating it as
genocidal because of its abuses of the Uyghur minority in the northwest province of Xinjiang. But human-rights
advocates are watching to see if the administration will stick by the accusation and follow it up with severe
penalties—or, by failing to do so, diminish the power of an accusation of genocide to shock the world’s
conscience.
The Biden administration is considering what penalties, including sanctions on individual officials, it might add
to measures put in place by the Trump administration. Biden officials also expect the genocide designation to
bring new pressure to bear on multinational firms operating in China. One lawyer with experience combating
crimes against humanity described fielding calls from companies with business in China asking what the
designation might mean for them. “You put China together with the term ‘genocide’ and you’re in new
territory,” this lawyer said.
Whether seen against the history of American indulgence of Chinese human-rights abuses, or the history of
American reluctance to level accusations of genocide against even weak, murderous states, the administration’s
move is extraordinary. So far no allies have shown much interest in lining up behind America. Joe Biden
avoided the word on a call with Xi Jinping on February 10th. China has rejected the charge of genocide and
warned against trying to interfere in matters like its approach to Xinjiang or Hong Kong. “They constitute a red
line which must not be crossed,” according to China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.
The American approach to naming and punishing genocide has been a tug-of-war between morality and
expediency almost from the start. Like the word “genocide” itself, the UN convention describing the crime was
created in the wake of the Holocaust. Under President Harry Truman, America signed the treaty in 1948, after it
was unanimously approved by the General Assembly. (China has also signed the treaty.) But the Senate resisted
ratifying it, out of fear it might infringe on American sovereignty, or that African-Americans or Native
Americans might invoke its provisions against their own government.
Almost twenty years on, in 1967, Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin vowed to argue for the genocide
convention on the floor of the Senate each day it was in session until ratification. It took him more than 3,000
speeches across 19 years to win the argument. Two years later, in 1988, Congress complied with a stipulation of
the treaty by passing its own anti-genocide law, which replicates the UN’s definition of the crime. The American
law empowers the justice department to arrest and prosecute foreign officials it can connect to a campaign of
genocide, but the law creates no obligation to do anything. Past administrations have nevertheless been reluctant
to invoke the term, fearing that they would be conjuring intense pressure to act.
The Clinton administration took to referring carefully to “acts of genocide” during the Bosnian war and the
slaughter in Rwanda, prompting one exasperated reporter to ask at a State Department briefing, “How many
acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?” Eventually, the Clinton State Department did apply the word
“genocide” to both those cases. That administration would go on to describe the mass killing of Iraqi Kurds in
1988 as genocide. Subsequent administrations applied the term to slaughter in Darfur, in 2004, and in areas
under the control of ISIS in 2016 and 2017. The American government has never spelled out a process for
arriving at a determination of genocide.
America has yet to stamp Myanmar’s persecution of its Rohingya minority as genocide. But in light of the
deployment of the term to describe the treatment of the Uyghurs, the Biden administration is coming under
intensified pressure from members of Congress and human-rights groups to invoke the word against Myanmar
too. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, has said he will review whether the treatment of the Rohingya
amounts to genocide.
Many human-rights advocates argue that the case for genocide is more stark against Myanmar than against
China. The UN convention says that genocide refers to acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. These advocates worry that it is harder to establish intent
without evidence of mass slaughter, which has not been documented in Xinjiang, and that as a result the Biden
administration may, in effect, define genocide downward. But others note that the UN convention, like the
American law based on it, calls out “measures intended to prevent births within the group” as well as forced
transfers of “children of the group to another group.” Journalists and NGOs have found extensive evidence of
both practices in Xinjiang.
Rather than diluting the genocide convention, its application to Xinjiang could fulfil a deeper reading of the
treaty. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who invented the word “genocide”, had studied the developments
that led to the Nazis’ campaign of extermination. The convention, which he helped draft, aimed not just to
punish genocide but to prevent it in the first place.
As a result, some human-rights advocates regard calling out the treatment of the Uyghurs as a potentially
important step forward in applying the treaty’s principles. According to this view, China’s government may be
playing a long game in Xinjiang, committing genocide not by killing off the Uyghurs but by working across
time to erase their identity as a people. “They have patience,” says Beth Van Schaack, a professor of human
rights at Stanford Law School and a former deputy to the state department’s ambassador-at-large for war-crimes
issues. “You can imagine them doing it in a much more methodical, slow way, even if it takes three
generations.” The task the Biden administration has now set itself is to find a way to honour Mr Lemkin’s
vision without blowing up the world’s most important bilateral relationship.■
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americas-government-deal-with-chinas-after-accusing-it-of-genocide

Lexington
Civil rights v civil liberties at the ACLU

After decades of undue pessimism, civil libertarians should be moderately concerned
Feb 13th 2021 |
IN THE SUMMER of 1964 a television repairman and Klansman called Clarence Brandenburg invited a television
reporter to join him at a hooded rally in rural Ohio. The resultant footage of Brandenburg and other goons
standing by a burning cross and vowing to take “revengeance” against blacks and Jews landed him in jail for
inciting violence. He was sprung by the Supreme Court, after it ruled that such a threat was too vague to
abrogate his right to free speech. That precedent—the court’s last word on inflammatory language—was the
nub of Donald Trump’s defence this week.
It was a poor legal argument, because an impeachment is not a criminal trial, which makes the Brandenburg
case barely relevant. But it was a strong political one. Mr Trump is appealing to partisan emotion, not reason.
And a belief that the left hates free speech is scripture on the Fox-MAGA right. Thus the war on political
correctness Mr Trump promised, when he dared to call Mexicans rapists and Christmas merry. And he has since
exacerbated this grievance by characterising the two big social movements of his presidency, #MeToo and
Black Lives Matter, as twin prongs of a liberal conspiracy to stifle, or “cancel”, conservative voices.
“You’re not allowed to use the word “beautiful” anymore when you talk about women,” was Mr Trump’s take
on #MeToo. The BLM protests, he said, were intended “to silence dissent…to bully Americans into abandoning
their values.” This ultra-politicisation of civil liberties may be as ominous as anything he has done. Rights
subject to a partisan interpretation are not secure (never mind civil). It is also especially threatening to the rights
organisation that would naturally hold the line against Mr Trump: the American Civil Liberties Union, which
defended Brandenburg and has been the foremost defender of civil liberties for a century.
Left-leaning, though non-partisan, the ACLU has traditionally maintained its influence by suing the governments
of both parties in roughly equal measure. It sued George W. Bush’s administration for torturing people, for
example; and Barack Obama’s for killing them with drones. This has not always convinced conservatives that it
had their backs. George H.W. Bush derided his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a “card-carrying
member of the ACLU”. Yet such hostility was mainly a response to the organisation’s work on civil rights, which
Republicans defined themselves against long before Mr Trump. And a related libertarian gripe, that the ACLU
had been captured by minority interests to the cost of its defence of civil liberties, has for the most part been
unconvincing.
A cursory review of the centre-right press suggests this incendiary claim has been made, in much the same
alarmist Bill-of-Rights-going-to-the-dogs tone, since the 1980s. Meanwhile, ACLU lawyers have carried on
defending the speech and assemblies of Nazis—in Charlottesville three years ago just as among the Holocaust
survivors of Skokie, Illinois, in 1978—as dutifully as ever. Aryeh Neier, an admired ACLU director of the 1970s
(and himself a Berlin-born fugitive from Nazism) says he sees no reduced commitment on that score. The only
significant evidence to the contrary—much tutted over by civil libertarians—appears to be a post-Charlottesville
determination by the ACLU’s current director, Anthony Romero, that the group should no longer help armed
groups hold rallies. That does not seem like a big worry.
Yet just because American liberties are in safer hands than many claim does not make them invulnerable to new
threats. Illiberalism is on the rise on the left as well as the right. Polls of college students suggest they are more
worried about offensive language than free speech—“a serious cause of concern”, Mr Romero notes. And the
same woke spirit, increasingly evident in boardrooms and newsrooms, has reached the ACLU. The organisation’s
transgender activism elides sex and gender identity. The ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice
suggested last year that a book hostile to that unscientific view should be banned. He was tweeting in a personal
capacity, Mr Romero notes, and an organisation dedicated to free speech cannot object to that. Yet the ACLU ’s
decades-old claim that its work on civil rights and civil liberties are mutually reinforcing is under pressure.
Mr Romero acknowledges the tension. He admits to spending more and more time arguing the case for classical
civil liberties inside his organisation. In time, he suggests, the more woke elements of his staff will come to
accept them: “Leadership matters”. Maybe so. Yet politics as well as the culture are against it.
The ACLU ’s long tradition of sticking it to both parties has been a force for moderation inside the organisation
as well as out. “If we became the civil liberties wing of the Democratic Party we would become irrelevant. It
would be a death knell for civil rights and civil liberties,” Mr Romero says. Yet the more profoundly illiberal
drift of the Republican Party has made it hard for the ACLU to maintain its customary even-handedness. It sued
Mr Trump’s administration over 400 times and advocated impeaching him twice. Thanks to the gusher of
money this elicited from approving liberals, it meanwhile doubled in size. It would be odd if that surge, borne of
opposition to Mr Trump, had not moved it in a partisan direction.
The shrinking middle
This is an illustration of the damage hyper-polarisation is doing outside politics, to the civic fabric. Already
endangered, non-partisan organisations such as think-tanks, research groups and law firms are, like the ACLU,
becoming increasingly aligned with the ascendant left. The ACLU’s unique history may also provide a useful
way to calibrate how worrying this development is. Decades of overly pessimistic attacks on its values and
institutional integrity suggest they are stronger than the doomsayers allow. The defenders of American rights
are still mostly moderate and effective. The liberal mainstream, by the same token, is probably less vulnerable
to illiberal groupthink than is claimed. Yet both are moving in that new and worrying direction, and the
endpoint is unclear.■
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v-civil-liberties-at-the-aclu
United States Sections Asia
The Americas
Cuba and Venezuela: Practically perfect Colombia: Activists amid anarchy
. .
Bello: Ecuador’s politics of the negative
.
United States Sections Asia
Practically perfect
Cuba and Venezuela open up, hesitantly, to the market

Latin America’s most socialist countries are becoming less so
Feb 13th 2021 | CARACAS
“DEEP DOWN, we are one single government, one single country,” said Venezuela’s loquacious president, Hugo
Chávez, of the relationship with Cuba in 2007. Fidel Castro, Cuba’s ailing revolutionary leader, was like a
father to him. Venezuela provided millions of barrels of subsidised oil to shield Cuba from the economic
consequences of its socialist system. Cuban doctors served Venezuela’s poorest neighbourhoods, boosting
Chávez’s popularity and providing Cuba with extra cash. Cuban spies schooled Chávez and Nicolás Maduro,
who became president after he died in 2013, in the dark arts of perpetual rule. Their political and economic
alliance was the strongest in Latin America.
Now the allies are discreetly sharing another experience: adoption of free-market practices to rescue their
moribund economies. Neither admits this. The goal, each claims, is “perfeccionamiento”—perfection—of
socialism, not its abolition.
On February 6th Cuba’s council of ministers expanded the number of trades open to self-employed
entrepreneurs, called cuentapropistas. A list dating from 2010 (and twice revised) permitted private enterprise
in 127 professions. Cubans could be horse-cart drivers and birthday clowns but not computer programmers or
pet veterinarians. A new list, published on February 10th, specifies 124 sectors reserved for the state (or entirely
banned). Everything else is to be permitted for entrepreneurs. Some finicky rules, like those that bar hairdressers
from offering manicures, are expected to be scrapped.
This follows another long-awaited reform. On January 1st, after more than a decade of debate, Cuba’s
government ended its economy-distorting dual-currency system. The CUC, a supposedly hard currency that Cuba
introduced 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is being phased out. The surviving Cuban peso has been
pegged at 24 to the American dollar (but is now trading at 50 in the black market). State enterprises, which
could hide their losses by valuing each of their Cuban pesos at $1, will no longer have that luxury. That will
probably lead to lay-offs. The government hopes that sacked workers will become newly liberated
cuentapropistas.
Venezuela, which sabotaged private enterprise with expropriations and price controls but did not outlaw it, has
been on a similar journey. Mr Maduro scrapped its bewildering system of multiple exchange rates in 2018. The
American dollar, formerly the “criminal dollar”, has recently been allowed to circulate freely. It is much more
common on the streets of Caracas than bolívar banknotes, of which the government is not printing enough to
meet demand. The government no longer enforces price controls. It has even raised the price of petrol for the
first time since 1996; state-run petrol stations take dollars. In November Santa Teresa, a private maker of rum,
issued the country’s first corporate bond denominated in dollars in two decades.
Shops, once emptied by price controls, are now well stocked. A semi-dormant Ferrari dealership plans to open a
showroom in Caracas. In the countryside, vast tracts of land that Chávez once promised to give to impoverished
campesinos are being bought by people who got rich from the crony capitalism practised by his successor. One
farmer in Bolívar state, in eastern Venezuela, says that he was offered $5m in cash to sell. He declined.
Parts of the state sector are shrinking, as is about to happen in Cuba. PDVSA, the decrepit oil monopoly, which in
2012 employed 150,000 people, now has a workforce of 111,000, according to Iván Freites, secretary of the
FUPTV oil union. PDVSA has reportedly offered small domestic contractors rights to operate its oilfields. Many
ex-PDVSA workers are among the 5.4m Venezuelans, 18% of the population, who have left the country since
2014. (On February 8th Colombia offered residency rights for ten years to nearly 1m Venezuelans who
migrated to the country.)
Cuba and Venezuela are acting out of desperation. Venezuela has been in recession for more than six years (see
chart). Its debt soared under Chávez, mismanagement at PDVSA caused oil production to slump and sanctions
imposed by the Trump administration in 2019 clobbered oil exports. Rampant corruption boosts the market for
supercars but bankrupts the state. “This government is doing the sort of things that would be demanded under a
classic IMF restructuring, and sanctions have made it politically possible,” says a Venezuelan businessman.
Cuba’s graft does not match Venezuela’s. Its officials “are mostly punctilious administrators. Corruption tends
to be an afterthought,” says a Western businessman. But its economy is similarly blasted. GDP shrank by more
than 11% in 2020, according to the government. Exports of sugar are close to their historic lows. In 2019 the
Trump administration restricted travel by Americans to Cuba and the sending of money by Cuban-Americans to
family members on the island. The United States has imposed sanctions on operators of tankers that carry oil
from Venezuela to Cuba. Last year it forced Western Union, an important conduit for remittances, to shutter its
shops in Cuba.
Sanctions plus covid-19 cut the number of tourists from an expected 4m to 80,000 last year. Luxury hotels in
Havana, built by the army with help from mysterious (perhaps Venezuelan) loans, stand empty. For ordinary
Cubans, food is in short supply.
Neither regime is planning to leap free of socialism in a single bound. The IMF does not lend to Venezuela and
Cuba is not a member of it, which means they will not get the sort of aid available to most countries that
undertake painful reforms. Venezuela’s government will continue to finance its massive budget deficit by
getting the Central Bank to create money.
Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is more constrained than Mr Maduro. He is “at best a closet reformer”,
says the Western businessman. Soviet-era officials still have powerful jobs. They include Raúl Castro, Fidel’s
brother, who is secretary-general of the Communist Party. Mr Díaz-Canel will try to avoid antagonising them at
least until April, when he is expected to take over from Mr Castro.
For now, the government is maintaining control of all large industries and wholesale shops, which will restrict
cuentapropistas’ options for obtaining supplies. The state will continue to monopolise professional services
such as architecture and accountancy, a big disappointment. Talk of a law to enable entrepreneurs to incorporate
has gone quiet.
The pandemic and American sanctions mean that neither Cuba nor Venezuela is likely to enjoy a market-led
boom anytime soon. Ventures requiring large investments will have to wait. Cuba’s continued restrictions on
entrepreneurship in vast areas of the economy will blunt its growth. But ingenious Cubans will exploit to the
full the new opportunity to enter any profession that is not specifically prohibited.
Mr Maduro and Mr Díaz-Canel will not offer their citizens political freedoms to match their new economic
ones. They look to China and Vietnam, where repression and rising prosperity co-exist, rather than to
democratic neighbours. “Both countries are changing their economic policies to certain degrees. But they are
not changing their political regimes,” says Orlando Ochoa from Economista Consultor, a consultancy in
Caracas. “That is the whole point.” Deep down, Cuba and Venezuela will continue to have much in common. ■
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venezuela-open-up-hesitantly-to-the-market

Activists amid anarchy
Why Colombia’s social leaders are being murdered

The state is absent from large parts of the country
Feb 13th 2021 | BOGOTÁ
YORDAN EDUARDO GüETIO championed the rights of the Nasa people, an indigenous group in Cauca, in western
Colombia, to which he belonged. On February 2nd men in military fatigues stopped him and his father on their
motorcycle on the outskirts of Corinto, in northern Cauca. They let Mr Güetio’s father go, but shot the son dead.
He was less than 30 years old.
Activism has long been a dangerous vocation in Colombia. From the 1980s to the early 2000s right-wing
paramilitary groups murdered trade unionists, Communists and peasant leaders. The FARC, a guerrilla group that
demobilised after a peace deal with the government in 2016, kidnapped farmers who opposed them.
Peace, it was thought, would bring safety for social leaders, as Colombians call activists. In fact, it has brought
more peril. At least 400 rights-defenders have been killed since 2016, according to the UN’s human-rights
commissioner. Colombia’s ombudsman has documented 710 such murders during the same period. Last month
19 activists were killed or went missing, according to Indepaz, a think-tank.
One reason may be that peace has encouraged more activists to make more demands, says Juan Carlos Garzón
of the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a think-tank. They campaign for causes that were overshadowed by war,
such as the rights of indigenous and Afro-Colombian people, land reform, protecting the environment and
corruption-free government.
A more obvious reason is the rise of armed groups that are fighting for control of territories vacated by the
FARC. These include the ELN and the EPL guerrilla outfits and gangs composed of FARC and paramilitary fighters
who refused to disarm. In Nariño, in south-western Colombia, drug-trafficking groups attack advocates of a
government programme that encourages farmers to switch from growing coca, used to make cocaine, to legal
crops like cacao.
Most activists slain in Cauca were indigenous or Afro-Colombian leaders trying to expel armed groups from
territories reserved for them. In Norte de Santander, in the north-east, the ELN and the EPL are at war with each
other and with local worthies, such as football coaches, whom they suspect of supporting their foes.
The state remains absent from large swathes of Colombia’s territory. The government sends soldiers to kill
drug-traffickers and other troublemakers. But it has not set up institutions needed to enforce the law
consistently. Without order, it is left to protect social leaders one by one.
Iván Duque, Colombia’s conservative president, has made an effort. In 2018 he created the “timely action plan”
to come up with policies to protect social leaders. The government holds meetings to discuss alerts issued by the
ombudsman about specific risks to social leaders. A “national protection unit” has given hundreds of leaders
cell phones, bulletproof vests and even bodyguards and armoured vehicles.
These are half-measures. When the ombudsman identifies threats, officials rarely propose action to head them
off, says a person who attended their meetings. The interior ministry, which has no enforcement powers, is in
charge of the timely action plan. Other agencies, such as the defence ministry, are supposed to protect social
leaders. But they do not co-ordinate with each other outside Bogotá, says Mr Garzón.
Another problem is mistrust. Activists are cynical about a government that is largely absent from their regions.
Left-wing parties have used the murders as a cudgel against Mr Duque’s government. Some of his allies dismiss
their outrage as an expression of castrochavismo—socialist ideas from Cuba and Venezuela. Activists
sometimes refuse to meet officials to discuss how to protect them.
On February 10th Human Rights Watch, a global pressure group, urged the government to establish police
forces and law courts in regions where social leaders are being slaughtered. Mr Duque, whose term ends in
2022, is running out of time to do that. Meanwhile, tragedies like the murder of Mr Güetio will keep
occurring.■
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Bello
Heir, banker, cyclist: Ecuador’s high-stakes election

Anti-incumbency, anti-correismo—and a positive newcomer
Feb 13th 2021 |
FOR A DECADE Rafael Correa, a leftist populist, ruled Ecuador as an autocrat. Enjoying an oil boom, he doubled
the size of the state, built roads and hospitals, curbed the media, harassed opponents and presided over
corruption. As money got tight, he lined up a proxy: Lenín Moreno, his former vice-president, narrowly won a
presidential election in 2017 against Guillermo Lasso, a conservative banker. But then Mr Correa’s plan
unravelled.
Faced with an oil bust, Mr Moreno broke with his predecessor in both economics and politics. Since Ecuador
adopted the dollar in 2000, it cannot devalue when exports fall. Instead of saving part of the oil windfall Mr
Correa had piled up debt. Mr Moreno had little choice but to adopt austerity. An ill-managed attempt to
withdraw fuel subsidies prompted widespread protests in October 2019 and, with the pandemic, left his
government deeply unpopular.
That has offered Mr Correa, who is in Belgium, another chance for a comeback. Sentenced in absentia to eight
years in jail for corruption, he picked a new proxy for the presidential election on February 7th. Andrés Arauz, a
loyal former minister but dull campaigner, promises to convoke a constituent assembly with the seeming
purpose of taking control of the judiciary, overturning Mr Correa’s sentence and allowing him in effect to run
the country.
Whether Mr Correa’s gambit works turns in part on whom Mr Arauz, who won 33% of the vote, faces in a run-
off on April 11th. For 60 hours after the polls closed it looked as if that would be Yaku Pérez of Pachakutik, an
indigenous party. After a review of votes that had been set aside because of administrative errors by polling
officials—many in Guayaquil, the main port—Mr Lasso squeezed ahead with 19.7% to Mr Pérez’s 19.6%.
On his Twitter account Mr Correa had been rooting for a fight with Mr Lasso once again. This would be a
straightforward left-right contest, and two-thirds of voters backed candidates to the left of centre. Mr Lasso is
tarred not just by being “the banker candidate”, as Mr Arauz calls him, but also by his support for Mr Moreno’s
government. In much of Latin America today, disdain for incumbents trumps all else.
However, Mr Correa’s appeal is waning. Mr Arauz’s share of the vote was seven points lower than Mr
Moreno’s in the first round in 2017. As Mr Lasso put it, two-thirds “have voted no to the totalitarian and
populist model that is trying to return”. Mr Pérez, who claimed fraud, had a better chance of harvesting anti-
correismo. He grew up in a house without running water. He studied law, became an environmental activist and
changed his first name from Carlos to Yaku, meaning “water” in the Quechuan languages of the Andes. He
abhors Mr Correa, whose government detained him five times for opposing mining projects. Campaigning
partly on a bicycle, he has a reputation for honesty. Whereas Mr Correa is an ally of the dictators in Venezuela
and Cuba, Mr Pérez is not. His political affinities look more green than red. Will he now endorse Mr Lasso?
The next president faces some unforgiving realities. Hit hard by the pandemic and its recession, Ecuador’s
economy is recovering only slowly after contracting by 9% last year. A $6.5bn loan from the IMF, of which
$4bn has already been disbursed, requires the government to cut the fiscal deficit from 7.8% of GDP last year to
2.8% this year. That will be less hard than it looks: tax revenues are recovering and Mr Moreno’s debt
renegotiation saved 1.5% of GDP in interest that would have fallen due this year. Even so, the new government
will have to cut spending or raise taxes—and probably both—fairly soon.
Mr Arauz promises a $1bn giveaway to families in his first week. He wants to pay for this by using the Central
Bank’s reserves. Since their function in a dollarised economy is to back bank deposits, that risks a bank run. Mr
Lasso opposes raising VAT, but otherwise supports the IMF programme and fiscal restraint.
The next government will not have a majority in the parliament. Mr Correa’s allies will form the largest bloc
and his sister Pierina may be the legislature’s speaker. Ecuador’s drama is that the dollar has given it stability,
but can bring rapid growth only if governments undertake sweeping reforms. When president, Mr Correa
squandered an oil-fuelled opportunity to do that. History suggests that with less money, populists become more
authoritarian. To prevent that, anti-correismo will need to overcome anti-bankerism.
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banker-cyclist-ecuadors-high-stakes-election

The Americas Sections China
Asia
The Tokyo Olympics: Olympic gory Protests in Myanmar: Don’t putsch me
. .
Banyan: Cool it or blow? Bangladesh’s army: Wallets at the ready
. .
Noise complaints in South Korea: Hell is other people
.
Geopolitics in the Pacific: Palm-fringed fury
.
The Americas Sections China
Olympic gory
The obstacles to holding the Tokyo Olympics in July are daunting

Most Japanese would prefer to postpone the games again, or cancel them
Feb 13th 2021 | TOKYO
THE RED digits on a clock outside Tokyo Station tick off the seconds until the Olympic games begin, on July
23rd. Yet the closer the date gets, the greater the uncertainty about whether the games will go ahead at all. The
clock has, after all, already been reset once: as the covid-19 pandemic swept across the world last year, they
were delayed until this year. Organisers spoke of the Olympics as a symbol of the light at the end of covid’s
tunnel. With the torch relay, the official start of the festivities, set to begin on March 25th but with the disease
still rampant, another decision looms.
It is a more complicated choice than it was last year. Covid-19 is better understood and more effectively
controlled than before, making the games, at least without massed spectators, appear tantalisingly feasible. But
holding them comes with big risks. An Olympic outbreak would symbolise hubris and incompetence, and could
provoke a crisis for the prime minister, Suga Yoshihide, whose approval ratings are already sagging. The
alternative is also unpalatable: the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has, at least so far, ruled out another
postponement, meaning that if the Tokyo games are not held this year, they will probably be cancelled
altogether. “They have presented [the games] as a symbol of victory over coronavirus, so if they cancel, it
becomes a symbol of the Japanese government’s failure,” says Sone Yasunori of Keio University. “Both options
are quite terrible.”
The reasons to cancel the games are obvious. The pandemic is still raging around the world, with nearly
300,000 new cases recorded every day. Japan itself is in the midst of a stubborn third wave that forced the
government to extend a state of emergency until early March. Although vaccination campaigns have begun in
many countries, even the most optimistic estimates do not foresee immunity becoming widespread enough by
the summer to guarantee a virus-free event. In Japan the first jabs have yet to be administered. Some public-
health experts say it would be mad to go ahead. Even some athletes agree. As Niiya Hitomi, a Japanese track-
and-field star, put it: “To be honest, I think life is more important than the Olympics.”
The Japanese public, predictably, has soured on the idea of hosting tens of thousands of athletes, journalists and
other hangers-on from around the world, each potentially a vector for the virus. When polled in 2019, nearly
90% of Japanese were looking forward to the Olympics; recent polls show that 80% now oppose holding the
games this year (roughly 40% favour cancellation, while another 40% want another postponement).
Spiralling costs have added to the misgivings. The tab had already ballooned from a projected $7.3bn to an
official estimate of $12.6bn, but government’s own auditors put the true cost at over $20bn. Postponement and
virus-prevention measures will add another $2.8bn to the total. The president of Tokyo’s organising committee,
Mori Yoshiro, an 83-year-old former prime minister, added to the event’s problems earlier this month when he
suggested that women talk too much in meetings, prompting a storm of public indignation. Japanese media are
reporting that he will soon resign.
Yet though the Japanese people bear most of the risks of the games, the choice is not theirs alone. Japan’s top
leadership remains committed: Mr Suga told a recent virtual gathering of the World Economic Forum that Japan
is “determined to deliver hope and courage to the world”. So is the IOC: Thomas Bach, its president, has said
there is “no plan B” to holding the Olympics in Tokyo this year. Myriad stakeholders, from national Olympic
committees to corporate sponsors to television networks, have an interest in seeing the games happen, even in a
limited form. Many athletes would welcome the chance to compete. Many Japanese business leaders believe
even a circumscribed Olympics would be better than cancellation, economically speaking. Big sporting events
elsewhere offer hope that the games can proceed: just this week, America’s National Football League crowned a
new Super Bowl champion, while the Australian Open, an international tennis tournament, got under way,
despite a series of covid-19 scares.
The Olympics, however, present a challenge on a different scale. Some 1,200 players, staff and officials visited
Australia for the Open. More than 11,000 athletes from some 200 countries are booked to compete in Tokyo,
with many more officials, coaches and reporters tagging along. Organisers must figure out how to keep athletes
healthy, especially in close-contact sports. Outbreaks have already disrupted sumo and rugby tournaments in
Japan this year. If top contenders are infected, it would threaten not only their health, but also the integrity of
the competition. Organisers will also have to work out how to welcome fans, if they are allowed to attend at all.
At the moment foreign spectators are unlikely, though some local ones may be permitted, as they have been in
recent months at Japanese football and baseball games.
Plans released by the organising committee this month offer hints of what such an event might look like. Those
attending would be subject to constant testing and rigorous restrictions on movement. What spectators there are
would be allowed to clap, but not sing or chant. Hugs and handshakes should be avoided. The Japanese
government’s covid-19 tracking app, COCOA, would be deployed to try to stop the spread of any infections. (It
has problems of its own: the health ministry recently admitted that for more than four months, a bug prevented
the Android version of the app from notifying users who came into close contact with individuals who tested
positive for covid-19.)
The fate of the games, like so much else, will depend on how the pandemic progresses. In private, some sources
close to the government presume that holding them as scheduled will prove impossible. They wonder about the
next unclaimed summer slot—in 2032. Other sources think that the obstacles will seem less daunting once the
winter outbreak ebbs and vaccines start flowing. The public, they reckon, will come around. Either way, Japan
will probably twist and turn to avoid making a unilateral decision, lest it be seen as denying the world. Last
year’s postponement came only after Australia and Canada, among others, announced they would not send any
athletes. In late January, by contrast, the head of Australia’s national committee declared: “The Tokyo Games
are on. The flame will be lit on July 23rd 2021.” If any athletes do indeed make it to the starting line, that in
itself will be a feat worthy of a medal. ■
Dig deeper
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Don’t putsch me
Myanmar’s generals face growing protests against their coup

Many demonstrators fear a violent crackdown
Feb 10th 2021 | SINGAPORE
IT WAS DIFFICULT to hear the commander-in-chief over the din. Every night since the army toppled Myanmar’s
civilian government on February 1st, people all over the country have banged pots and pans at 8pm, turning a
traditional ritual to cast out evil spirits into a political protest. On February 8th, at 8pm, the head ghoul made his
first televised address since the coup. Those who were not drumming kitchenware or slapping the image of the
general on their TV screens with their slippers would have heard Min Aung Hlaing trying to reassure the public.
There would be no change in government policy, he said, and elections would be held in a year. His interim
government would be “different”, he pledged, from the oppressive junta that had preceded Myanmar’s ten-year
experiment with democracy.
His audience is not convinced. Just hours earlier the army’s Orwellian “True News Information Team” had
warned that action would be taken against “wrongdoers” who “disrupt the state’s stability”. But its pleas for
“discipline” are falling on deaf ears. Tens of thousands of Burmese have thronged the streets in cities big and
small, day after day, since February 6th, in the biggest protest movement in a generation. They are clamouring
for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the erstwhile
ruling party. To justify the coup, the army claimed, without evidence, that the election in November at which
the NLD won a second term by a landslide was marred by “terrible” fraud.
Many of the demonstrations have the air of a carnival. On February 10th young women paraded around central
Yangon wearing Disney princess outfits. Another group carried a coffin with a picture of the commander-in-
chief. Placards full of obscenities abounded. Shops have sold out of balloons in the NLD’s trademark red.
Yet a current of foreboding is charging the atmosphere. The previous junta crushed dissent ruthlessly. Htay
Win, who runs a tea shop in Yangon, took part in protests in 1988 and 2007. Both times the army shot into
crowds, killing hundreds. “I think 100% that the military is going to crack down on us very soon,” he says.
General Min Aung Hlaing’s assurances notwithstanding, agents from the feared intelligence service are
knocking on doors, prompting many activists and journalists to go into hiding. Some 200 people have been
arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a human-rights group. Ninety districts,
including all of Yangon, the largest city, and much of Naypyidaw, the capital, have imposed curfews and
restricted gatherings to no more than five people, in effect criminalising public assembly.
The authorities have also begun trying to disperse the protests. Police have fired tear gas, water cannon and
rubber bullets into crowds. Videos on social media showed police beating protesters with truncheons in
Mandalay, a big city. Three protesters are being treated for wounds from rubber bullets. Two people in
Naypyidaw were shot with what seems to have been live ammunition; one, Mya Thwe Thwe Khine, is on life
support.
So far, the protesters seem undeterred. Their numbers are swelling with people from all walks of life: teenagers,
labourers and professionals. Teachers, firefighters and health workers across the country are on strike. Civil
servants are reportedly resigning en masse, among them the entire staff of the Ministry of Welfare. On February
10th a handful of officers from the police force, which is under the command of the army, broke ranks and
joined the protesters. The next day, dozens of police officers from Kayah state declared their opposition to the
coup.
General Min Aung Hlaing may “hope the protests exhaust themselves” and that Burmese “settle for less than
what they’re demanding right now”, says Aaron Connelly of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a
think-tank in Singapore. But with the bureaucracy in turmoil and some foreign businesses leaving the country,
“it is very difficult to see how they get back to some kind of status quo”, says Kim Jolliffe, another analyst.
Young people, in particular, are more educated, organised and connected than the previous time protests
convulsed the country, in 2007. They are unlikely to back down meekly, Mr Jolliffe thinks. President Joe
Biden’s announcement on February 10th that America would impose sanctions on the coup leaders is another
blow to the generals.
The coup, naturally, has hardened misgivings about the prominent role the army already took in public life.
Esther Ze Naw, a 27-year-old activist, wants not only a return to civilian rule but also an overhaul of the
constitution, which the generals wrote to entrench their own power. “If we cannot abolish the military regime,”
she says, “then full democracy will not be created.” A prominent 22-year-old activist speaks of “revolution”. If
non-violent methods of protest fail, he says, he will take up weapons. “I think Min Aung Hlaing expected this
coup to be a fait accompli,” says Mr Connelly. “It’s not been that at all.” ■
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face-growing-protests-against-their-coup

Banyan
If America leaves Afghanistan there will be trouble

If it stays it may be double
Feb 13th 2021 |
WHEN HE CAME to office last month President Joe Biden inherited, in Afghanistan, America’s longest war. He
also inherited a deal that his predecessor struck a year ago with the Taliban, who have fought a bloody
insurgency ever since American-led forces ousted them from power in late 2001. Under the accord, Donald
Trump agreed to withdraw all American forces by May 1st 2021—so supposedly ending this “forever war”.
The Taliban leadership promised, in return, not to allow Afghanistan to be used as a base by terrorist groups
planning attacks against America, as it was by al-Qaeda. It also committed itself to talks with the debilitated,
American-backed government in Kabul, whose writ covers a diminishing portion of the country. As part of
those talks, it specifically promised to negotiate a “permanent and comprehensive ceasefire”.
The United States has kept its side of the bargain. In recent months Mr Trump cut the American presence,
which once numbered over 100,000 servicemen, to just 2,500 troops. That is a fraction of what American
generals consider a minimum, for both counter-terrorism efforts and for helping the despondent Afghan armed
forces prepare for life without American support. Yet apart from a (delayed) exchange of prisoners, very little
else has moved forward. The Taliban still appear close to al-Qaeda. Talks between the Taliban and the Afghan
government started six months late, in September, and have got nowhere. The gulf at times appears
unbridgeable, including whether Afghanistan should be a theocracy or a republic.
Worst of all, the violence—the Taliban’s biggest bargaining chip—continues. Scores are killed or injured each
week in gun and bomb attacks. Recent assassinations in Kabul and elsewhere, widely assumed to be the work of
the Taliban, have targeted not just police and soldiers but civil-society activists, journalists and, last month, two
female judges. On February 9th five government employees were killed in two separate attacks in the capital.
Laurel Miller, a former American official at the International Crisis Group, a think-tank, points out that neither
the Taliban nor the government believes they have exhausted their military options, so are half-hearted about
talking. As May approaches, Mr Biden faces a pressing decision. Should the United States, having expended
2,300 American lives and nearly $1trn, cut and run, leaving the country to its fate? Or should it declare the
peace deal dead and accept that the war, if not endless, is not over yet?
Mr Biden’s gut surely favours the first option. When vice-president to Barack Obama, he argued against
redoubled attempts at nation-building in Afghanistan. But his reappointment of Mr Trump’s special envoy to
Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated last year’s deal, suggests indecision. So does the
administration’s talk of a “review”.
With the clock running down, Ms Miller and others argue that Mr Biden should seek a six-month extension of
the deadline. The intention would be to keep the peace process alive, while buying the Biden administration
time to work out what it wants. A delay would reassure the Afghan government, which felt sidelined by the
Trump deal and dreads American abandonment. Officials in Kabul hope to be treated as American partners
again. Their message to the Biden administration, says a negotiator, Nader Nadery, is that a lasting peace deal
must not be rushed, especially when the Taliban are not keeping to their side of the bargain.
But America has few ways to force the Taliban to behave better. The insurgents’ leaders, former international
pariahs, may be reluctant to give up the boost in standing that the peace process has given them. And the
Taliban’s friends in the region, in places like Pakistan, might conceivably be persuaded to press the insurgents
to curb their attacks.
To some in both Afghanistan and America that seems like fantasy. They fear the Taliban will seize on any
American foot-dragging to abandon the peace process altogether. Even if the Taliban do acquiesce to a delay,
that may only be because they believe time works in their favour. Popular anger at the corruption and ineptitude
of the Afghan government is high. Taliban commanders, meanwhile, are buoyed by their creeping conquest of
the country. They talk not of power-sharing but of a coming takeover. Meanwhile, even if Mr Biden secures an
extension, the same dilemma is likely to loom for him six months later: should I stay or should I go?
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afghanistan-there-will-be-trouble

Wallets at the ready
Bangladesh’s government lavishes money on the army

But in buying soldiers’ loyalty, it has also put them at the heart of power
Feb 11th 2021 |
WHEN AL JAZEERA, a Qatari television network, accused Bangladesh’s army chief not only of helping to hide his
two fugitive brothers, who are on the run from a murder conviction, but also of steering military procurement
contracts their way, the Bangladeshi government did not investigate the allegations. It did not even bother to
rebut the claims in detail—including the assertion by one of the fugitives that Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the prime
minister, was aware of and happy with this arrangement. Instead, it simply dismissed the whole story as a
“smear campaign”.
Sheikh Hasina has a peculiar relationship with the armed forces. It was soldiers who got her into politics in the
first place, by murdering her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first president, as well as most of
her family, during a coup in 1975. Ever since, she has pursued the two somewhat contradictory ends of
avenging the killings and cultivating close ties with the army, lest she be toppled herself.
Sheikh Hasina’s party, the Awami League, used to be less popular among the armed forces than its main
opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which was founded by an army officer and war hero, Ziaur
Rahman, and is now led by his wife, Khaleda Zia.Yet since Sheikh Hasina began her second stint in power in
2009, she has gradually purged the armed forces of BNP supporters and promoted loyalists like Aziz Ahmed, the
current army chief and object of Al Jazeera’s accusations (pictured, on the left). At the same time, she has
showered the armed forces with perks. Close relatives of soldiers can receive health care in military hospitals,
which are considered the best in the country. In 2015 she doubled pay across the armed forces, as well as for the
civil service.
The government’s spending on defence rose by 123% between 2008 and 2017, according to a report by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a watchdog, despite the lack of any obvious military threats.
The army has bought Chinese fighter jets and tanks, and built several big new bases, such as one of 620 hectares
in the southern district of Patuakhali that the prime minister opened in 2018.
During Sheikh Hasina’s decade in power, the armed forces have also massively expanded their business
interests, in part through the Bangladesh Army Welfare Trust (AWT) and Sena Kalyan Sangstha (SKS). These two
foundations for the welfare of soldiers and veterans are technically independent of the army, but managed by
serving officers. According to its website, SKS alone has assets of over 60bn taka ($700m). Among the assets of
the AWT, meanwhile, are several luxury hotels and the firm that makes the voting machines used in national
elections. There was no tender for the contract; watchdog groups and opposition politicians complain the
machines’ design makes vote-rigging easy.
The armed forces also manage lots of infrastructure projects on the government’s behalf—an alarming prospect
given the practices Al Jazeera has alleged. The navy spent $300m developing a refugee camp on a remote
island, for instance. The air force is in charge of the expansion of the main airport in Dhaka, the capital. The
army handles highway construction.
Senior officers are also handed explicit opportunities for self-enrichment, in the form of land in Dhaka, a
cramped city of 18m. They all get plots on which they are entitled to build a seven-floor building, with up to
seven apartments. In theory, this is a form of housing allowance; in practice, officers sell at least some of the
flats at a huge profit. Many serving or retired officers are also given swanky government jobs: heading the
national port authority, for instance, or the agency that regulates tea farming. Even the lower ranks enjoy
lucrative perks: the government passes on the roughly $10,000 it receives from the UN for each Bangladeshi
soldier deployed on a peacekeeping mission.
This coddling has worked. Although the army has seized power three times and run the country for 15 of the 50
years since independence, it has let Sheikh Hasina be. But in buying its loyalty, she has put it at the heart of
government. Given her lack of a clear successor, its banishment from politics may last no longer than she does.
■
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government-lavishes-money-on-the-army

Hell is other people
South Koreans are being driven mad by noisy neighbours

And there is not much they can do about it
Feb 13th 2021 | SEOUL
THE LOUD music that his neighbours keep playing is fairly easy to deal with, says Yoo Seung-joo, a 21-year-old
who lives in a block of flats in Seoul. “I just call the security guard to tell them to keep it down and that usually
works.” But there is a more delicate problem. “At least once a week I’m woken up at 5am by loud sex noises.”
The recurring disruption to his sleep is extremely wearing, but he feels too embarrassed to raise it with the
security guards, let alone his parents, with whom he shares the flat.
Mr Yoo is not the only South Korean suffering from noisy neighbours. In a country where around two-thirds of
people live in sound-carrying high-rise apartment blocks, ”noise between floors” is such a well-established
problem that there is a national centre dedicated to dealing with it. The centre registers complaints and offers
mediation through a range of committees to prevent lawsuits and perhaps even patch up neighbourly relations.
The pandemic has given the noise mediators more work. Although South Korea never imposed a lockdown, the
government recommended early last year that people work from home whenever possible and avoid going out
to prevent the spread of covid-19. For those stuck in cramped flats at all hours, opportunities for being bothered
by loud neighbours have proliferated. The noise centre registered 60% more complaints in 2020 than in 2019.
Resolving them is not easy, not least because large numbers of people seem to be driven mad by the mere
existence of their neighbours. Nearly two-thirds of the complaints the centre received last year were related to
children running or adults simply walking in the flat upstairs. Total silence being an unreasonable expectation,
mediation often ends with people being told they have to put up with the noise, says a lawyer representing those
who wish to take their complaints to court. Even if they win, compensation is paltry.
The government, which last mandated thicker floors in new buildings in 2013, is considering requiring them to
be thicker still. But that will not help residents of older flats. With few options to settle matters, long-suffering
apartment-dwellers sometimes take them into their own hands. Many websites recommend effective ways to
take revenge on noisy neighbours, for instance by blasting bass-heavy music towards the ceiling or by banging
rubber mallets against the wall to create noises that can “shake the skull”.
Not everyone takes this advice quite as literally as the man sent to prison in September for assaulting his
neighbour with a rubber mallet after a noise dispute. But many resort to desperate measures. Kwon Seo-woon,
who suspects her upstairs neighbours practise basketball and golf in their apartment, says bashing the hoover
against the ceiling has worked on occasion. Lee Sun, who feels tormented by the noise of her neighbours’
children, says she is considering putting up a notice in the lift to shame them publicly. Mr Yoo says he has tried
playing Buddhist chants and the national anthem through the ceiling at full volume. Though effective at shutting
up the neighbours, the approach has its drawbacks: “It’s basically unbearable to listen to for any length of time.”
The number of noise complaints will probably fall along with the covid-19 caseload. But pandemic or not, it
seems certain that there will always be a healthy market in South Korea for thick carpets, fluffy slippers and
noise-cancelling headphones—if not rubber mallets. ■
Dig deeper
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being-driven-mad-by-noisy-neighbours

Palm-fringed fury
A Zoom call sets off a diplomatic dust-up in the Pacific

Micronesians complain that the Pacific Islands Forum treats them as second-class countries
Feb 13th 2021 | WELLINGTON
IT WAS YET another Zoom meeting gone horribly wrong. The annual shindig of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF),
the main regional organisation for the far-flung countries of the Pacific, could not take place in person this year,
owing to covid-19. Instead, its members chose a new secretary-general in a video conference. When a former
prime minister of the Cook Islands, Henry Puna, squeaked into the job by a single vote, five of the forum’s 18
members threatened to withdraw from the body in protest.
The five dissenters are the PIF’s Micronesian members: Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of
Micronesia (FSM), Palau and Nauru. They insist that a gentlemen’s agreement requires rotation of the top job
among the three main regions of the Pacific: Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia (see map). Since the
outgoing secretary-general was Melanesian, and her predecessor was from Polynesia, the Micronesian
candidate, Gerald Zackios, had widely been considered next in line. Yet on February 4th, with Australia’s
encouragement, the forum’s members disregarded the convention to award Mr Puna the job by nine votes to
eight.
The Micronesians are furious. Palau announced it was shutting its embassy in Fiji, where the PIF’s secretariat is.
Then on February 9th the five Micronesian countries declared that they would “initiate the process to formally
withdraw from the Forum”, although the final decision will be up to national governments.
Micronesians have long feared marginalisation in Pacific diplomacy. The PIF began life in 1971 as the South
Pacific Forum, an organisation of Pacific countries mostly south of the equator. At the time most of Micronesia,
to the north, was still, in effect, an American colony (technically, America administered the area on behalf of
the UN). All five Micronesian countries had joined the forum by 1995, but only in 1999 did it drop the word
“south” from its name.
Moreover, even by Pacific standards the countries of Micronesia are small. All five put together muster a
population of barely 300,000, not only vastly less than PIF’s giants, Australia (25m), Papua New Guinea (8.6m)
and New Zealand (4.9m), but also considerably less than Fiji (900,000) or the Solomon Islands (670,000).
The PIF has never been a closely integrated bloc. There is little trade or tourism among its members. Their most
important ties are to the various countries of the Pacific rim rather than to one another. Although Jules Dumont
d’Urville, a French explorer, divided the Pacific into three regions in the 1830s, contemporary economic
realities have in effect reduced it to two.
The northern Pacific relies chiefly on America as a source of aid and a place to migrate to, whereas the south
has closer ties to Australia and New Zealand. In the northern Pacific most flights go to Guam, an American
territory, or Hawaii, as well as to China, Japan and Taiwan in search of tourists. In the south they tend to
connect to Auckland, Brisbane or Sydney. Australia and New Zealand are the biggest contributors to the PIF’s
budget.
Micronesia straddles this divide: the two southernmost Micronesian countries, Kiribati and Nauru, have strong
ties to Australia. Nauru has earned most of its foreign exchange over the past decade by hosting a detention
centre for Australia’s unwanted asylum-seekers. Kiribati, a country of some 120,000 people spread across an
area of ocean bigger than India, uses the Australian dollar as its currency.
That may undermine the Micronesians’ united stance. So may geopolitics. Australia and America are both
anxious about China’s expanding influence in the Pacific. One of the ways they hope to curb it is by promoting
Pacific unity. Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa, America’s three remaining territories in the
Pacific (as opposed to Hawaii, a state), became associate members of the Forum in 2011. Already David Kabua,
president of the Marshall Islands, has said he would prefer to “review” membership rather than pull out of the
Forum. A few more Zoom calls may yet patch things up. ■
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a-diplomatic-dust-up-in-the-pacific

Asia Sections Middle East & Africa
China
Repression in Tibet: Accept these gifts, or else
.
Online debate: Suddenly, space for free-thinkers Chaguan: Working together, but in parallel
. .
Asia Sections Middle East & Africa
Accept these gifts, or else
As in Xinjiang, China is tightening its grip in Tibet

The Communist Party wants Tibetans to pay less attention to their Buddhist religion
Feb 13th 2021 |
THE COMMUNIST Party chief of Tibet, Wu Yingjie, replied in January to a letter from a yak-herder living on the
outskirts of the region’s capital, Lhasa. According to state media, the author, Sonam Tsering, had expressed
gratitude to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, for his “happy life”, and to the party for providing care “as warm as the
sun”. Mr Wu asked the farmer to spread this story to others in order to encourage them, too, to love Mr Xi
“from the bottom of their hearts”. He also made clear what was not responsible for Sonam Tsering’s happiness:
Tibetan Buddhism and its leader, the Dalai Lama. Mr Wu wrote that Tibetans must “reduce religious
consumption”, eliminate the Dalai Lama’s “negative influence” and “follow the party’s path”.
The party has long vilified the Dalai Lama, who escaped to India in 1959, as the treasonous overseer of an “evil
clique” that seeks to split Tibet from China. Since 2007 the government has even claimed sole legal authority
over his reincarnation (he is 85 and, says an aide, in “excellent health”). But in recent months officials have
intensified their efforts to eradicate the Dalai Lama from the religious lives of China’s 6.3m Tibetans, of whom
less than half live in Tibet itself, with most of the others in neighbouring areas of the Tibetan plateau. They have
also been trying to persuade Tibetans to pay less attention to their faith and show more enthusiasm for Mr Xi
and the party. It is the latest stage in a decades-long attempt to crush Tibetan identity.
The Tibetan religion is undergoing what the party calls “sinicisation”. Although different methods are involved,
the process echoes a campaign in neighbouring Xinjiang to do the same to Islam, the faith of most of that
region’s 12m ethnic Uyghurs. The purpose is to eliminate religious influences from outside China, especially
from the Dalai Lama (on the Tibetan plateau) and from radical Islamic groups (in Xinjiang). In both regions, the
party’s efforts amount to an assault not only on religion, but on cherished cultural traditions. Chen Quanguo, the
party boss in Xinjiang, was Mr Wu’s predecessor. While in Tibet Mr Chen tried out some of the heavy-handed
security tactics which later, in Xinjiang, he developed into a vast network of “re-education” camps for Uyghurs.
The party has taken its campaign to horrific extremes in Xinjiang because it fears that the region may turn into a
hotbed of terrorism (over the years, Uyghurs have staged several bloody attacks). In Tibet the party has big
worries about stability, too. An explosion of unrest across the plateau in 2008 prompted a security clampdown
there and tighter restrictions on travel to Tibet by foreigners (journalists are rarely admitted). After that, a series
of public self-immolations by desperate Tibetans kept the authorities on high alert.
But officials in Tibetan areas have not replicated the worst atrocities in Xinjiang, which America has
contentiously called “genocide”, though they do not involve killing (see article). In Xinjiang, more than 1m
Uyghurs have been sent to the new gulag, where they supposedly learn job skills. In Tibet, many farmers
(including Sonam Tsering, the herder near Lhasa) have been moved in the past decade to more modern housing
in or near towns and cities. Hundreds of thousands have been admitted to vocational training centres set up by
the government. But most observers believe this has been far more voluntary than in Xinjiang.
As in Xinjiang, however, sinicisation—though officially limited to religious affairs—involves a much broader

effort to make ethnic-minority residents feel they belong to China. In schools, “patriotic education” is
emphasised. Mandarin has replaced Tibetan in most classes. Surveillance has been stepped up. Networks of
informers relay information to the state; smartphones are tapped. Just as Uyghurs can no longer make
pilgrimages to Mecca, it has become almost impossible for Tibetans to travel to India to attend religious
teachings given by the Dalai Lama, as many did before Mr Xi took power in 2012.
Unlike Uyghurs, Tibetans can still keep in touch with friends and relatives outside China using WeChat, a
social-media app, without fear of arrest. But they are cautious. Posting images online of the Dalai Lama can be
an imprisonable offence. In December a 30-year-old herdsman, Lhundup Dorjee, was sentenced to a year in
prison for posting a lunar new-year greeting from the Dalai Lama on WeChat. The charge was “splitting the
nation”.
In December and January officials seized the mobile phones of dozens or hundreds of members of a WeChat
group of Tibetans in and from Xiahe, a monastery town in Gansu province which borders on Tibet, says a
member of the group who lives in exile. Participants had used the app to discuss sensitive topics, such as the life
of the Dalai Lama and America’s passage in December of a law calling for sanctions against Chinese officials if
they interfere in the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation. In the 2000s Tibetans still kept images of the Dalai Lama in
their homes. Now many display photographs of Mr Xi as well as of Mao Zedong and other former leaders of
China (see picture). These are handed out by officials along with gifts of rice, clothes or cash. Refusing the
presents, and the photos, may incur reprisals.
As in Xinjiang, the party is planning ahead. “It seems these policies are aimed at creating future Tibetans who
won’t know about the Dalai Lama as having any role in Tibetan Buddhism except as an enemy,” says Robbie
Barnett, a scholar of Tibetan culture. But there are still occasional signs of resistance among the young. In
January Tenzin Nyima, a 19-year-old monk, died from injuries apparently sustained while in custody in a
Tibetan area of Sichuan province. He had been detained in August for spreading news about his earlier arrest for
distributing leaflets and shouting slogans calling for Tibet’s independence.
Officials fear that when the Dalai Lama dies, distraught Tibetans may once again stage big protests. The party
would rather not be accused of crushing acts of mourning—better to deter people from displaying grief well
beforehand by incessant waving of an iron fist. At a convention in August of officials involved in Tibet-related
policy, Mr Xi called on schools to teach “patriotism” more thoroughly. The party, Mr Xi said, should “plant the
seeds of loving China in the depths of the hearts of every teenager”. It will be a long struggle. ■
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china-is-tightening-its-grip-in-tibet

Suddenly, space for free-thinkers
People from China flock to Clubhouse to enjoy calm, open debate

The Chinese government is trying to block access to the app
Feb 13th 2021 | HONG KONG
FOR MODERATE, open-minded critics of Communist Party rule in China, who also speak Mandarin, the past few
days have been heady ones. Across the global Chinese diaspora, word has spread rapidly that Clubhouse, an
audio social-networking app, is the place to be for unfettered, calm debate about contentious topics relating to
China. People have been pouring into its “rooms” to discuss everything from the gulag in Xinjiang to the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Some are residents of mainland China, despite a hasty attempt by censors
to block them.
Why the rush of enthusiasm? One reason is that Clubhouse, launched last April by an American firm, is not
subject to the word-sniffing controls that stifle free speech on social-media apps such as WeChat and Weibo. It
is also largely free of the nationalist rants and pro-party cheerleading that often crowd out liberal voices on such
Chinese-language platforms. Rooms are set up by users who then act as moderators with the power to kick out
the unruly and rein in the long-winded. Membership of Clubhouse is by invitation only: those admitted may
recruit others. This may put a brake on access by trolls.
For users in China, this has been a deep breath of fresh air. But there are probably few who have enjoyed it. The
Clubhouse app is available only on iPhones, and not to those with Apple IDs registered in China. Fang Kecheng
of the Chinese University of Hong Kong reckons no more than 50,000 Clubhouse members live on the
mainland. Since February 9th they have needed a VPN in order to leap over the “great firewall” and use the app.
Also since that day, Chinese mobile operators have blocked verification codes sent by text message. Such
measures may be turning some mainlanders away. But there is clearly pent-up demand. Before the great firewall
began blocking Clubhouse, people in China were paying up to 500 yuan ($78) to buy an invitation code through
Taobao, a retail platform.
Clubhouse has been a boon for people belonging to China’s ethnic minorities, and for residents of Hong Kong
and Taiwan, whose views are rarely heard on the mainland. Rayhan Asat, an ethnic Uyghur who was born in
Xinjiang and now lives in America, has spent hours on Clubhouse in rooms with up to 5,000 participants, most
of them non-Uyghur Chinese, sharing her brother’s story. He is almost five years into a 15-year sentence in
China on what she says is a trumped-up charge of inciting ethnic hatred.
On Twitter Ms Asat is often bombarded by hate messages from members of China’s ethnic-Han majority. But
on Clubhouse she has received many supportive ones. She thinks the use of audio encourages more intimate
discussion than exchanges by text on other social-media platforms. “People heard my voice, they heard my
pain,” she says. “They messaged me privately afterwards saying they believed me, they silently supported me. I
understand they can’t speak publicly because they fear the Chinese government will retaliate against their
family still in China.”
Even before the great firewall was reinforced, some members suggested self-censoring in order to deter a
government clampdown on the app. But one young user from the mainland pushed back. “We should take
advantage of this brief opportunity to be human, to be normal for once, to talk about our feelings, to talk about
what’s going on and whatever else we haven’t been allowed to say,” he said. Outside China, Mandarin speakers
are still flocking to Clubhouse. But free speech in China appears as far away as ever. ■
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flock-to-clubhouse-to-enjoy-calm-open-debate

Chaguan
China and America talk of co-operating on climate. It will be hard

Asking China to show leadership cuts two ways
Feb 13th 2021 |
FOR THE first decades of global wrangling about climate change, China’s foot-dragging caused alarm. Its self-
interested approach to climate action—once summarised by a Beijing-based diplomat as seeking “maximum
credit for the minimum effort”—frustrated governments that were ready to enact costly measures. Worse,
China’s blame-shifting ways gave cover to politicians clinging to climate denial and inaction in America and
elsewhere.
Soon, the most disruptive force in global climate politics may be China’s ambition. Its economy is being readied
for a low-carbon world sooner than many expected. Its companies are under orders to develop world-beating
clean-energy technologies, including by aggressively pushing foreign firms to share them. China says it wants
to re-engage with America on climate matters.
Optimists see signs in China of high-level pragmatism in the return from semi-retirement of Xie Zhenhua. He is
a well-connected climate negotiator who brokered the burden-sharing agreements between China and the
Obama administration that made possible the Paris climate accords in 2015. Mr Xie, China’s new climate
envoy, has known his American counterpart, John Kerry, for years. Gloomier sorts worry about the distrust and
disdain shown by other Chinese officials and scholars who call America a jealous, declining power, bent on
containing a rising China. Talks on such subjects as climate cannot prosper when bilateral relations are bad, said
a foreign-ministry spokesman, after Mr Kerry promised that he would not trade away American criticisms of
Chinese trade or human-rights abuses for climate-related concessions. Chinese co-operation is not like “flowers
that can bloom in a greenhouse despite winter chill”, the spokesman sniffed.
China’s ambitions are disruptive because they are newly credible. They are credible, not because it has been
converted to selfless acts of sacrifice, but precisely the opposite. To Communist Party leaders, greenery
increasingly aligns with their economic and political interests. China, a populous country that is cruelly lacking
in clean water and arable farmland, and which hates having to rely so heavily on imported energy, has a selfish
interest in embracing what President Xi Jinping calls “ecological civilisation”. Though the Chinese public is not
very focused on climate change, citizens care deeply about clean air and water. They stage frequent
demonstrations against pollution. In the words of a European diplomat, Mr Xi is convinced that “ecology is key
to China’s renaissance and is part of the social contract between the Communist Party and the people.” China
also wants to enhance its global reputation, the diplomat adds: “China cannot be Number One, which is of
course its aspiration, without being a climate leader.”
Last September, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, Mr Xi unexpectedly committed his country to carbon
neutrality by 2060. That pledge to offset or capture all carbon dioxide emitted in China would require most
fossil fuels to vanish from an economy that currently consumes more than half the coal burned worldwide. In
December Mr Xi tweaked existing targets for the year 2030 to make them a bit more ambitious and cover such
areas as fossil-fuel use, forest cover, and wind and solar installations. In a rare public humiliation,
environmental inspectors reporting to China’s leaders recently accused officials at the National Energy
Administration of a “deviation in ideological understanding” for allowing too much dirty coal to be burned.
The climate battle is not over. Fossil fuels still have powerful defenders in China. Some provinces approved
fleets of new coal-fired power plants in 2020 while they still could. Chinese banks and businesses still invest in
coal-powered plants overseas, from Pakistan to Africa. Still, signs may be glimpsed that China is planning for a
different future. Research institutes close to Mr Xi’s inner circle, notably at Tsinghua University in Beijing,
have laid out paths for the electricity sector to achieve net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050.
Indications of seriousness could appear in the next five-year plan, to be unveiled in March. They could include
an absolute cap on emissions, a step that China has so far refused, or a promise to advance to 2025 the date
when emissions will peak. The current target for this will hardly be a stretch.
Previous high-level co-operation between China and America or the European Union, as in Paris in 2015,
involved joint announcements of sweeping goals and targets, intended to prod other countries into action. In
these low-trust times, such moments may prove hard to replicate. Instead, there is much talk in Beijing of
confidence-building exchanges between experts. Wang Xin, who heads the research bureau of China’s central
bank, cites promising areas for co-operation with America and other countries. These include joint work on
important technologies such as carbon capture and storage, clean coal and hydrogen power, and on developing
green financial instruments to fund such efforts. Climate co-operation is needed to tackle a threat to humanity,
Mr Wang says. “In the process, it is only natural to strengthen mutual trust and improve relations.”
Asking China to show leadership cuts both ways
Obstacles loom. Other countries are wary of helping to strengthen China’s industrial policies. In order to sell
climate-related measures to voters, Mr Biden talks of creating millions of well-paid jobs by making America an
export champion in clean technologies. Li Shuo of Greenpeace, an environmental group, worries about calls to
action that are framed as a competition to beat China in sectors like solar or wind power, where China “is so far
ahead”. Mr Li thinks that China and America may have to settle for “climate engagement” as they pursue
common goals in parallel.
China is a latecomer to climate seriousness. Western powers, especially in Europe, have long pushed it to do
more. Now, at least when it comes to clean technologies, China’s price for saving the world may be asking to
lead the world. ■
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talk-of-co-operating-on-climate-it-will-be-hard

China Sections Europe
Middle East & Africa

America and the Middle East: New sheriff in town Libya: Fourth time lucky
. .
The Horn of Africa: Adding to the chaos Congolese politics: The president pounces
. .
Kenya’s rose-tinted spectacle: Flower power
.
China Sections Europe
New sheriff in town
Joe Biden looks to end the war in Yemen

His decision may say more about America’s troubled relationship with Saudi Arabia
Feb 13th 2021 | DUBAI
FOR THE previous two American presidents, the war in Yemen seemed like an afterthought. Barack Obama
backed the Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of Yemen’s government against the Houthi rebels. But it was a
cynical decision meant to blunt Saudi anger over the nuclear deal he reached with Iran in 2015. Then came
Donald Trump, who resisted calls to curtail American support for the war. Instead he signed huge arms deals
with Saudi Arabia.
Joe Biden has promised a different approach. In a wide-ranging speech at the State Department on February 4th,
Mr Biden excoriated the “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe” of the war in Yemen, now in its seventh year.
There was no hyperbole in his diagnosis. More than 112,000 people have been killed in the fighting. With the
economy devastated, four out of five Yemenis rely on aid to survive. Collapsing health and sanitation systems
caused a years-long cholera outbreak; the United Nations warns of incipient famine.
To take Mr Biden at his word, America will no longer be complicit in this. It will continue to sell defensive
arms to Saudi Arabia, which the Houthis have targeted scores of times with drones and missiles, including an
attack on February 10th that targeted the airport in Abha. But Mr Biden pledged to end “all American support
for offensive operations”, including arms sales. He also reversed the Trump administration’s eleventh-hour
decision to label the Houthis a terrorist group and tapped a respected diplomat, Timothy Lenderking, to serve as
his special envoy for Yemen.
Much will depend on the details of his policy. If America merely cuts off the flow of “smart” bombs, the Saudis
can continue dropping dumber ones. If it goes further, though, it could hobble the Saudi war machine. Between
2015 and 2019 the kingdom was the world’s largest arms importer, according to figures collected by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think-tank. Around three-quarters of that came from
America, with another 13% from Britain (see chart).
Years of lavish spending mean the kingdom has all the tanks and warplanes it needs. But it still needs other
things from America, such as munitions and spare parts. Mr Biden has already paused a $478m deal for 7,500
guided missiles announced in the waning days of the Trump administration. And the Saudis still rely on
American help for everything from identifying targets on the battlefield to keeping their kit in shape. If America
stops maintaining Saudi jets, half of the kingdom’s air force could be affected, estimates Tom Beckett of the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London.
At best, though, this would ease a conflict that had reached an impasse anyway. The United Arab Emirates
(UAE) had been the most effective partner in the coalition. But it largely withdrew from the war in 2019, leaving
the Saudis to muddle along against an intransigent foe. The Houthis have been fighting the Yemeni state for
decades and have shown little appetite for compromise. Other Yemeni groups are also vying for power. Months
of UN-backed peace talks have not produced a deal.
America’s about-face on Yemen may matter more for the future of its partnership with Saudi Arabia. Forged in
1945, when Franklin Roosevelt met King Abdulaziz aboard an American cruiser in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, it
has grown dysfunctional since the turn of the century. The attacks of September 11th 2001—overseen by the
Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and carried out by mostly Saudi hijackers—led many Americans to associate the
kingdom with terrorism. Eighteen months later George W. Bush invaded Iraq, over the objections of some
Saudi officials, who feared (correctly) that it would destabilise the region.
Still, the Saudis remained friendly with Mr Bush. Not so with his successor. They were furious in 2011 when, as
revolution brewed in Egypt, Mr Obama called on Hosni Mubarak, its longtime dictator, to step down. It seemed
to them a hasty betrayal of an American partner—one that left them worried about their own status. A far bigger
rupture came in 2015, when Mr Obama signed the deal under which Iran curbed its nuclear programme in
exchange for sanctions relief. For Mr Obama it was a legacy-defining achievement. For the Saudis it was a
reckless boost to their arch-nemesis, one that offered Iran the prospect of legitimacy and economic growth.
No surprise, then, that the Saudis were happy to see Mr Obama go. They spared no effort to charm Mr Trump.
Unusually for an American president, he made his first foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, where his hosts feted him
with a traditional sword dance and a bizarre glowing orb. The president’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear
deal was well received in the kingdom. After the murder in 2018 of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist
dismembered by Saudi agents inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, Mr Trump helped shield the
government from consequences.
Yet Mr Trump was hardly a reliable partner either. The Saudis (and other Gulf states) were shaken in 2019
when he did not retaliate for an Iranian attack on their oil facilities. And his embrace turned Saudi Arabia into a
partisan issue in Washington. Many Democrats, and some Republicans, want to see the kingdom punished for
the carnage in Yemen and Mr Khashoggi’s murder. Mr Biden himself said in a presidential debate that he would
treat it like a “pariah”.
That is unlikely. Americans may be exasperated with Saudi Arabia, but it remains a big oil producer and a
useful intelligence partner. Mr Biden cannot simply cut ties. Nor, however, can he avoid confrontation. He plans
to re-enter the nuclear deal with Iran. And he will probably keep up his criticism of the kingdom’s human-rights
record, as it seems to have produced a result: the release on February 10th of Loujain al-Hathloul, a women’s
rights activist. Mr Biden’s challenge will be to find a path that neither indulges the kingdom’s worst impulses
nor reinforces its worst fears. ■
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africa/2021/02/13/joe-biden-looks-to-end-the-war-in-yemen

Fourth time lucky
Can a new administration reunite war-torn Libya?

Warlords and foreign powers will try to scuttle the UN’s fourth attempt to establish a government
Feb 13th 2021 |
THE DRIVE from Benghazi to Tripoli, Libya’s capital, should take ten hours. But the coastal road connecting the
two cities has been impassable for most of the past decade because of an on-and-off civil war. Since Libyans
toppled Muammar Qaddafi, their old dictator, in 2011, various groups have fought for control of the country—
and for parts of the road. Today, near the road’s mid-point outside Sirte, militias, boulders and landmines block
the way.
Opening that road is one of many tasks facing the new Libyan administration unveiled in Geneva on February
5th. Holding presidential and parliamentary elections in December is its primary job. The body, led by a three-
person presidential council and a prime minister, was chosen by 74 Libyans in a forum representing the
country’s regions at talks sponsored by the United Nations. It was the UN’s fourth attempt to establish a unified
government in Libya since the revolution. But the new administration faces some old problems.
The biggest of these is meddling by foreign powers. Turkey and Qatar back the Government of National Accord
(GNA) and its allied militias, which control the west (see map). The GNA was the UN’s third attempt at a unified
government. But it has been challenged by the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Khalifa Haftar, a
renegade general who dominates the east. He is backed by Egypt, France, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.
Even so, the general’s siege of Tripoli was broken last year by forces loyal to the GNA, which then pushed the
LNA back to Sirte.
Some of these foreign powers probably do not want the new administration to succeed. But there has been cause
for hope in the past six months. A ceasefire negotiated by the UN in October has largely held and prisoners have
been exchanged. In September General Haftar lifted a blockade on oil exports, the country’s main source of
income. A separate government in the east, allied to the general, agreed with the GNA on a single exchange rate
for the Libyan dinar and the resumption of flights between east and west. Countries are reopening their
embassies in Tripoli.
When the UN created the GNA in 2015, it met behind closed doors and imposed Fayez al-Serraj, a largely
unknown politician, as prime minister. It was more inclusive and transparent when setting up the new
administration. The proceedings of the 74-member forum were broadcast live on the UN’s website, as were
interviews with candidates for the presidential council and prime minister, who ran on four-person lists (and
who agreed not to stand for office in December). “When we began the process in November, the delegates were
cursing each other,” says a UN official. “By February they stayed up after midnight laughing and chatting
together.”
The delegates took observers by surprise, rejecting a list of powerful politicians from east and west in favour of
people who had never held high office. The presidential council will be led by Muhammad al-Menfi, a former
diplomat. The new prime minister is one of the country’s richest men, Abdul Hamid Dabaiba. During the
Qaddafi era he ran the state-owned Libyan Investment and Development Company, responsible for some of the
country’s biggest public-works projects. His brother-in-law, Ali Dabaiba, has been investigated for allegedly
embezzling millions of dollars from public funds, perhaps with the help of his family. Ali sat on the forum and
is accused of trying to buy votes for Abdul Hamid. He denies all of these claims.
Critics of the Dabaiba family believe it will use its influence to hog contracts and increase its wealth. “He’ll try
to get as much as he can,” says a UN official, referring to Abdul Hamid. Others, though, liken him to Rafiq al-
Hariri, the businessman who led and rebuilt Lebanon after its long civil war—and who also was dogged by
corruption allegations.
General Haftar and militia leaders in the west encouraged their representatives on the forum to choose the
winning list because they reckoned it would make for a weak administration. It will certainly struggle to
persuade the warlords to give up their arms. It may also have trouble winning over Libyans in the east, many of
whom distrust the new prime minister because he comes from the western city of Misrata. Abdullah al-Thani,
head of the eastern government, says he is waiting for instructions from the old parliament, which sits in the
eastern city of Tobruk.
The foreign powers pay lip-service to the political process, but they ignored the UN’s deadline of January 23rd
to withdraw. Turkey wants to maintain influence in Libya. In 2019 it signed a deal with the GNA that supposedly
gives Turkey the right to drill for oil and gas in waters off Greek islands. It views Mr Dabaiba, who has business
interests in Turkey, as an ally.
Russia, meanwhile, wants to preserve its access to air bases and ports facing NATO’s underbelly. It dispatched
more mercenaries to Libya shortly after the new government was voted in. And it continues to help General
Haftar dig his “Maginot line”, a fortified trench running from Sirte into the desert. That will not make the new
government’s job any easier. ■

africa/2021/02/13/can-a-new-administration-reunite-war-torn-libya

Adding to the chaos
Gulf rivalries are spilling into Africa’s Horn

Foreign meddling is unsettling an already fragile region
Feb 13th 2021 |
THE NARROW waters separating the Arabian peninsula from the Horn of Africa have never served as much of a
moat. Goods and people routinely cross. Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in particular, are increasingly
active in the Horn. Tensions between them rose after the UAE established diplomatic ties with Israel last year, a
move that Iran furiously condemned. A string of recent arrests shows how the rivalry between the two is adding
volatility to an already unstable region.
In recent weeks Ethiopia arrested 15 people for allegedly plotting to attack the UAE’s embassies in Ethiopia and
Sudan. The authorities said that those arrested were working for a “foreign terrorist group”, but did not say
which. Around the same time Sweden said it was holding two men, a Swede and an Eritrean, on suspicion of
planning a terrorist offence in an unnamed foreign country. Western intelligence sources say the arrests were
linked and Iran was behind the planned attacks.
That would be nothing new for Iran. It has a history of plotting attacks in Africa, often unsuccessfully. Western
spies believe it may be looking for soft targets so that it can retaliate against its rivals, namely America, Israel
and the Gulf states.
Iran is destabilising the Horn in other ways, too. Since 2013 UN experts have voiced concerns to the Security
Council about a flow of weapons from Yemen and Iran into Somalia. In recent years as many as four shipments
every month have been arriving. Western and local forces have intercepted several boats heading for Somalia
and Yemen, loaded with weapons made in Iran or North Korea. Some of these arms may go to al-Shabab, a
Somali jihadist group. Others may be destined for Houthi rebels in Yemen. Last June, for instance, Saudi Arabia
seized a dhow carrying anti-tank missiles and thousands of assault rifles made in Iran on their way to Yemen via
smuggling networks in Somalia.
In January al-Shabab released a video commemorating its attack last year on an American air base in Manda
Bay on Kenya’s coast. Its fighters can be seen carrying Iranian-made rocket launchers. But they are also
carrying rifles stolen from the Somali army—originally supplied by the UAE.
From 2014 to 2018 the UAE trained part of Somalia’s army. But the countries fell out after Somalia resisted
Emirati pressure to cut ties with Qatar following a dispute between the Gulf states. Somalia, for its part, was
angry with the UAE for making deals with Somaliland, a breakaway region.
Nowadays the UAE is more active in Eritrea and perhaps Ethiopia. It has provided weapons to Eritrea’s army in
defiance of a UN arms embargo. And it has used an air and naval base in the port city of Assab to launch air
strikes in Yemen. That base, claim Ethiopian rebels, has also been used to launch drone attacks against them.
Eritrea is fighting alongside Ethiopia’s government against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the
ousted rulers of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
Iran and the UAE are not the only Middle Eastern powers operating in the Horn. Israeli journalists have long
reported the existence of secret Israeli intelligence facilities in Eritrea, which occupies a strategic position,
overlooking the Bab al-Mandab strait at the mouth of the Red Sea.
Is any of this good for the Horn? Somalia’s fragile attempts at state-building were set back earlier this month,
when presidential elections were indefinitely delayed. Ethiopia, meanwhile, is at risk of splintering into warring
ethnic groups. The region needs outsiders to douse these flames. Instead, many are fanning them. ■

africa/2021/02/13/gulf-rivalries-are-spilling-into-africas-horn

The big men still eat
Congo’s president cuts free of his would-be puppetmaster

Two years after a rigged election, Félix Tshisekedi is asserting himself
Feb 9th 2021 | KINSHASA
IN THE LAWLESS eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, nomads and sedentary folk often clash.
Cattle-rearing groups rub up against crop-growers over access to land. In the absence of a strong state, disputes
can quickly turn violent. By contrast another type of nomadism obsesses the population in Gombe, the wealthy
core of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa: that of elected officials.
Few politicians are loyal to ideas or people. Instead they head for the best grazing. “The Congolese politician is
the most unstable human ever to exist,” says Félix Momat Kitenge, until recently a government minister. “He
will change with the breeze.” Others call it, in French, transhumance politique (political nomadism).
On January 27th several hundred members of Congo’s parliament put on their metaphorical walking boots and
took a hike. They left the majority political grouping, the Front Commun pour le Congo (FCC), which is
affiliated with Joseph Kabila, Congo’s president until 2019. Most joined two of the largest opposition parties in
supporting a new majority called the “Sacred Union” set up by Félix Tshisekedi, who has been president for the
past two years. The prime minister, Sylvestre Ilunga Ilukamba, an ally of Mr Kabila’s, resigned. So did his
ministers, including Mr Momat. A new government will now be appointed that will be closer to Mr Tshisekedi.
Mr Tshisekedi’s ascent to the presidency, in rigged elections at the end of 2018, was unexpected. For much of
his adult life he had lived in Belgium. He was given a place on the ballot largely because of the reputation of his
late father, Étienne, a firebrand opposition leader who died in 2017. Electoral tallies compiled by the Catholic
church suggested that Mr Tshisekedi came second, with under 20% of the vote, well behind Martin Fayulu, a
charismatic anti-corruption campaigner. Yet Mr Tshisekedi, to the astonishment of many Congolese, was
declared the winner, seemingly as part of a last-minute deal with the former president. The quid pro quo,
allegedly, was that Mr Kabila kept control of much of the state.
Yet power has steadily flowed to Mr Tshisekedi as he has appointed allies to key posts. He appears to have
routed Mr Kabila more quickly and comprehensively than almost anyone predicted. “We thought it would be
closer to 50/50,” says Manya Riche, a Congolese political analyst. “This totally surpassed that.”
Exactly how Mr Tshisekedi achieved this is unclear. Supporters of Mr Kabila (or at least those who did not
swap sides) mutter that bribery must have been involved. There are whispers that some MPs took payouts of
$7,000-15,000 to join the new coalition. One leading MP who changed sides admits that although “money
circulated”, people were offered much more to stay. Other MPs may simply have been unnerved enough to
change their allegiance by Mr Tshisekedi’s threat to call new elections. He has also targeted allies of Mr Kabila
with an anti-corruption drive. Faced with the chance of lucrative positions under Mr Tshisekedi on the one
hand, and prosecution on the other, many opted to migrate to the president’s greener pastures.
Mr Tshisekedi made big promises on coming to office, including providing free primary schooling, building
infrastructure and reforming the electoral system. Almost none of that has happened. Most Congolese remain
extremely poor. In a park near the parliament, a group of men playing backgammon with bottle tops say that
jobs remain scarce. “The poor in Congo still suffer, while the rich continue to eat,” complains Eric Kayado, a
petrol vendor. (“Eat”, in Congo, implies “embezzle”.)
Mr Tshisekedi has long argued that Mr Kabila’s control of parliament was a problem. “The system of Mr Kabila
was to block [progress],” says Jacquemain Shabani, an official in Mr Tshisekedi’s party, the UDPS. Outside the
party’s offices, a crowd of his supporters argue that their president has “chased away” Mr Kabila and will now
bring them the changes they hope for. “Now he can work for the people,” says Darcin Mukendi.
Yet a new majority may not make reform easier. The new government will not necessarily be stable, notes Ms
Riche. The president’s new allies will be competing for ministerial positions. Not every aisle-crosser will stay
loyal. The economy remains weak and, for the moment, Mr Kabila retains his grip on a large part of it.
Some fear that Mr Tshisekedi may end up emulating Mr Kabila, whose final years in office were characterised
by grotesque corruption and the suppression of dissent. On coming to office Mr Tshisekedi released political
prisoners and promised freedom of the press. Now he appears to be backtracking. On January 28th Human
Rights Watch, a watchdog, accused Mr Tshisekedi’s government of having arbitrarily detained and prosecuted
journalists and activists. It is too early to conclude that the new boss is the same as the old boss. But ordinary
Congolese have cause to worry. ■

africa/2021/02/09/congos-president-cuts-free-of-his-would-be-puppetmaster

Roses rise again
Kenya’s floral exports are blooming once more

Covid-19 wilted them; lockdown love has revived them
Feb 13th 2021 | TIMAU
IVAN FREEMAN runs a 20-hectare rose farm at the foot of Mount Kenya right by the equator, where the soil is
fertile and the sun shines all the year round. His business, Uhuru Flowers, exports to some 49 countries,
including China, Nigeria and parts of eastern Europe. Some of his buds reach the shop window within four days
of being cut.
That finely tuned business came to a halt when the pandemic struck. Celebrations were cancelled, florists shut
and aeroplanes were grounded. Uhuru halved workers’ hours and destroyed 1.2m unsold stems, about a month’s
harvest. Supply chains have slowly been rebuilt since then, and the 350 staff are back full-time. Now Mr
Freeman, like many farmers, is speeding up production, hoping to recoup last year’s losses with sales on
February 14th. “Valentine’s Day for most farms is a huge deal,” he says. “Everyone is feeling positive and
ready to take advantage of it.”
After the initial disruption, countries have reopened their borders. Florists have gone online and Kenya’s flower
industry has come up roses. The sector employed more people last month than before covid-19 began to spread,
according to a survey of producers in the Rift Valley by Kenya’s central bank. Production and exports are at
90% and 95% of their levels in February last year, respectively.
Farmers say demand has recovered surprisingly well. The global economy may have wilted and consumers may
be penny-pinching, says Anna Barker at the Fairtrade Foundation, but “a bunch of flowers on the table does
wonders when you’re in lockdown.”
That is good news for Kenya’s economy. The flower industry usually contributes around 1% of GDP and is a
source of foreign exchange. It employs more than 500,000 people, including 100,000 directly in farms. Debate
about flower farms once focused on poor conditions for workers, who are on their feet all day and exposed to all
sorts of chemicals. The focus now is on keeping these workers, including lots of unskilled women, in jobs.
A big problem that hasn’t gone away is transport. Fewer passenger flights than usual ply the crucial route from
Africa into Europe. And freight capacity has fallen as planes have been redirected to moving medical equipment
around. Richard Fox at Flamingo Horticulture, a big flower producer with farms in Timau, reckons the cost of
air freight has jumped from $1.90 to almost $3 per kilo in the past year.
Such disruption has hurt the smaller farms a lot more. Flamingo, which processes a mammoth 780m stems
every year, has a long-term agreement with a logistics provider. Its supply chain has barely been disrupted. But
smaller farms are busy negotiating with freighters. Competition for slots on planes is particularly fierce ahead of
the peak season, which begins with Valentine’s Day and extends to Mother’s Day weeks later. “The big guys
always win,” sighs Mr Freeman.

africa/2021/02/13/kenyas-floral-exports-are-blooming-once-more

Middle East & Africa Sections Britain
Europe
Education and covid-19: A tale of two colleges France: The president’s dilemma
. .
Turkey: Lesbian, gay, bi and terrorist? Pets and covid-19: Canine crushes
. .
Italian politics: No time for foot-Draghing Charlemagne: They told you so
. .
Middle East & Africa Sections Britain
A tale of two colleges
Covid-19 school closures are widening Europe’s class divisions

And it will only get worse
Feb 13th 2021 | AMSTERDAM
NO ONE IS ever truly ready for lockdown. But when the Netherlands closed its schools in December, the Herman
Wesselink College, a high school in a well-off suburb of Amsterdam, was readier than most. About half its
students have parents who completed higher education. Nearly all have their own bedroom to study in. The
school has given its pupils laptops for years, and during the first lockdown last spring switched smoothly to
remote learning. The director says students have not fallen behind a whit in terms of content, though their study
skills have languished.
The Mundus College, a trade school in a poorer Amsterdam neighbourhood, has had it rougher. About a third of
its students are new immigrants or refugees. Vocational education is hard to do remotely. Classes have stayed
open at half-size under an exception for vulnerable students, but it is impossible to follow social-distancing
rules for subjects like nursing, says Diana Brummelhuis, the director: “You can’t teach someone to handle a
wheelchair by lecturing.” She estimates that her pupils are lagging at least a quarter behind their normal pace.
Such contrasts are playing out all over Europe. On a continent famous for its welfare systems, school closures
threaten to widen divisions of education, ethnicity and class. Compared with the rest of the world, Europe has
not done badly during the pandemic. Most of its schools reopened in the autumn, while in South America and
South Asia they largely stayed shut. But covid-19’s second wave has forced many European schools to close
again.
This hurts all pupils, but it hits the poor and vulnerable ones harder. France’s education ministry says that last
spring’s lockdown increased the gap in exam scores between normal schools and ones in hard-up areas by
several points. In Germany, that first lockdown cut studying time from 7.4 hours per day to 3.6. An analysis of
last year’s national exam results in the Netherlands came up with the depressing finding that during the spring
lockdown the average pupil had learned nothing at all. Those whose parents were poorly educated did even
worse: they emerged from their first two months of schooling by internet knowing less than when they started.
France has been the most determined of any European country not to let schools close, arguing that the risks to
educational attainment and social cohesion are greater than those to public health. Last spring President
Emmanuel Macron overrode advice from epidemiologists and ordered schools reopened. They have stayed that
way, though since November most high schools have worked in shifts. Germany closed its schools from
December 16th until at least February 15th. Its state governments would like to start reopening them, but
Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to wait until covid-19 caseloads fall by half from current levels. Northern
Europe has roughly followed the German pattern (apart from contrarian Sweden, which closed only briefly in
January).
In southern Europe closures have been less widespread. Spanish schools have stayed open since the autumn,
though most high schools use some distance-learning. Some 35,000-40,000 new teachers and assistants have
been hired to reduce class sizes. In Italy primary schooling has not been interrupted. High schools, shut in
November, have reopened for most classes. Both countries have struggled with remote classrooms, thanks to
dodgy internet connections and a lack of computers among poorer pupils.
Similar tech problems plague the continent’s poorer east. Nevertheless, the closures there have been stricter. In
Poland schools have been shut since late October; schools for those aged up to eight reopened on January 18th.
A survey of Polish teachers last summer found that most knew of pupils who had not turned up since instruction
went online. Romania’s schools were shut almost continuously from March until they reopened on February
8th, yet more than a quarter of the country’s children are not equipped for online education, according to Save
the Children, a charity. By January the government had distributed around 250,000 tablets, but said 287,000
more students still needed one.
Many experts worry about the emotional and developmental damage of lockdowns. But the data are ambiguous.
A survey of Dutch social workers last year found that emotional neglect of the children they were responsible
for was much more common than in the same period in 2017. But even though some children report less
affection from their families, others say they are getting more, including a rise in hugs. Others worry about
working parents forced to stay at home to care for children. About 150,000 Polish women have dropped out of
the labour force since last March, says Piotr Lewandowski, an economist.
One issue has been what to do about Europe’s all-important national examinations. Germany is pressing ahead
with the Abitur to ensure that this year’s graduates get equal respect. Dutch high schools have stayed open for
students in their final year before the eindexamen. In France, the dreaded four-hour baccalauréat exams have
been cancelled, apart from bits the country considers essential: French literature, the final oral exam and, of
course, the written exam in philosophy.
At least the gravity of the threat to education has sunk in. Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands reopened their
primary schools on February 8th; Romania reopened primary and most high schools as well. The question is
what governments will do if infection rates rise in the spring: close schools again, or find other painful measures
(such as curfews or bans on house visits) to compensate for keeping children in class. ■
Dig deeper
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closures-are-widening-europes-class-divisions

The president’s dilemma
France’s Emmanuel Macron must decide how to fight next year’s

election
The pandemic favours the politics of caution over risk
Feb 9th 2021 | PARIS
IN FEBRUARY 2016, just 14 months before the most recent French presidential election, not a single opinion poll
of potential candidates bothered to test the name Emmanuel Macron. Weak party allegiances, anti-establishment
distrust, a bold campaign—and a generous dose of luck—carried the electoral novice from nowhere to the
presidency in record time. As France now turns its mind to the presidential contest in 2022, all polls and
predictions therefore deserve caution. Yet the contours of the next campaign are beginning to emerge, and they
present a peculiar challenge to Mr Macron as he thinks ahead to his re-election bid.
Two new polls suggest that 2022 will bring a repeat of the run-off between the centrist Mr Macron and the
nationalist Marine Le Pen. But each also points to a far tighter race than in 2017, when Mr Macron beat Ms Le
Pen squarely by 66% to 34%. One poll reduces the sitting president’s margin to 12 points. The other gives him
an even narrower victory of 52% to 48%. The French, prone to malaise even in good times, give little credit to
their president and are feeling anxious: about a possible third lockdown, the spread of le variant anglais, the
reliability (and now the availability) of vaccines, the well-being of the young, and the livelihoods of all those
furloughed chefs and waiters who sustain the French art de vivre.
Apprehension, as well as disease control, has bred a politics of reassurance and caution. Whereas once Mr
Macron stood in an army tent and declared war on the virus, covid-19’s long effect on politics has been to
emphasise protection. He promised to do “whatever it costs” to save jobs and lives. His government maintains a
generous furlough system for millions of employees, as well as loans and grants to keep businesses afloat. It is
shielding its supermarkets from foreign predators, has raised health workers’ salaries and has all but shelved its
controversial pension reform. A nightly national curfew has been in place since mid-December. Even France’s
glacial vaccine roll-out is justified as a measure to build trust in a vaccine-sceptical country; Britain’s approach,
said a minister, carries “enormous risks”.
Such prudence may be justified by the pandemic, and in many ways matches the new global orthodoxy. Yet the
broader message also works against Mr Macron’s reflexes, and what he stood for during his bid for the
presidency in 2017. The candidate’s campaign then was based on an attempt both to free up initiative and risk-
taking, and to build a modern system of rules and protections to encourage this to happen. Mr Macron’s defiant,
disruptive side—reforms to the labour market, schools, training, the railways and taxes—marked his initial
years in office. Covid-19 is crushing this flat.
“In all our societies the pandemic is leading us to protect more; that’s normal,” Mr Macron told The Economist
at a recent meeting with foreign reporters, arguing that if he had not carried out his liberalising reforms before
the pandemic the country would be less well placed to finance protection today. The recovery plan based on
common European Union borrowing is, he pointed out, oriented towards investments that “build the future, and
not from a perspective of protection”. But Mr Macron does not deny that the balance has shifted: “Two years
ago I was told, ‘You are freeing up more than you are protecting’; today I am told, ‘You are protecting more
than you are freeing up.’”
This poses a particular challenge in France, a country that has long had a strong central state and that has tended
to long spells of conservatism interrupted by bursts of rebellion, some of them rather dramatic. Protection is in
some ways the country’s default mode, and that mindset can be hard to alter. Mathieu Laine, a liberal writer and
the author of a new book, “Infantilisation”, argues that the French state is now acting to entrench a dangerous
form of risk aversion. All those rules and forms devised by overzealous bureaucrats during the pandemic—no
more than one hour of exercise a day, at no more than one kilometre from home—are teaching people, he says,
how to “unlearn what it means to exercise freedoms”.
It may yet be that this shift towards the politics of protection could in fact provide Mr Macron, a former
investment banker, with a form of defence. The most disillusioned of his former supporters are on the left. Last
year he lost his absolute parliamentary majority when a group of left-leaning deputies quit his party, La
République en Marche. Instead of a nod in their direction, he then replaced one centre-right prime minister
(Edouard Philippe) with another (Jean Castex). Some inside the party now want Mr Macron to tilt towards the
left to recover such voters. If faced with another second-round choice between him or Ms Le Pen, they might
otherwise abstain. Polls suggest that this is part of the reason for the closer run-off gap.
The chances are that Mr Macron, whose adage is en même temps (at the same time), will seek to forge a fresh
balance in the run-up to 2022. He has shown that he is still ready to take risks, says one of his presidential aides,
by keeping schools open since last May, and refusing—against scientific and ministerial advice—to put France
into a third lockdown right away. Partly as a result, his poll rating among the young has risen 11 points in three
months. For now, his greatest asset is that no single credible alternative candidate has yet emerged, on either the
left or the right. But these are uncertain times. And nobody knows more about the volatility of electoral politics
than the former outsider whom polls overlooked, Mr Macron. ■
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emmanuel-macron-must-decide-how-to-fight-next-years-election

University challenged
Turkey’s president scapegoats gay-friendly students

Recep Tayyip Erodgan likens protesters to “terrorists”
Feb 13th 2021 | ISTANBUL
SQUADRONS OF armed policemen block the entrance. Metal barriers line the avenue leading up to the campus.
Snipers occasionally emerge on nearby rooftops. Bogazici University has long been considered one of Turkey’s
most prestigious. Today it resembles a besieged terrorist hideout.
That, believe it or not, is how Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sees it. On February 1st police
stormed the campus and detained dozens of students who were protesting about his appointment of a
government loyalist as their rector. The protests have taken place regularly for over a month. They escalated
after the arrest of four students who had organised an art show that included a rainbow flag alongside an image
of the Kaaba, the black cube at the heart of Mecca. Turkey’s interior minister called the students “LGBT
perverts”. Mr Erdogan compared the protesters (at least 600 of whom have been detained) to terrorists. “There
is no such thing as LGBT,” he said on February 3rd. (Why he is so upset about something he doesn’t think exists
remains a mystery.)
Mr Erdogan tends to inflame protests. He often depicts them as part of an existential struggle between pious and
secular, conservative and degenerate, patriotic and foreign—and crushes them. This tactic worked in 2013,
when a small protest in defence of a small park snowballed into countrywide demonstrations after Mr Erdogan
referred to the protesters as looters and had them sprayed with tear-gas and rubber bullets. Dozens were later
rounded up and indicted on coup charges.
Mr Erdogan is doing something similar today, while attempting to seize control of Bogazici, a rare bastion of
liberalism in a country increasingly under the sway of nationalists and Islamists. Sexual minorities make a
perfect target. Homophobia in Turkey is a chronic condition. With the exception of the country’s main Kurdish
party, no political group in Turkey has embraced LGBT rights, out of both conviction and fear of a conservative
backlash.
After an abortive coup in 2016, Mr Erdogan redoubled his attempts to bring education into line with his vision
of a more pious, prouder Turkey, a country looking inward rather than westward. Under an emergency law, he
sacked over a thousand academics accused of terrorist sympathies (with scant evidence) and gave himself the
power to appoint university rectors. His choice of Melih Bulu, a longtime member of the ruling party, as
Bogazici’s president, has gone down particularly badly. Since being parachuted in, Mr Bulu has had to contend
with claims that he plagiarised parts of his dissertation. Condoning the arrests of hundreds of his students has
not made him popular on campus.
Once again, Turkey’s president has deliberately turned a local crisis into a national one. Once again, he seems
poised to prevail through a combination of division, intimidation and force. But all this comes at a price. In a
poll published last year, over 62% of young people in Turkey said they would prefer to live abroad if they had
the means. If the country’s best and brightest start leaving, Mr Erdogan will have no one to blame but himself. ■
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scapegoats-gay-friendly-students

Canine crushes
Shelters fear an influx of no-longer-wanted lockdown pets

Dogs have made the pandemic more bearable. But what happens when it ends?
Feb 13th 2021 | BERLIN
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER owned a succession of pet poodles. Franz Kafka maintained that “all knowledge, the
totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog.” Frederick the Great exclaimed: “The more I see
of men, the better I like my dog.” Pets have been deeply embedded in Germanic culture for centuries, but never
more so than now. As people seek a cure for covid-induced solitude and angst, demand has surged for dogs,
budgies, snakes and even cats.
The German Kennel Club says dog sales increased by 20% in 2020. Prices for puppies sold on pets4homes,
Britain’s largest online ad site for pets, more than doubled. A Yorkshire terrier pup can set you back £1,500
($2,050), and some breeds cost twice that. Some dogs are no doubt enjoying the pandemic, since their owners
are always home. Many are being pampered. The share price of Chewy, an online pet-supplies store, rose by
more than 260% in 2020 as owners splurged on posh toys and organic food. Zoo Zajac, a huge pet shop based
in Duisburg, says January was probably the best month in its 45-year existence.
Soaring profits, alas, attract crooks. The unspeakable crime of “dognapping” is on the rise. Pedigree pooches are
preferred. The German Animal Welfare Federation (DTB) registered 75 illegal trades between January and
October last year, more than in all of 2019, involving more than 800 animals (mainly dogs). The true number is
surely much higher. Many take place online and are hard to spot. Puppy farms are mass-producing dogs, often
in poor conditions. Thomas Schröder of the DTB demands a ban on the online sale of animals. Other activists
argue that the internet helps find good homes for many pets, though they advocate stricter regulation of online
sales.
When covid-19 eventually recedes, animal shelters expect another problem. Some new owners will tire of their
lockdown pets and want to return them. Others will go back to work and find they have no time to look after
them. Europe’s biggest animal shelter, in Berlin, which is the size of 22 football pitches and houses some 1,300
animals, including apes and a pig called Tinkerbell, is bracing for a post-pandemic crush.
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No time for foot-Draghing
Mario Draghi looks set to become Italy’s next prime minister

But once he has formed his government, he will have to move fast
Feb 13th 2021 | ROME
WAS THERE ever a luckier prime minister than Mario Draghi? Or an unluckier one? He looks set to come into
office with around €200bn from the EU’s recovery funds to spend. But he will also take over Europe’s worst-
performing economy in a pandemic and with a parliamentary majority hard put to agree on anything, let alone
on controversial structural reforms the European Commission wants to see implemented as the largesse is
disbursed.
By February 11th only the far-right Brothers of Italy party had declined the chance to climb aboard the “Super
Mario” bandwagon. The ideologically variegated Five Star Movement (M5S), the biggest group in parliament,
gave its approval following an online ballot of members (with a lukewarm 59% voting in favour of Mr Draghi).
Even the hard-right Northern League hastily renounced its Euroscepticism to book a place in Italy’s next
parliamentary majority, and perhaps its cabinet.
The former president of the European Central Bank faces both a daunting challenge and a unique opportunity.
The challenge is to cope with the effects of covid-19 in a country hard hit by the virus; Italy is fourth in the EU
in terms of deaths relative to population. Its economy shrank by 8.8% last year, compared with 5% in Germany.
If a ban on sackings is lifted at the end of March, an estimated 250,000 more people will be dumped onto the
labour market. Mr Draghi’s opportunity, though, is to use the recovery funds to start reversing two decades of
economic decline. Even before the pandemic, Italians’ real GDP per person was lower than at the start of the
century. Behind that woeful performance lies an array of obstacles to growth, held firmly in place by vested
interests.
In consultations with the various parties, Mr Draghi has hinted at how he intends to deal with both the challenge
and the opportunity. The priority areas he indicated were health (a central aim must be to speed up vaccination);
education (he has suggested that the school year be extended to allow students to catch up); the protection of
individuals and enterprises from the effects of the pandemic; and, less obviously, the environment (which
squares with the priorities of the commission and the M5S). The prime minister-designate’s targets for reform
are said to include Italy’s tax regime, its stultifying bureaucracy and a slow, unpredictable civil-justice system
that discourages both domestic enterprise and foreign investment.
But these are tasks for a period of years, so the first question that arises is how Mr Draghi’s long-term aims can
be reconciled with the EU’s exacting deadlines and—a point largely overlooked in the euphoria surrounding his
appointment—the short life expectancy of his government. Contracts for 70% of the recovery funds must be
awarded and signed by the end of 2022 and the remainder committed within the following year. In the
meantime, a general election must be held by early 2023. But, given the parties’ aversion to winter
campaigning, it is more likely in the first half of next year. Mr Draghi may want to step down even sooner if he
is to run for president in a separate election due in February 2022. “I think he’ll set a working method for the
next government,” says Veronica De Romanis, who teaches European economics at LUISS, a university in Rome.
A second question is how much unpopularity Mr Draghi is prepared to risk. When the outgoing government
suggested a longer school year, it prompted an outcry from the unions. Tax reform usually favours some parts
of society at the expense of others. And Mr Draghi’s approach to safeguarding enterprises may also prove
controversial. Last year he co-chaired a working group of the Group of Thirty, an informal body of bankers and
officials, that looked at restoring the corporate sector after the pandemic. It concluded that governments should
focus on supporting viable firms and managing the pace of what his co-chair called “the needed creative
destruction”.
Mr Draghi is popular. But Italy’s electorate and parliament are notoriously fickle. “If he starts immediately with
these reforms we have been speaking about for 20 years, he will have a chance of success,” says Giuliano Noci,
professor of strategy and marketing at Milan’s Politecnico University. “But if he waits for more than a month,
the sentiment will change.” ■
Editor's note (February 11th 2021): This article has been updated since publication with the result of the vote
by members of the Five Star Movement.
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They told you so
The European Union must face up to the real Russia

Appeasement isn’t working
Feb 13th 2021 |
WHEN ROBERT CONQUEST, a historian, was working on a new edition of “The Great Terror”, his seminal text on
Stalin’s crimes, he was told to come up with a new title. The book had described the horrors of the Soviet Union
at a time when apologism for it was still rife. By the time of the new version, freshly opened archives had
vindicated Conquest’s account. His friend Kingsley Amis, a novelist, suggested a pithy new title: “I told you so,
you fucking fools”.
Head east in Europe today and it is easy to find similar sentiments about Russia. The Baltic states and Poland
warned Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, against visiting Moscow in the wake of its imprisonment of
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition politician. They were right. Mr Borrell was humiliated. In a press
conference Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, dismissed the EU as an “unreliable partner”, while Mr
Borrell stood alongside. European hypocrisy was mocked as he brought up the treatment of Catalan politicians
by Spanish authorities, knowing that Mr Borrell is a staunch opponent of independence for the region. Mr
Borrell did not even insist on visiting Mr Navalny in jail. While he was there, news leaked that the Russian
government had expelled diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden for attending pro-Navalny rallies.
Diplomats from eastern Europe may be politer than Amis, but the message is the same.
Dealing with Russia is the most pressing foreign-policy problem facing the EU. It is also where the bloc is least
coherent. While national capitals may not always agree on how best to handle China or how close to remain to
America, on Russia they are hopelessly split. Russia can be a potential or even necessary ally, a business
opportunity or an existential threat, depending on whether you are in Paris, Berlin or Warsaw. The notion of an
EU foreign policy is flimsy at the best of times, but especially on this topic. “Everybody knows that the big boys
freelance on anything that matters,” says Radek Sikorski, a Polish MEP and former foreign minister. And Russia
is among the things that matter most.
Doveish attitudes are based on pragmatism, pessimism and cynicism. France puts its accommodating strategy
down to culture and geography: Russia is too large to push around and too near to ignore. It emphasises
patience and engagement—a tactic its critics label “doing nothing”. When it comes to Russia, Emmanuel
Macron, the French president, talks in terms of decades, and doubts whether tough action would do much good.
Whereas such remarks may be wise from a policy wonk, they are less comforting coming from the mouth of the
EU’s only hard power.
In Germany economics trumps geopolitics. Nord Stream 2, a pipeline running from Russia to Germany,
undercuts the EU’s wider strategy of trying to rely less on Russia for energy but retains the support of the
German government. (The fact that Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor, is the chairman of the
scheme does not help.) Angela Merkel surprised critics by shepherding through—and sticking with—sanctions
on Russia over its actions in Ukraine. Yet she is soon to leave office. Armin Laschet, the new leader of her
Christian Democratic Union, is more doveish. Even direct attacks, such as Russian hackers breaking into the
Bundestag’s computers in 2015, failed to budge opinion. Unfortunately for the EU’s band of eastern hawks,
France and Germany are not alone. Spain and Italy, the EU’s other big countries, are similarly meek when it
comes to Russia.
Each approach shares an assumption that there is not much the EU can do about Russia. But the EU forgets its
power. It is a bloc of 450m people with a GDP that is nine times larger than that of its Russian neighbour;
Russia’s economy is slightly larger than Spain’s and smaller than Italy’s. Collectively, EU countries spend
almost three times as much as Russia on defence. Just France and Germany together spend roughly two-thirds
more. Yet when dealing with Russia, the EU behaves like a supplicant. What Russia lacks in relative means, it
makes up for in motivation: from the Sahel to Belarus, Russia is an enthusiastic troll, causing no end of trouble
for the bloc. European governments have the tools to take a firmer line with Russia, whether sanctions on those
close to Mr Putin, or scrapping Nord Stream 2. What they lack is the will to use them. In one multilingual
intervention, Assita Kanko, a Belgian MEP, asked of Mr Borrell: “Dónde están los cojones de la UE?”
When doves cry
The ill-fated Moscow trip caps off a period in which Russia’s gangsterism has become impossible to ignore.
Until recently, it was possible to argue that it was open to a constructive relationship with Europe. Now it is not.
Sanctions require the unanimous support of all governments, which is tricky, even with new EU legislation that
makes it easier to punish human-rights abusers. But such measures are more likely thanks to Russia’s recent
actions. “Russia is usually its own worst enemy,” says one official from an eastern country.
This clarity leaves Europe’s doves in a bind. Their vision of a better relationship with Russia, working together
on matters like climate, is appealing. In this world, Russia could be a well-behaved G8 member. Unfortunately,
that Russia does not exist. Instead, European powers face a government that tries to murder its opponents,
stokes proxy wars and hacks its neighbours. It is a country that deliberately chooses confrontation rather than
partnership, and the EU—both its national capitals and its institutions—must recognise this.
The real Russia is much closer to the way it is described by the EU’s eastern countries than to the benign image
conjured up by western ones. No one can force Mr Macron to give up his hope that Russia will eventually be a
partner. Likewise, no one can force German politicians to take a short-term economic hit for geopolitical gain.
But they cannot say they were not told. ■
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union-must-face-up-to-the-real-russia
Europe Sections International
Britain
National Health Service: Hands on Rule-breaking: Going underground
. .
Sino-British relations: No longer glistening Exporting vaccine: Good global citizens
. .
Business and the economy: A firm footing Travel restrictions: Grounded
. .
Internal borders: No place like home Bagehot: The price of acceptance
. .
Europe Sections International
Hands on
Boris Johnson’s NHS prescription: more control, less competition

The government sets out its plan for the first major health-service legislation in a decade
Feb 13th 2021 |
ONCE UPON a time, an ambitious young Tory MP could write columns mocking bien-pensant pieties about the
health service—dinner-party attendees who thought “how maahvellous it was that the duke and dustman were
treated alike in our glorious New Jerusalem, watching the same TV, eating the same spotted dick, attended by
the same starch-bosomed nurses.” When that was written, in 2004, Tories liked to flirt with the idea of adopting
the social-insurance systems seen in much of Europe. At the very least, they would argue, the health service’s
internal market ought to be sharpened to raise standards and cut costs.
Now that MP is the prime minister, he treats the NHS with rather more reverence. The health service is, Boris
Johnson says, “the beating heart of this country...It is powered by love.” His government’s prescriptions for it
also differ. A white paper, due to be published as The Economist went to press but leaked beforehand, sets out
plans for the first major NHS legislation in a decade. They would put the final nail in the coffin of the internal
market—competition will no longer be the “organising principle” of the health service—and would give
ministers more direct control over the NHS.
The country’s current rulers believe they express the will of the British people, and are therefore justified in
grabbing power from any institution that gets in their way, whether the EU, the courts or bureaucrats in the civil
or health service. But politicians mess with the NHS at their peril. Although health outcomes are below par for
the rich world, Britons love the health service with a deep and abiding passion. This gives medics enormous
power.
The fate of the last politician to try to reform the health service serves as a warning. In 2011 Andrew Lansley,
health secretary in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, set out to abolish almost all national and regional management
by extending the use of market mechanisms, and to take oversight of the system out of political hands. Although
the legislation he promoted eventually passed, it met strong opposition. Mr Lansley was sacked, and the
officials put in charge of the NHS largely ignored the changes his legislation sought to introduce.
The Conservative Party has taken a more cautious approach to the health service of late. At the general election
in 2019, Mr Johnson promised the NHS lots of money to build hospitals and hire nurses. There was no mention
of traditional Tory cost-cutting demands. The reforms in the new white paper are happening partly in response
to the requests of NHS bosses.
Although the internal market helped cut waiting times, there is not much evidence it improved the quality of
care. And the split between purchasers (mostly GPs) and providers (mostly hospitals) makes the health service
unwieldy. As the population ages, fewer patients go to hospital for a single operation, and more need care for a
complex set of problems. The hope is that integrated care, of the sort pioneered in Singapore and by Kaiser
Permanente in America, will serve them better than the fragmention of an internal market.
Integrated care’s introduction to the NHS has been driven by Sir Simon Stevens, the health service’s boss, who
has brought purchasers and providers together to plan care for areas covering 1m-3m people. The white paper
suggests sweeping away remaining barriers, such as procurement rules and regulation, and giving the centre
powers to overcome local resistance.
Health wonks mostly approve of the direction of travel. Worries, where they exist, are about details. The most
concerning, says Nigel Edwards of the Nuffield Trust, a think-tank, is that the proposals may end up creating
unaccountable local monopolies. Jeremy Hunt, a former health secretary, suggests setting up a body along the
lines of Ofsted, which inspects schools, to guard against this; others would like more performance data
published so that officials can be held to account.
But while those in the business mostly approve of the first part of the government’s plans, they do not like the
second. Mr Lansley’s reforms created a clear division between politicians and the NHS. The government sets the
priorities and appoints the boss; the technocrats are left to work out the details.
Nicholas Timmins, a historian of the health service, thinks the set-up has led to more consistent policymaking:
“There have not been endless announcements in recent years, ‘Oh well, we’re going to spend £40m ($55m) on
dementia or £60m on cancer because the minister needs to say something.’” Supporters of the NHS’s
independence point out that organisations under ministerial control—such as Public Health England and the
test-and-trace system—have not had successful pandemics. The NHS has done a better job.
The white paper would put the government back in control, giving it, among other things, the ability to abolish
or alter the arm’s-length bodies that make up the health service without new legislation. The political rationale
is that since the state spends more than £160bn a year on health care, around 7% of GDP, ministers (or, as they
prefer to put it, taxpayers) should have more say over how it is run. A cruder explanation is that the government
is annoyed that Sir Simon runs rings around it, whether in funding negotiations or questions of data access, and
gets credit when things go well. Politicians also like to be able to influence decisions that matter to voters—
over, for instance, the fate of an inefficient hospital in a marginal constituency. Shutting it may be the right
decision for health care, but the wrong one for a government clinging to power.
Knowing how fraught any legislative process involving the NHS can become, the government has played down
the significance of these new powers. Mr Johnson will be loath to get into an argument with medics, so he will
hope they do not rally to the defence of the officials who run the health service. At times, the NHS really is
powered by love. But it can also run on anger—a frightening prospect to any politician, especially one who
came to power posing as its protector. ■
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nhs-prescription-more-control-less-competition

Rule-breaking
A secret world of illicit fun

Many Britons are breaking the rules in many different ways
Feb 13th 2021 |
ALEX, A CRYPTO-CURRENCY trader in east London, is a party animal. For a while covid-19 put a brake on his
hedonism, but during this lockdown the boredom got too much, so he has started attending cocaine- and spirit-
fuelled parties once more. At the last bash, in January, there were 40-50 people. He is not surprised it was so
well-attended: his friends, he says, are “a bunch of degenerates…Liberal progressive people don’t give a toss
anymore.” One such soirée was so raucous that it exploded onto the street, where two guests scrapped. Alex
says the neighbours did not call the police because they host similar gatherings.
When the pandemic began Britons embraced a wholesome 1950s-style of living. Sales of board games and
bicycles soared, while social-media feeds were swamped with photos of homemade sourdough bread. Most
people may have stuck to such blameless pastimes. In a survey by Ipsos MORI in January, 78% of Britons
claimed to follow the government’s rules.
But Robert Dingwall, professor of social sciences at Nottingham Trent University, reckons a parallel society is
emerging. It is, he says, “very much like eastern Europe in the old days... not entirely secret but carefully
organised so not to come to the attention of the authorities.”
Despite an £800 ($1,100) fine introduced in January for anyone attending a gathering of more than 15 people,
police regularly break up large house parties. Last month, a raid on an upmarket party in Knightsbridge saw two
officers injured as attendees fled. Security-conscious promoters are doing their best to avoid unwanted
publicity. Some use Telegram, a secure messaging app, to advertise exclusive parties. “No photos or videos,”
read one flyer for a party held on February 6th with an entrance fee of £10. Cannabis cafés and poker clubs have
also been shut down.
Sport has gone underground, too. Across Britain, youths have been scaling fences to break into skateparks—
often abusing officials who try to stop them. But skaters are also disappearing into the shadows, says an
enthusiast, by building their own skateparks in wasteland and woodland areas, some from concrete. Amateur
footballers have broken into pitches for kickabouts. On January 31st police stopped a football game involving
more than 20 people in Dartford, Kent. Meanwhile, police in Shropshire say car races are taking place on
farmland. Hare-coursing—setting greyhounds to chase hares, which is illegal—is all the rage in the Midlands.
In January, a large gathering was broken up by police in Peterborough and fines were issued.
Another marginal pursuit that has flourished during lockdown is group sex in outdoor locations, or dogging.
Locals who live near notorious sites have reported increased activity in lockdown; in Birdlip, a Gloucestershire
village, there was even a report of goings-on at lunchtime. On February 4th, Police Scotland dispersed over 50
doggers from a Paisley car park; which, given the chilly northern temperatures, showed an impressive level of
commitment. It is such a problem in Hampton-in-Arden, a West Midlands village, that a security gate has been
installed to close off a popular lane. “It is just not what you’d expect from an affluent village in Solihull,” says a
councillor. ■
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illicit-fun

Sino-UK relations
Britain’s hardening stance on China

The relationship is more steely than golden
Feb 13th 2021 |
IT WILL BE a more fitting home for a rising superpower than the delegation’s current poky premises in
Marylebone. Overlooking the Tower of London, the fine Georgian buildings of the old Royal Mint, where
Britain’s coins and medals were once struck, are to become the new Chinese embassy. Plans lodged with the
local council outline a vast complex designed by David Chipperfield, the architect behind the renovated Neues
Museum in Berlin, which includes 230 flats. Announcing the new base in 2018, Liu Xiaoming, the then
ambassador, declared it to be a “fresh golden fruit” of a new “golden era” of ties.
That followed the era of David Cameron, who wanted Britain to be China’s “best partner in the West”. Today,
exchanges are more steely than golden. Under Boris Johnson, Britain’s stance has hardened dramatically, and
now hews more closely to America’s. “What has really surprised me is the speed of the degeneration between
the two countries,” says Yu Jie, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a think-tank.
The shift has shown up in several recent disputes. A rebellion by hawkish MPs over the trade bill has led the
government to offer a compromise that would allow lawmakers greater scrutiny of the human-rights record of
Britain’s trading partners. The Sino-sceptic coalition in Parliament is broad. Tom Tugendhat, a leading China
critic, is the liberal Tory chairman of the foreign affairs committee; Iain Duncan Smith, another, is a Brexit
hardliner.
On February 4th, Ofcom, Britain’s broadcasting regulator, said it would revoke the licence of CGTN, an
international TV channel owned by China’s state broadcaster. Ofcom found that Star China Media Limited, the
licence-holder, did not have editorial control over its output; permission to switch the licence to a new entity
was refused after Ofcom concluded it would be “ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party”,
violating rules shielding broadcasters from political control. The channel had previously been rebuked by
Ofcom for broadcasting the alleged forced confession of a British prisoner in China, and for lopsided coverage
of Hong Kong’s democracy movement.
That movement has the British government’s ear. On January 31st, in response to tightening Chinese control in
the former British colony, the government opened a new visa scheme granting 2.9m Hong Kongers and their
dependents the opportunity to settle in Britain. Conservative MPs were delighted. The government reckons as
many as 322,000 people will take up the scheme over five years; London may become a new hub for Hong
Kong dissidents.
For a decade, British intelligence has known that the country is vulnerable to Chinese espionage. Those fears
were sidelined in the “golden era”. No longer. It emerged on February 4th that three Chinese spies allegedly
posing as journalists had been expelled. Academics working on sensitive technology in co-operation with China
have been warned that they risk prosecution for breaching export-control laws. A new investment-screening
law, currently before Parliament, will grant ministers new powers to block the acquisition of shares, land or
intellectual property in sensitive sectors. Last summer the government announced it would reverse an earlier
decision to permit Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, to help build Britain’s fifth-generation telecoms networks.
That decision followed intensive lobbying from Donald Trump’s administration to break ties with China.
Britain’s new approach places it firmly in step with the Biden administration which, like Mr Trump’s White
House, accuses Beijing of genocide; unlike the Trump administration, it is keen to work with allies to counter
China. This is an opportunity for Mr Johnson, who plans to use the G7 meeting in Cornwall this June as the
launch for an expanded grouping of democracies including Australia, India and South Korea.
China’s response to Britain’s new stance has so far been limited to rhetoric. CGTN said Ofcom had been
“manipulated by extreme right-wing organisations and anti-China forces”; the Hong Kong visa offer was
denounced as unwanted colonial meddling. But things may change, and British companies may suffer high-
profile sanctions similar to those imposed by China on Australia, reckons Charles Parton, a former British
diplomat and senior associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute. AstraZeneca, Jaguar Land Rover
and HSBC have been floated as possible targets in the Chinese press. And after CGTN’s closure, life may get
trickier for BBC journalists in China. Mr Parton says China will bide its time: “I think we’re going to get the
Australia treatment, but they serve their revenge a lot colder than you think.” ■
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Exporting vaccine
Britons are keen to share their vaccine supplies

Our poll shows people want poor countries to get priority
Feb 13th 2021 |
BRITAIN EMBARKED on a vaccine shopping spree last year, securing 367m doses of seven potential candidates.
Since three have been approved and two delivered good late-stage trial results, ministers are in the fortunate
position of weighing up whether to share the stash. Liz Truss, the trade secretary, says Britain can’t be a
“vaccinated island”.
Polling by Ipsos MORI for The Economist shows that the public is enthusiastic. More support than oppose—47%
to 32%—exporting vaccines once everyone over 65, health workers and the clinically at-risk have been
vaccinated; 51% would support doing so when those over 50, plus those other groups, have had the jab. The
government reckons it can give the latter group the first dose by May. When people were asked whether vaccine
should be given away or sold, the most popular option was to give it to poor countries and sell it to rich ones;
asked which countries should be given priority, most went for poor ones. Only 7% said the EU should be given
priority.
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Firm footing
British business is in surprisingly good shape

Although the economy has shrunk by a tenth in a year, companies are flush
Feb 13th 2021 |
THE ECONOMY shrank by around 10% in 2020, the largest drop in a century. There has been a steady drumbeat of
corporate collapses, with high-street retailers such as Topshop and Debenhams and restaurant chains such as
Café Rouge going down the tubes. Yet British business has rarely been in such rude health.
Despite the pain in the hospitality and retail sectors, company insolvencies in England and Wales fell by a fifth
between 2019 and 2020. While overall business profits slipped in 2020, the impact was far less severe than in
the financial crisis of 2008 or the early-1990s recession. And British businesses have never held so much cash.
Surging corporate bank deposits do not usually accompany a recession. According to an analysis by the
Resolution Foundation, a think tank, the past four British recessions have seen corporate cash holdings shrink
by an inflation-adjusted average of £40bn. But over the last nine months of 2020 firms added almost £120bn
($165bn) to their bank balances, taking the total up to over 30% of GDP (see chart).
The uneven recession is part of the explanation. While physical retail, hospitality and travel have been crushed,
other industries have got off lightly. “I’ve got companies in my portfolio which have been ordered to basically
shut down by the government, but I’ve got others for whom 2020 has meant lower rent and interest costs,” says
an investment manager. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), over two-fifths of British firms
report that covid-19 has either had no effect on revenues or has increased them.
The government has absorbed much of the cost of the lost output. Aside from the almost £60bn it has spent
picking up 80% of the wage bill for furloughed workers through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, it has
given firms direct grants and tax cuts worth over £25bn and £85bn of cheap, state-backed loans, while deferring
over £2bn of tax payments.
Some companies are using their cash to buy others. Kevin Ellis, senior partner at PWC, a professional-services
firm, says his deal-making advisory practice has rarely been so busy. Cash-rich firms, he says, want to buy
those that are good at tech. The trade deal with the European Union may give dealmaking a further impetus.
“We’ve had this huge amount of uncertainty hanging over Britain for almost five years and people have been
keeping their powder dry. What you are seeing now is those war chests going to work,” says a banker.
But if larger firms have been building piles of cash, smaller firms are feeling less flush, according to the ONS.
They are twice as likely to have no reserves than larger ones. Tony Danker, head of the Confederation of British
Industry, a trade body, fears that small firms that have reserves will use them up quickly. The first repayments
on government-backed loans are due in May and the economic outlook remains highly uncertain.
Faced with a budget deficit of around 20% of GDP, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is keen to start reducing state
support to business. The furlough scheme, for example, is due to end in April. Officials worry that the
borrowing-funded largesse over the past year has been spread too broadly and much of it has ended up in
corporate bank accounts rather than supporting spending. Keen to get its hands on some of the cash pile, the
Treasury is floating ideas such as increasing corporation tax or introducing a tax on online sales. Business
leaders suspect the Treasury is throwing out these ideas ahead of the budget in March to see which arouse the
greatest opposition, and which are more likely to fly.
Amid a bonanza of dealmaking and a massive corporate cash mountain there are large clusters of firms that will
need more support if a sharp rise in unemployment is to be avoided as government schemes wind down. The
challenge for the Treasury in the budget will be to find a way to target help where it is required as Britain’s
economy begins to reopen. ■
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is-in-surprisingly-good-shape

Grounded
Britain’s belated quarantine scheme

The punishment for breaking the new rules is up to ten years in jail
Feb 10th 2021 |
BY FEBRUARY 15th last year, only nine cases of covid-19 had been confirmed in Britain. On that day, the Times
reported that the government’s existing flu pandemic strategy suggested closing the country’s borders would be
pointless since it would probably hold back the virus by only a couple of weeks. “What we are seeing are the
droplets before the wave,” a government official said then. Exactly a year on, as the country’s tally of cases
edges over 4m, the flood defences are finally going up.
From February 15th, residents arriving from a list of 33 countries deemed especially risky will have to spend ten
days in quarantine (non-residents are banned entirely). They will be charged £1,750 ($2,425) each for the
privilege of being locked up in an airport hotel. Other incomers also face a beefed-up regime: “travel corridors”
that allowed arrivals from low-risk countries to dodge quarantine have been scotched; three covid tests—one
before departure, two in isolation—are mandatory. The idea is to minimise transmission of new variants of
covid-19, such as the South African strain which public-health officials believe has yet to take hold in Britain.
Penalties for non-compliance are draconian—fines of up to £10,000 for those who flout test or quarantine rules
and fines or prison sentences as long as ten years for anybody who attempts to conceal their arrival from one of
the highest-risk countries. That may deter would-be rule-breakers, even though such a sentence is unlikely ever
to be passed and would lie in the gift of judges, not ministers.
Yet, as with the government’s warning last year that vandals who desecrate war memorials could spend a
decade in jail, they are not the intended audience. Like that proposal, this one is extremely popular: according to
YouGov, a pollster, about two-thirds of Britons think the proposed penalty for misleading border officials is
about right or not tough enough. Ministers want to undermine the impression that, compared with countries like
Australia and South Korea, they have taken a laid-back approach to the border. The Scottish government will
use devolved powers to insist on hotel stays for all incomers. They will not find chocolates on their pillows. ■
Dig deeper
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quarantine-scheme

No place like home
Migration between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland is falling

That could weaken the union
Feb 13th 2021 |
IN THE EARLY 1990s Tennent, a Scottish brewer, ran a television advert designed to play on the homesickness of
migrant workers in London. A Scottish office drone, yearning for the pubs of his homeland, endures crowded
Tube trains, argumentative Cockneys and foreigners as the song “Caledonia” plays in the background.
Many young Scots at the time emigrated to the rest of the United Kingdom in search of work or excitement. “I
was desperate to travel to London,” remembers Melanie Hill, who graduated from Strathclyde University in
1993 and now works for ScottishPower, an energy company. In 1987, the peak year of emigration, 65,000
people—one in every 78 Scots—left for England, Northern Ireland or Wales. But the flow has slowed, as have
the other streams that carry people between the four nations.
Unlike America, Britain has not experienced an overall decline in internal migration. Before covid-19 struck,
movement between most of the UK’s 12 regions (nine of which are English) was growing, as the economy and
the housing market recovered from the financial crisis. Two exceptions stick out, however. Northern Ireland and
Scotland, which anyway send the smallest proportions of their residents to other parts of Britain, are holding
onto even more of them (see chart). In 2018-19 Scotland lost just one in 146 people.
Patterns of study have a lot to do with this. In the 1994-95 academic year 6.2% of Scots studying full-time for a
first degree attended English universities, and 2.8% of English students were in Scotland. In 2019-20 the
proportions had fallen to 4.4% and 1.6%. The proportion of Northern Irish students studying in Scotland has
dropped even more sharply, from 14.5% to 8.1%.
Jim Shannon, a Democratic Unionist Party MP, suggests that some Northern Irish people might have been put
off by Scotland’s burgeoning independence movement; nobody is hotter for the union than an Ulster Protestant.
But the widening gap in tuition fees is probably more important. Northern Irish students pay £4,395 ($6,062) a
year to study in their own country, while Scots generally pay nothing if they stay in Scotland. Both are liable for
£9,250 a year if they study elsewhere. The demographic effect in Scotland was not an accident: the Scottish
National Party cut tuition fees partly in order to discourage students from leaving.
After graduating, Scots have good reasons to hang around. Charlie Ball of Jisc, an education outfit, points out
that the cull of civil servants after the financial crisis was milder in Scotland than in England or Wales, so there
are more secure jobs. Glasgow, which used to send many people to England, has become a confident, successful
city. Linda Murdoch, who runs the University of Glasgow careers service, says it is quite hard to persuade
graduates even to go to Edinburgh.
If young Britons are less likely to cross the kingdom’s internal borders to study, they are also less likely to meet
people from the other countries, fall in love with them, and have children with them. Since 1997 the proportion
of Northern Irish babies born to a mother from England, Scotland or Wales has fallen from 7.3% to 4.8%. There
has been a smaller decline in Scotland over the past decade.
Britons are also less likely to take trips to other bits of the kingdom. According to Visit Britain, which organises
large surveys, English people accounted for 57% of all British tourist trips to Scotland in 2011, measured by
number of nights. Since then Scots have toured their own country more and the English have made fewer trips
there; in 2019 English people accounted for 50% of the total. Scotland is just as beautiful as it always was. But
people often travel to see friends and attend weddings. If they know fewer people in another country from
university or work, they have less reason to go.
If England, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all becoming more insular, Wales has the opposite problem—a
brain drain. Dawn Bowden, who represents Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney in the Senedd, says that young people
in her constituency who do well at school want to spread their wings. Welsh students pay roughly the same fees
everywhere, and get a bigger maintenance grant if they study in London. Over the past few years the number of
Welsh teenagers who apply to study in Wales has fallen.
Meanwhile, Ms Bowden says, South Wales has seen an influx of English workers who commute to jobs in
Bristol—something that may have increased since 2018, when tolls to cross the Severn river were abolished.
She is relaxed about this cross-border traffic. South Wales and the west of England have a long history of
migration to and fro, she says. Besides, she also moved to Wales from Bristol.
In one way, the growing insularity of Northern Ireland and Scotland is a good sign. It reflects the success of
their major cities, which ought to recover when Britain gets on top of covid-19. But it might hurt them in the
end. Scotland in particular is about to experience a nasty demographic crunch: the country has 382,000 25- to
29-year-olds but only 282,000 15- to 19-year-olds. Westminster will not allow Edinburgh to run its own
immigration policy. It might have cut itself off from the rest of the United Kingdom just as it would most
benefit from a bit of ebb and flow.
The lack of mixing is also a bad omen for the United Kingdom. Many English are already ambivalent about the
union—a recent poll for the Sunday Times found less than half would mind if Scotland left, and less than a third
would be upset by Irish reunification. The more the nations grow apart, the less they are likely to care. ■
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between-england-scotland-and-northern-ireland-is-falling

Bagehot
The British establishment is the world’s most open—for a price

Rich foreigners get a warm welcome, whatever the source of their money
Feb 13th 2021 |
SOMETIMES FICTIONAL characters are so vivid that they cannot be confined to the page. Augustus Melmotte
began life as a villain in Anthony Trollope’s 1875 masterpiece “The Way We Live Now”. Seventy years later
he escaped into the real world in the form of Captain Robert Maxwell, a Czech war hero whose extraordinary
rise and fall is the subject of a new book (see article).
Melmotte is a large man with heavy eyebrows and a “wonderful look of power about his mouth and chin”.
Nobody knows where he came from, and nobody knows why he’s so rich, though there are rumours of
chicanery in Paris and Vienna. But none of this is a barrier to his social ascent. He sets up a company that
promises to build a railway linking Utah with Mexico and throws lavish parties at his rented house in Grosvenor
Square. The Emperor of China comes to dinner along with various ministers and “a prince of the blood royal”.
He swiftly becomes a Conservative MP for the plum seat of Westminster.
Melmotte and Maxwell are doppelgangers all the way down to the heavy eyebrows. But the most important
similarities between the two lie not in their physiognomies but in the way they are treated by British society.
The real target of Trollope’s novel is not the monstrous Melmotte but the even ghastlier “we” of the book’s title
—the Lords and Ladies Monogram with the grandest of pedigrees and the basest of motives. Impoverished
aristocrats promise to marry Melmotte’s daughter for “half a million down”. Dissolute young men who know
nothing about either railways or Utah accept well-paid seats on his board. The Conservative Party takes him up
in return for “fiscal assistance” and, as a newly minted MP, he enters Parliament on the arm of the prime
minister. And they do all this while privately despising the newcomer who doesn’t understand the secret codes
that hold British society together. (A particularly excruciating passage describes Melmotte’s confusion about
when to wear a top hat in the chamber.)
The British establishment prides itself on openness to foreign talent. Look at the City of London: Rothschild’s
bank has occupied the same spot in New Court, St Swithin’s Lane, since 1809. Or look at the world of learning:
while Maxwell was swindling shareholders imported geniuses were revolutionising almost every branch of
learning from English history (Lewis Namier) to architecture (Nikolaus Pevsner) to the history of ideas
(Maxwell’s neighbour in Oxford, Isaiah Berlin). When Berlin died in 1997 William Waldegrave, a man at the
heart of the British establishment who is now provost of Eton, wrote that “if you had asked me to show you
what I meant by the ideal of Englishness…I would have taken you to see Isaiah Berlin.”
But the stories of Melmotte and Maxwell reveal a darker side to British openness. The apparently generous
welcome is actually the offer of a deal: social position, and the stamp of respectability that goes with it, for cash.
Consider the transatlantic marriage market: in the late Victorian and Edwardian era great British aristocrats
responded to the agricultural depression by marrying their sons to the daughters of American plutocrats. By
1914, 60 peers and 40 younger sons of peers had married American heiresses, most notably the ninth Duke of
Marlborough who married Consuela Vanderbilt. Or consider political funding. Lloyd George’s great honours
fire-sale of 1916-1922, when he sold 91 hereditary peerages and 1,500 knighthoods, ground to a halt only when
he tried to ennoble Joseph Robinson, a South African gold and diamond magnate whose reputation was so
unsavoury that George V objected. Harold Wilson’s resignation honours list in 1976 included the names of
several businessmen who may have taken buccaneering to unusual lengths. Joseph Kagan, for example, a
Lithuanian-born textile maker who funded Wilson’s private office for years and provided the prime minister
with his trade-mark Gannex raincoats, was awarded a peerage, only to end up in prison for tax fraud.
Thanks to globalisation, the trade in cash for respectability has boomed since the demise of Maxwell, who
disappeared off his yacht in 1991. Oliver Bullough, the author of “Moneyland”, points out that Britain,
particularly London, is home to the world’s largest collection of insecure plutocrats: not just attention-seeking
Russians who buy flashy toys like football clubs, but also the more self-effacing Chinese. They have spawned a
vast industry of people who do their best to make sure that, in Boris Johnson’s phrase, Britain is to the
billionaire what the jungle of Sumatra is to the orangutan: City panjandrums who list foreign companies on the
London Stock Exchange; lawyers who protect their reputation with fearsome libel suits; public-relations
consultants who burnish their image; family offices that not only look after their cash but also help open the
right doors; public schools that furnish their children’s brains, polish their manners and get them admitted to the
best universities. Residency in Britain is for sale: a Tier One Investment visa is available for a minimum
investment of £2m in the country—a very reasonable price given the many social and economic advantages that
it confers.
Britain’s political establishment remains as venal as it was when Trollope skewered it a century and a half ago.
Sometimes the greed is Lloyd-Georgian in its crudity: last year Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of a former Russian
finance minister, paid tens of thousands to play tennis with Boris Johnson. Usually it relies on a nod and a wink.
Evgeny Lebedev, the son of a former KGB agent and a familiar figure in Tory circles, until recently employed
George Osborne, a former chancellor, as editor of the Evening Standard, and has entertained Mr Johnson at his
“party-castle” in Italy. He was recently elevated to the peerage as Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia. The
Melmottes and Maxwells of this world may come and go. But the British upper classes go on forever, shape-
shifting but sempiternal, sponging but self-satisfied, lethargic but opportunistic, the world’s most cynical and
accomplished free-loaders. ■
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establishment-is-the-worlds-most-open-for-a-price
Britain Sections Special report
International
Freedom of speech: Inconvenient truths
.
Britain Sections Special report
Inconvenient truths
Censorious governments are abusing “fake news” laws

The pandemic is giving them an excuse to gag reporters
Feb 13th 2021 |
DURING HIS final days Mohamed Monir, an Egyptian journalist, was so short of breath he could barely speak. In
a video recorded in July last year, as his final hours approached, he begged for oxygen. He died in a hospital
isolation unit after contracting covid-19 in prison while awaiting trial. He had been arrested the previous month
after, among other things, writing an article lambasting the Egyptian government’s response to the pandemic.
He was charged with spreading false news, misusing social media and joining a terrorist group.
Covid-19 has indeed unleashed a flood of misinformation. But it has also given governments such as Egypt’s an
excuse to crack down on their critics using the pretext of restricting the spread of fake news. Between March
and October last year 17 countries passed new laws against “online misinformation” or “fake information”,
according to the International Press Institute (see map). Among those leading this charge are such guardians of
free speech as Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Rodrigo Duterte. Other authoritarians, such as Nicaragua’s
Daniel Ortega, have followed since then. Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, is keen to pass a law to
stop the dissemination of fake news after the protests that roiled the city in 2019.
Governments have always regulated speech. And the spread of disinformation is indeed a serious and growing
problem. If politicians are enacting laws against fake news to catch people spreading deliberate lies, “that’s one
thing”, argues Marko Milanovic, an expert in international law at the University of Nottingham. If, however,
they are putting in place broad, vague measures that are in fact intended to curb the freedom of the press and
free speech more widely, “that’s a huge problem.”
Some governments have cited the pandemic as justification for new laws. Under legislation introduced in March
2020 in Russia, media outlets found guilty of deliberately spreading false information about matters of public
safety, including covid-19, face fines of up to €117,000 ($140,000). Russia already imposed fines on people for
spreading “false information” but the new regulations fall under the criminal code which means the
punishments can also include time in jail. The editor of one website was fined 60,000 roubles ($810) for
reporting that 1,000 graves had been dug for potential victims of covid-19. Tatyana Voltskaya, a freelance
journalist, was fined 30,000 roubles in December for a radio report that included an interview with an
anonymous health worker, who described the shortage of ventilators in Russian hospitals and other difficulties
faced by doctors battling covid-19.
Other governments are reviving obsolete legislation, ostensibly to combat fake news related to covid-19. Their
true aims, however, are to hamper independent journalism or “retaliate against those doing reporting that they
don’t appreciate”, says Courtney Radsch of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based NGO. In
March the Jordanian government used a “defence” law from 1992 that permits the declaration of a state of
emergency in exceptional circumstances to do so as part of its efforts to stem the spread of covid-19. The law
allows the government to monitor the content of newspapers and censor or shut down any outlet without giving
any reason. On Christmas Eve Jamal Haddad, the Jordanian publisher of a news website, was detained after
publishing an article asking why officials had received vaccinations against covid-19 when these were not yet
available to ordinary citizens.
And some authorities are invoking laws that may not even exist. Hopewell Chin’ono, a journalist in Zimbabwe,
was arrested in January for tweeting about police violence while enforcing lockdowns. The government says
that “anyone who spreads false news will be charged in terms of Section 31 of the Criminal Code”, according to
Doug Coltart, one of Mr Chin’ono’s lawyers. But the section of the law criminalising the dissemination of
“falsehoods” had been struck down in 2014 by the Zimbabwean constitutional court.
Some of the new laws are temporary. But their creators appear in no hurry to lift them. Mr Orban imposed a
state of emergency in Hungary in March last year. Among other measures it made the dissemination of
“misinformation” punishable by up to five years in prison. The state of emergency ended in June, but Mr
Orban’s government reimposed it in November as the country faced a second wave of covid-19 cases.
South Africa also introduced temporary legislation in March 2020, as part of a package of measures to limit the
spread of covid-19. It stipulated that those publishing falsehoods about the disease could face fines or up to six
months in prison. Only a handful of people have been arrested. Those who have been prosecuted were social-
media users charged with promoting unscientific nonsense, such as a man who claimed that covid tests spread
the disease. So far, journalists have been fairly relaxed about the restrictions, in part because the government
listened to their concerns, reckons Izak Minnaar, a former broadcaster who works on disinformation issues as
part of the country’s National Editors’ Forum. Fact-checking of contentious social-media posts is done by an
independent body rather than one run by the government, for instance. But the law has set a precedent for
tighter curbs on the press. “We cannot make it permanent,” says Siyavuya Mzantsi, editor of the Cape Times.
Even as free-speech campaigners in rich democracies offer support to those fighting censorship in poorer, less
free places, their own governments are providing the would-be censors with cover, even inspiration. Germany’s
Network Enforcement Law (NetzDG), passed in 2017, is meant to protect readers from fake news and hate
speech by requiring social-media platforms to remove material deemed incendiary. More than a dozen
countries, from Russia to Turkey, have copied this legislation as a way to suppress dissent online. Many of these
countries expressly referred to the German law as justification for their repressive legislation. Turkey’s allows
the government to remove online content and reduce the bandwidth of social-media sites so much that they
become unusable. Jacob Mchangama and Joelle Fiss of Justitia, a Danish think-tank, have described the NetzDG
as “the Digital Berlin Wall” because it has accidentally become a “prototype for global online censorship”.
None so zealous
Converts to the cause of tackling fake news are often guilty of peddling the stuff themselves. Brazilian
politicians are in the process of passing a law against fake news. But the president, Jair Bolsonaro, has
downplayed the dangers of covid-19 and touted ineffective pills. Though he was infected in July last year, he
says his background as an athlete helped him shrug it off. He is cool on the law because he worries it will affect
his supporters, some of whom are also quick to spread misinformation. Alexander Lukashenko, the president of
Belarus, has prescribed saunas and hockey as cures for covid-19. In a survey of 1,406 journalists conducted by
the International Centre for Journalists, a non-profit organisation in Washington, 46% said that elected officials
were the source of misinformation relating to covid-19 that they had encountered. They also blamed
government agencies and networks of trolls linked to various states.
These laws are making journalists’ jobs harder. In Hungary they have made reporting more arduous. Sources
are less willing to talk. Atlatszo, an independent news site established in 2011, has three lawyers who do a legal
check of articles to make sure that everything complies with the regulation. Mr Orban’s government has become
more secretive. It is more reluctant to answer questions from independent media outlets. It has established a
central “Operative Unit” to deal with journalists’ inquiries. As a result questions to local hospitals, schools and
municipalities are now handled by national authorities. In Myanmar the “True News Information Team” exists
largely to suppress reports about crimes committed by the army, which since February 1st has been in charge of
the whole country.
In desperation some have gone into exile. Belarusian journalists have fled to Poland. Many Nicaraguan
reporters have moved to Costa Rica. After Lucia Pineda, a Nicaraguan journalist, was arrested and held in
prison for six months in 2019, she moved her news website, 100% Noticias, there. Gerall Chávez, another
Nicaraguan hack, co-founded a website called Nicaragua Actual but works out of Costa Rica, too. He still
worries that his work puts him in danger. Last summer he received death threats on Facebook, including a
cartoon showing him being killed. His parents, who are still in Nicaragua, were sent the same animation on a
USB stick.
Others are censoring themselves. In countries that have had such laws on the books for a while, this is already
apparent. Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, passed in 2018, imposes hefty fines on journalists or individuals
found guilty of “cyberterrorism”. It has created a culture of fear, one journalist explains, which silences
reporters. The government does not need new laws to do so. “Our legal system, our judiciary is so fragile that…
if the government wants to harass someone, they don’t need any piece of legislation,” he says.
Such repression is changing how journalists publish and where people seek their news. Some media outlets are
moving onto new platforms, such as Telegram, an online-messaging service. In Belarus the government
responded to big protests over a contested election in August by shutting down the internet and arresting scores
of journalists. Between mid-August and mid-November subscriptions to the Telegram channel for Tut.by, a
news website, grew by 28%. In Hungary many publishers are controlled by the government. During the
pandemic they have published nothing but articles praising the effectiveness of the state’s response, says Tamás
Bodoky, the editor of Atlatszo. His site, by contrast, has reported on controversies concerning the government’s
handling of the crisis. He reckons that explains the rise in its average monthly views from around 182,000 in
2019 to over 285,000 in 2020: “People were actively looking for articles about the pandemic which were not
government propaganda.” No laws can stop them doing that. ■
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governments-are-abusing-fake-news-laws

International Sections Business
Special report
The future of travel: The age of the wheelie-bag The airline industry: No heads in the clouds
. .
The environmental damage: Emission days Business travel: Video-conferencing rules
. .
Corporate jets: High flyers Testing and vaccines: Well travelled
. .
Tourism: The holiday only just began The future: Faster, higher, longer
. .
Sources and acknowledgments
.
International Sections Business
The age of the wheelie-bag
What will travel look like after the pandemic?

Covid-19 has brought international travel to a standstill. But it will recover and may even become a better
experience, says Simon Wright
Feb 11th 2021 |
LUGGAGE UNPACKS how international travel has changed down the ages. Adventurers in the 15th-century age of
discovery set sail in galleons loaded to the gunwales with supplies for voyages that might take years. Aristocrats
on a “grand tour” in the 18th century trekked around Europe for months in horse-drawn carriages packed with
trunks, servants and even furniture. The suitcase arrived at the end of the 19th century when spending several
weeks abroad became more common for the wealthy. By the 1970s tourists and executives needed to cart the
wherewithal for a few nights away through vast airports. And so the wheelie-bag came to symbolise the era of
mass travel.
The rise of the wheelie-bag reflects the falling cost and increasing speed of long-distance travel. Cheaper air
fares, rising incomes and more leisure time have made foreign trips routine and a holiday abroad accessible to
many in the rich world wishing to escape their daily stress. Travel brings new experiences and memories (or
moments to capture on Instagram). And if not every mind is broadened, surely few suffer the opposite effect. As
Mark Twain put it, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”
The ease of travel has not just expanded tourism. As companies have spread across the world so have their
workers. Business travel keeps multinational companies and supply chains connected. And the ability to get
away has let people spread around the world to work, learn or just have a change of scene. As families have
dispersed so has the need to keep in touch or attend weddings and birthday parties in foreign parts. It has
brought the world together by allowing family and friends to live farther apart.
Yet until recently few people went far. Travel was slow, difficult and expensive when it relied on wind or
horsepower. Steam and railways opened the gates a little wider. But getting far afield even 100 years ago took
an ocean liner or airship, a pricey way to go. A first-class cabin on the Titanic in 1912 started at £30 ($3,500
today); a transatlantic ticket on the Hindenburg cost $400 in 1936 (both one-way, as it later turned out). The big
surge in international travel came with flying. A train on the trans-Siberian route from Beijing to Moscow takes
over five days; a flight around seven hours. Yet the real game-changer was cheaper fares. In 1950 only 25m
people took a trip abroad, says the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). By 2019 the number
of trips had grown to 1.5bn (and that excludes migrants, refugees and visits of over a year).
Nearly three-fifths of international travellers arrived and departed by plane in 2019, compared with only 5% by
sea and 1% by train, according to UNWTO. The 35% of travellers crossing borders in a car were mostly
Europeans, inhabitants of the world’s largest travel market, taking advantage of their continent’s small size and
good roads. Going on holiday is the main motive for travel abroad, accounting for 55% of trips. Business travel
made up 11% of the total. Most of the rest was to visit families and friends abroad. Some travel for religious
reasons (2m Muslims visit Mecca every year); and around 15m sought medical treatment in 2017.
International travellers have filled tills for hotels, restaurants, car-hire firms and tour operators. Their spending
hit $1.5trn in 2019. Before covid-19, travel contributed 4.4% of GDP and 6.9% of employment in the OECD rich-
country club. International travel made up 6.5% of global exports in 2019, according to the World Trade
Organisation. In all, travel and tourism accounts for over 330m jobs, one in ten of the world’s total, claims the
World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).
Covid-19 has devastated an industry that relies on the freedom of people to move. International travel stopped
almost completely between March and May 2020, as four-fifths of countries closed their borders. Forbidden or
unable to get around, travellers have stayed put. International arrivals fell by 70-75% in 2020, estimates the
UNWTO, with 1bn fewer travellers and $1.1bn less spending (see chart). That is ten times the shortfall in travel
spending in 2009 after the financial crisis. And recovery looks far off, even with effective vaccines. The OECD
predicts that tourism will be among the “last sectors of the economy to…recover lost demand”.
It is not all dark clouds, however. Greenhouse-gas emissions by commercial jets plunged in 2020, intensifying
debate about how to curtail this pollution permanently. Destinations blighted by overtourism have had a break.
And optimists reckon that in the long run the link between growing wealth and the urge to travel will remain
unbroken. This report will argue that, for all its high short-term costs, the pandemic may accelerate trends that
will eventually make travel both easier and less damaging. Today’s travel industry may have taken a battering—
but the new one that emerges could be better than ever.■
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travel-look-like-after-the-pandemic

No heads in the clouds
Could covid-19 shake up air travel for the better?

Governments’ re-entry into airlines may spur more competition
Feb 11th 2021 |
ECONOMY PASSENGERS taking one of the few international flights still running have had an unusually pleasant
experience of late. Exasperated cabin crew battling to close overhead lockers full to bursting with wheelie-bags,
duty-free booze and laptop cases have been replaced by masked attendants presiding over planes two-thirds full
at best and often with only a handful of passengers. Some report sleeping across empty rows of seats. The
collapse of passenger numbers and revenues will damage the industry. Yet previous disruptions have shaken up
the airlines to the benefit of the flying public. It could happen again.
The advantages of the previous big interruption to air travel, the second world war, are debatable. The
experience of servicemen crammed into uncomfortably spartan transport aircraft, argues Eric Zuelow in his
book, “A History of Modern Tourism”, created a generation without pre-war expectations of air travel as
glamorous and luxurious. When those same aircraft were converted for civilian use, travellers accepted being
packed in like sardines. The cattle-truck economics worked in passengers’ favour when deregulation brought
competition to a previously highly regulated and often state-controlled industry. Air fares tumbled everywhere.
Between 1995 and 2014 they fell by half in real terms, according to IATA, a club of the world’s airlines.
World wars aside, past crises have passed speedily. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2009
were “nasty shocks”, says Brian Pearce, chief economist of IATA, but “small bumps in the road” compared with
covid-19. At its height in April 2020 flying was down by 94% over a year earlier, measured by total revenue
passenger kilometres (RPKs). Current estimates are that RPKs in 2020 will be down by 66% on 2019, when
(including domestic flights) 4.5bn passengers took to the skies. Only 1.8bn people buckled up last year. By the
end of it, some 30% of the global fleet was still grounded, according to Cirium, an aviation-data firm. And the
sense of optimism that had slowly grown took a fresh hit early in 2021 as more transmissible and dangerous
variants of the virus emerged, leading to renewed border closures and capacity cuts.
The plunge comes after years of bumper growth. In each 15-year period since 1988 RPKS doubled. They were
expected to do so again between 2018 and 2033, according to Airbus, the European half of the duopoly that
builds the world’s biggest passenger jets. Boeing, its American rival, notes an acceleration over the past decade,
when growth averaged 6.5% per year, above the long-term average of 5%. Darren Hulst of Boeing is confident
of an eventual return to a growth trend of 5% a year, even if over the decade from 2019 the number may be
closer to 3.7%. In the meantime it will be a rough ride for airlines. Only 2.8bn passengers are expected to take
to the air this year.
Signs of recovery are scant. Domestic flying in China and Russia has largely recovered, but in Australia it is
still down by 86% and in America, the world’s biggest domestic market, it has fallen by 60%. International
routes are suffering the most. Despite huge capacity cuts (only a quarter of the international flights scheduled a
year earlier were still running in January), load factors are still low. Planes are often taking off a third full at
most.
The opportunity for travellers to stretch out comes at a heavy cost. Full service will not resume for a long while.
Mr Pearce says the gradual deployment of vaccines merely makes him more confident about his baseline
forecast of a return to 2019 levels by 2024. Not all air travel will recover at the same pace. Domestic flying will
continue its rebound, followed by regional international traffic. The last part of the industry to refill its seats will
be long-haul flying. This has a disproportionate impact on legacy airlines that still rely most on long-haul
international routes.
All airlines face a bleak period. Rather than increase by 4% on 2019 levels to $872bn, air-transport revenues in
2020 have plummeted to $340bn, reckons IATA. In a good year the industry makes an operating profit of $50bn.
Losses for 2020 are forecast at $118bn and, even if the second half of this year sees a recovery, they will still be
around $38bn in 2021.
Airlines have responded by slashing costs, getting rid of staff and cutting fleets, yet carriers continue to burn
cash at a rate of $5bn-6bn a month. Looking at the cash and liquid assets of carriers in mid-2020, the median
airline had enough funding to last just eight-and-a-half months (or half way through this month), according to
IATA. Some big names have succumbed. Norwegian Air Shuttle, one of Europe’s largest low-cost carriers,
sought bankruptcy protection in November 2020. Dozens of smaller airlines including FlyBe, a British low-cost
carrier, Virgin Australia and Avianca, based in Latin America, have gone to the wall.
Two types of carrier have the best chance of survival. Those with sound business models and strong balance-
sheets, such as Ryanair in Europe, Southwest in America and AirAsia, are all low-cost carriers ready for a
rebound. And legacy carriers, mostly propped up by governments, will keep their grip on long-haul flying when
it returns.
Subsidies, subsidies
Support for airlines has been prodigious. Governments are used to helping airlines for reasons of national pride
and to maintain international connections. Many countries in the Middle East, India and Africa cling to
ownership of loss-making national carriers. Others are just returning to the orbit of governments. Bruno Le
Maire, France’s finance minister, has promised to “do what is necessary to guarantee the survival of Air
France”. Germany’s Lufthansa has had a bumper aid package. America’s airlines, never shy to extend an
upturned palm, benefited handsomely from its CARES stimulus act, signed into law in March 2020, which set
aside $25bn in grants for airlines and the same in loans and guarantees.
The result will be an industry wallowing in debt and beholden once again to the state. Aviation Strategy, a
consultancy, puts the total in 2020 of government support plus loans from banks, other investors and aircraft-
leasing companies at $600bn, an increase of $170bn since the end of 2019. Keith McMullen, a partner at the
consultancy, points out that most government aid has come in the form of loans, the terms of which incentivise
rapid repayment. But the fragile state of the industry will make that tricky. European governments may then be
obliged to swap debt for equity.
A return to the days before deregulation and the rise of low-cost carriers, when governments controlled national
flag-carriers, set (high) fares and decided routes based on national goals rather than demand, is the fear of
Andrew Charlton of Aviation Advocacy, another consultancy. America’s big carriers, Asian giants such as
Singapore Airlines, and Lufthansa and Air France-KLM may be subject to government meddling. The terms of
bail-outs for Air France stipulate that it must no longer compete with high-speed rail on some routes;
Lufthansa’s decide what planes it may purchase.
That could give the low-cost carriers an advantage. Michael O’Leary, boss of Ryanair, admits to mixed feelings
about state aid. Although it is “hugely distorting”, it is also likely to “sustain high-cost employment”, he says.
And high-cost competitors are what he and his kind thrive on. Legacy airlines, already having to compete harder
on short-haul routes and often weighed down by heavy pension-fund deficits, could struggle to adapt to an
uncertain future that will require flexibility and nimbleness as well as lower costs.
Moreover, legacy carriers rely especially heavily on lucrative business travellers, a sector that may never
recover fully, to subsidise seats at the back of the plane. If business customers and feeder routes dwindle, the
complex web of domestic and international flights becomes harder to sustain, reducing connections and forcing
up long-haul prices.
Not all will suffer. British Airways has slashed costs and raised capital and is fast-tracking its previous
restructuring effort to compete with low-cost rivals. Other models look riskier. The Gulf carriers—Emirates,
Etihad and Qatar Airways—that have grown swiftly in recent years may struggle. They lack a large domestic
market to fall back on, unlike their Chinese competitors, and passengers may prefer not to mix with people from
all over the world as they change planes at vast airports in the Gulf. If their model falters, the sky will be clearer
for China’s state-controlled behemoths, which are already eating away at long-haul routes.
Low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and Wizz Air, based in eastern Europe, sniff opportunities. Mr O’Leary has
promised to slash fares to rekindle his business. His ability to compete with airlines under the heavy hand of the
state will be helped by several factors. The availability of bargains from embattled planemakers and leasing
companies will help carriers in decent health or with new business models. Ryanair confirmed an order for
another 75 Boeing 737MAXS in December, taking its total to 210. The plane’s grounding after two fatal crashes
had led to cancelled orders, so a big vote of confidence from Ryanair was surely worth a hefty discount. Wizz
Air, which relies on more robust parts of the market such as younger flyers and east Europeans going west for
work and returning to visit family, also has big growth plans. Southwest, America’s biggest low-cost carrier, is
in expansion mode as the country’s legacy carriers retreat. Tony Fernandes, boss of Air Asia, based in Malaysia,
is “quietly optimistic” about 2021, and hopes to start three new airlines in the region.
A surplus of pilots where there was a dearth and unemployed cabin crew looking for work could also boost low-
cost carriers. Once-scarce landing slots at busy airports may become more available. And, if prices rise for long-
haul seats, this may rekindle interest in low-cost long-haul services, which have a patchy history. The demise of
Norwegian was largely down to its inability to make profits on long-haul routes. The business model of short-
haul carriers does not easily translate to long-haul flights, where fuel is a bigger share of costs and schedules are
compromised by time differences and airport curfews that do not affect short-haul travel. But a new plane,
Airbus’s A321XLR, a single-aisle jet with the ability to fly long-haul routes, could change the equation again.
The commercial-aviation business will be smaller for years to come. Yet opportunities abound, especially if
legacy carriers fail to adapt. Higher fares and lower costs will attract competitors that threaten the old guard. In
20 years’ time air travel will be back on track and growing again but the old names may no longer be on the
tarmac. Just as Pan Am and TWA are distant memories, so a clutch of now familiar airlines may become relics of
the past.■
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covid-19-shake-up-air-travel-for-the-better

Emission days
How today’s reviled airlines could become greener

The pandemic has drawn attention to the environmental damage caused by air travel
Feb 11th 2021 |
SKIES CLEARED of much commercial aviation gave plenty of ammunition to those who see air-travel emissions as
one of the gravest threats to the environment. Travel by commercial jet attracts more criticism than its 2-3%
share of global carbon emissions seems to justify. Yet despite this seemingly modest contribution it is (or was,
until covid-19 struck) one of the fastest-growing sources, the worst contributor of all emissions per kilometre
travelled of transport and is likely to continue on its upward path. The growing ease and falling cost of travel,
plus a lack of any regulations to curb emissions, means that unchecked a rise to as much as 9% of total carbon
emissions by 2050 has looked plausible.
As far back as 2009 the airline industry pledged to cut emissions from flying by half from levels in 2005 by
2050. More recently flygskam (flight shame), a Swedish word that sums up a growing worry about the
environmental impact of flying, protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion, whose followers have blockaded
airports, and other anti-flying movements have all reminded the airline industry that for too long it has got away
with failing to tackle the growth in carbon emissions.
The industry has adeptly managed to sidestep regulation. Aviation fuel is exempt from taxes on international
flights, thanks to the Chicago convention, still the main rulebook for the industry even though it was agreed in
1944. In 2013 the EU tried to add international flights to its emissions-trading system, but the industry
successfully resisted. As a compromise the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a UN agency, came up
with CORSIA, a global scheme to offset emissions. Although criticised for its toothlessness—it is voluntary until
2027 and does not include domestic flights—CORSIA starts its pilot phase this year.
Yet carbon emissions per passenger have fallen by over 50% since 1990. New technology serving the
commercial interests of airlines (fuel typically accounts for 15-20% of airlines’ operating costs) has had the
side-effect of lowering emissions. Every generation of aircraft, such as the newest short-haul planes from
Airbus and Boeing, is typically 15-20% more fuel-efficient than the one it replaces, mostly because of
improvements in engines. Other bits of kit have helped. Airbus’s “sharklets” or Boeing’s “winglets”, the
specialised wingtip additions on new planes, have improved fuel efficiency by 3-4%. Better business models,
such as low-cost carriers that pack in more passengers, have ensured that aircraft are flying around with more
people on board. Average load factors have improved by some ten percentage points over the past 15 years to
83% in 2019—though that was pre-covid.
Emissions per passenger will fall further in the next few years, if only because flying is unlikely to return to
levels of 2019 for three or four years. Cleaner skies will result from the early retirement of older, less efficient
planes as airlines cut capacity. The oldest, most inefficient models such as the Boeing 747 jumbo jet and the
Airbus A340 may stay on the ground for good. Other older planes will be retired earlier and replaced with more
efficient models.
Rail v air
The pandemic might even see some shift to rail, especially in Europe where trains and planes compete on
international routes and an established high-speed network can be expanded. China’s domestic market could see
similar competition between rail and jet engine. UBS, a bank, reckons that the use of high-speed trains could lead
to zero growth in air traffic between European destinations from 2018 to 2028. Governments should be keen to
invest in high-speed rail in Europe given their commitments to net-zero-carbon emissions by 2050. Further
liberalisation across the EU will expose state-run incumbents to more competition.
Yet rail can never compete with airlines on long-haul routes that traverse large stretches of water. So a bigger
leap to net-zero emissions from aviation has come to the fore. Airbus and Boeing, the duopoly atop the aircraft
supply chain, have been clobbered by big losses, production cuts and fears for the financial health of their
suppliers and their customers. Boeing’s woes have been compounded by the damage from the grounding of the
737MAX for almost two years after two fatal crashes. The plane was eventually recertified for a return to service
by American regulators in November. Yet the pair will continue to sell planes and these will largely replace
older ones rather than expand fleets. So the share of newer, cleaner planes in the world’s fleets will grow.
Airbus and Boeing have gone further, with plans for aviation to clean up its act more comprehensively. The
European firm hopes to have net-zero-emission planes that can ply short-haul routes in commercial service by
2035. The three concept aircraft it has unveiled, including a futuristic “blended wing” design, use hydrogen as a
fuel. In January Boeing said that by 2030 it will start delivering commercial planes powered entirely by
biofuels, another way to cut emissions. These are already in use in limited quantities by several airlines, blended
with regular fuel, but are still prohibitively expensive—perhaps twice the price of kerosene.
Scale should bring prices down. And turning plant matter and waste into fuel has a carbon footprint of its own.
Rolls-Royce, a jet-engine maker, nevertheless reckons a 75% reduction of carbon emissions is possible, with
more to come. Other zero-emissions technologies are in development. Startups have been testing small battery-
powered planes. Eviation, an Israeli firm, hopes that Alice, capable of flying nine passengers up to 800km, will
fly for the first time next year. Others, such as ZeroAvia, are trying out fuel cells that use hydrogen to generate
electricity to power engines.
Airbus expects its new plane to be powered by hydrogen directly as a fuel in new turbofans of the sort now
found in large passenger jets. Big investments will be needed, starting with engine makers that must work out
how hydrogen, which burns at a far higher temperature than kerosene, can be used safely. Boeing’s plans
require some adaptation of existing engines. Given that new planes can take seven or eight years to get from
drawing-board to commercial service, that gives Boeing what Robert Spingarn of Credit Suisse, another bank,
calls “breathing room”. Airbus is likely to launch its hydrogen programme formally in 2027. So gradually, after
2030 if the timetable holds, new planes will have far lower emissions and after 2035 short-haul jets should have
net-zero emissions. The hydrogen technology could be extended to twin-aisle planes, all of which should be
using more biofuels. No switch will be flicked but in around a decade the journey to clean up travel will start in
earnest.■
climate-change hub
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todays-reviled-airlines-could-become-greener
Video-conferencing rules
Business travel may never fully recover from covid-19

Business class was late to the game. It might be early to leave too
Feb 11th 2021 |
BUSINESS TRAVEL is as old as the traders who carted silks and spices between ancient civilisations. The executive
tapping at a laptop as other flyers recline their seats and settle down with a glass of wine is a more recent
phenomenon. The physical movement of goods on ships and planes and the supply chains that underpin global
manufacturing and services firms rely on an army of businessfolk flying around the planet. But that army is in
retreat.
Executives, diplomats and government employees, and NGO staff still trot the globe. Bosses of big companies
often spend more time in corporate jets than with their families. At lower altitude workers travel to fit out
factories, attend trade shows and conferences, launch new products or meet clients. Business class is a recent
arrival. Airlines pitched it between first and economy class only in the late 1970s. Such travel has grown a lot in
the past 25 years. According to Bernstein, an equity-research firm, total spending on international and domestic
travel in 1995 amounted to $2.1trn, of which $400bn was for business. By 2019 around a quarter of the total, or
$1.3trn, was spent on business travel.
Covid-19 has hit corporate jaunts hard. A poll in January by the Global Business Travel Association found that
79% of its members had cancelled all or most business travel. Credit Suisse reckons 2021 will see 65% fewer
international business trips than in 2019. Bill Gates thinks the shift will be permanent. “My prediction would be
that over 50% of business travel…will go away,” he says. That may be too pessimistic. The boss of one aviation
firm sees a full return. Bernstein goes for up to 24% never coming back. Credit Suisse reckons 10-20% will
disappear for good. Citi, another bank, plumps for 25%. Any recovery will be long in coming. McKinsey, a
consultancy, points out that business travel rebounded more slowly than leisure travel after earlier disruptions,
noting that after the financial crisis the number of international business trips from America fell by 13% (against
7% for leisure travel) and took five years to recover, compared with two years for tourism.
Every knock that travel has taken in recent decades has been followed by similar predictions of permanent
decline. Each time it has failed to materialise. Why is this time different? Vaccines, fast-testing regimes and the
dropping of travel bans might yet open the door for leisure travel. But Zoom, Google hangouts, Skype and other
video-conferencing services have a better chance of permanently replacing business-class tickets, for several
reasons. One is that companies badly hit by covid-19 will be under pressure to cut costs—and travel is an easy
target. Second, a blizzard of pledges to cut carbon emissions and hit climate-change targets make cutting flying
“low-hanging fruit”, says Paul Flatters of the Trajectory Partnership, a consultancy. Third, even though vaccines
may reopen borders to many travellers, so long as covid-19 is at large firms will be reluctant to sanction trips
not strictly required.
Some types of business trip are harder to conduct over a screen and so likely to revive. Vik Krishnan of
McKinsey notes that these include sales and client meetings. Personal contact, especially when seeking new
business, is hard to replicate digitally. And once one company resumes meetings in person, so will its
competitors. Manufacturers will struggle to monitor remotely factories in far-flung corners of their supply
chains. Trade shows and conferences that bring many people together in close proximity are more vulnerable,
notes Bernstein. Hybrid shows, with some people present and others joining online may attract a larger audience
who might otherwise have neither the time nor the excuse to attend, says Caroline Bremner of Euromonitor, a
data firm. Plenty of low-level internal meetings will migrate permanently to the online world. One executive
who has not flown in months happily notes that the sort of trip that required flying halfway around the world for
one short meeting will go for good. Though the number of trips is likely to fall, their length may increase as
executives try to fit in more, perhaps visiting several outposts in one country in a single trip.
If around a fifth of business travel never returns, that will have big consequences for airlines. Most
accommodate some business travellers. Legacy airlines, which rely disproportionately on long-haul business
customers, will suffer the most. But even low-cost carriers, which have targeted business travellers in recent
years with flexible tickets at higher fares, will feel the pinch. Some 17m of easyJet’s 96m passengers in 2019
were flying on business, almost a fifth of the total and up from 10m in 2012. Southwest is even more reliant,
with two-fifths of passengers paying business fares. But the mark-up over economy fares is generally lower than
a legacy carrier’s price premium of three- to six-times as much as economy.
For the likes of IAG, Lufthansa and Air France-KLM, around 25-30% of revenues come from passengers flopping
into business-class seats. A rule of thumb for legacy airlines is that business class comprises 10% of tickets, but
40% of revenues and up to 80% of profits. Citi reckons that every 1% fall in business custom knocks 10% off
profits. Some airlines are trying to change how they operate. BA, which is part of IAG, is trying to sell business-
class seats to leisure travellers, but it can never charge as much as to a late-booking executive. The secular
decline in business travel will mean a smaller business cabin—and higher long-haul economy fares.
The likelihood that lucrative business travel will rebound more slowly than leisure is a blow to airlines that
depend disproportionately on companies picking up the tab. A permanent decline will make life harder still. Yet
for the executive who has had to spend weeks of every year on the road the chance to leave the wheelie-bag in
the cupboard more often and settle down in front of a computer screen instead may come as something of a
relief.■
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travel-may-never-fully-recover-from-covid-19

High flyers
The pandemic has hurt corporate jets less than commercial ones
The wealthy are not bound by airline schedules
Feb 11th 2021 |
CORPORATE JETS are emerging from covid-19 in better shape than commercial ones. Bosses of big companies
and the super-rich have long relied on owning or chartering their own small jets. As Jim Currier of Honeywell, a
conglomerate, points out, business aviation suffered as much as commercial airlines at the start of the pandemic,
but recovery has been “steady, consistent and at a higher pace”. The number of flights undertaken by scheduled
airlines was down by 49% in 2020 on a year earlier whereas business flights were down by only 24%, according
to WingX, a private-aviation data firm. Mr Currier expects a full recovery by mid-2021.
Economic jolts have taken a toll on business aviation, which had barely recovered from the financial crisis of
2008-09. Annual sales of new planes fell by almost half from a peak of 1,200 in 2008 to 700 a year, as the mood
in boardrooms turned against corporate jets. But a health crisis is different to an economic one. Chad Anderson
of Jetcraft, which sells new and used business planes, notes that second-hand planes have not been dumped on
the market as in the financial crisis. With so many international flights grounded, executives and the ultra-rich
may be joined permanently by the merely wealthy.
A new class of private traveller has emerged that Mr Currier characterises as those who used to fly first class
but, though they can afford it, have not seen any value in chartering a private jet. It is a big step up in price,
perhaps five to ten times, says Richard Koe, of WingX. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of
“first timers”, who want to avoid crowds on commercial jets and in airports, has doubled with covid-19.
Charter companies are doing what they can to hold onto these new clients by offering more flexible deals than
the long-term commitments usually required. Mr Koe reckons that the outcome will be an industry that provides
a more flexible on-demand service in future. But as private jets emit up to 20-times as much carbon per
passenger as a commercial flight, the industry will also have to make more effort to introduce sustainable fuels,
carbon-offsetting programmes, and hybrid and electric technology.
The mega-rich may also lead the way to the next step change in the speed of travel. Supersonic planes could cut
journey times almost in half. Several are on the drawing board. Aerion, an American firm, hopes to have an
eight-to-ten-seat supersonic jet on sale by 2025. Boom Supersonic plans a larger 55-seat all-business-class jet.
The latest holiday destination for the ultra-rich may open the door to even speedier jaunts. Space tourism may
change travel if the technology to take a few people to the edge of space can be developed into hypersonic
flights at mind-boggling speeds. Elon Musk’s SpaceX hopes to use its giant Starship rocket to fly 100 people
around the world in the blink of an eye: New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes, and for less than the current price
of a business-class ticket.
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pandemic-has-hurt-corporate-jets-less-than-commercial-ones

Well travelled
New health and other apps may make travel easier

Restarting international travel means reassuring travellers than they are safe. Technology can help
Feb 11th 2021 |
VENETIANS CAN be credited with one significant intervention in the history of travel and one near miss.
Disgruntlement over the constant din led them to consider a ban on wheelie-bags in Venice’s alleyways in 2014,
though it was never enacted. Seven centuries earlier the city pioneered the use of international borders to stop an
infectious disease. The word quarantine is derived from a requirement for ships to anchor offshore for 40 days if
plague was suspected. Perhaps inconvenient for ancient mariners, the impact on the travel business of attempts
to keep covid-19 at bay has been greater. Efforts to restore confidence have accelerated moves to make travel
more digital, contactless and seamless.
Reinstating international travel depends on reassuring people that it is safe and finding ways acceptable to
health authorities to let passengers fly. Long quarantines are almost as much of a deterrent to travel as a ban,
says Andrew Charlton of Aviation Advocacy, a consultancy. “The public are not scared of flying, they are
scared of arriving.” Getting people back onto planes is not a problem, if the rebound in domestic markets where
covid-19 persists is a guide. A poll in July 2020 by UBS found that only 10% of European leisure travellers and
9% of businessfolk would refuse to fly in the foreseeable future. In October data collected by IATA found that
only 44 out of 1.2bn passengers since the start of 2020 were known or thought to have contracted covid-19 on a
plane. IATA’s medical adviser notes that, even if 90% of cases went unreported, that implies just one infection
for 2.7m passengers.
Commercial jets are fitted with a grade of air filter found in operating theatres. The air on board is replaced 20-
30 times an hour. Seating arrangements help. Boeing reckons that sitting side by side in an aircraft facing a seat
back is equivalent to sitting seven feet apart indoors on the ground. New measures make flying safer still. Some
airlines are keeping middle seats in economy free. Hygiene practices go far beyond the cabin crew sauntering
down the aisle collecting rubbish. Queuing for the toilet is banned on some flights and airlines have introduced
rules to keep passengers apart by ensuring they get on and off in strict row order. Planes are thoroughly
disinfected between flights.
The main obstacles to a rapid rebound are closed borders and ever-changing regulations for entry, as covid-19
ebbs and flows. Out of 220 countries monitored by Kayak, a travel firm, 50 remain closed to air travel, and most
of the rest have some restrictions. Effective vaccines give hope, but Gloria Guevara, boss of the WTTC, says the
travel industry “cannot wait”. Her organisation says that 198m jobs are at risk if current restrictions remain in
place until the summer.
The aviation industry has pushed testing to get planes back in the air. But agreement on how, where and when
to test is covered by such a mish-mash of different requirements as to make flying even more troublesome. The
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Americans should have a test one-to-three days
before flying and three-to-five days after a trip abroad, and also isolate at home for seven days. It also requires
travellers to America to have evidence of a negative test. Many other countries require a test as a condition of
entry. This is often accompanied by checks on arrival and a period in quarantine, sometimes in a hotel at the
traveller’s expense. A PCR test, often required by countries that insist on a test before travelling, can cost $50-
150.
Until fast, accurate and cheap tests are available or vaccinations are widespread, the hope is that a standard pre-
departure regime could allow a restart of international travel. Airlines think trials of different systems may
provide evidence that pre-flight testing is enough to dispense with quarantine rules. IATA and ACI World, a
global airports association, have called for an internationally recognised pre-flight testing regime to replace
quarantine.
If such systems are to work, mutually agreed standards and some way of showing that passengers are covid-free
and/or vaccinated will be needed. Qantas’s boss, Alan Joyce, reckons a valid vaccination “passport” may
become a general pre-boarding requirement. This has led to a flurry of activity to develop digital-health passes.
IATA is promoting Travel Pass, a digital-health app, that allows governments to verify tests and identities of
passengers presenting a result issued by a recognised laboratory. Free to travellers, airlines will pay a small fee.
A more recent vaccination credential initiative, backed by tech giants including Microsoft and Oracle, has a
similar aim.
Such technology will become common, reckons Arnaud Vaissié of International SOS, the world’s biggest travel-
security firm. AOKpass, its digital-health pass, is secure and easily readable using blockchain technology. Apps
like this will be the basis for a new focus on health in travel. Mr Vaissié notes that, after 9/11, security went
from being an obscure corporate function to the main priority in many boardrooms. Health information will
become as vital to international travel as a passport is today.
The experience of electronic tickets for airlines, which went from 20% of the total in 2004 to 100% by 2008,
shows that digital data-sharing can cut costs and make travel easier. Technical hurdles remain to making
different health systems interoperable with each other and with airlines’ passenger-information systems. Jeffrey
Goh, boss of Star Alliance, the world’s biggest airline alliance, says the industry is resigned to living with
multiple passes. Personal data will need to be secure but systems must also be flexible enough to reveal what
health data is required where—lots on arrival in snooping Singapore but little apart from covid-free status in
America, say. And a way needs to be found not to discriminate against passengers who are unable to take a
vaccine.
It helps that the travel industry has long been working on how to make journeys more seamless. Steve Peterson
of IBM, another company working on a digital-health pass, says such systems could be the “backbone” for
storing more data, allowing a new level of personalisation in travel. He cites the example of a passenger with a
trip from London to New York that includes a plane ticket, hotel and transport on arrival. If something changes,
such as a delayed flight, an app loaded with personal preferences can automatically rebook all these elements. It
may eventually book the entire trip, with a traveller just entering where and when to go and letting details of
past journeys and personal preferences guide the choice of flight, hotel and so on.
Passage through airports may be about to get easier as well. Jeff Lennon of Vision-Box, a Portuguese operator
of automated border controls, argues that “biometrics is the enabler…the face is the key”. An app will store a
person’s credentials, cameras can then recognise the traveller at security and boarding gates will automatically
open. Travel may thus become a more seamless, even personalised experience, with business customers greeted
by name and even given their favourite drink. Nina Brooks of ACI World reports that some 50 airports are trying
out biometrics. The ideal outcome would be continued travel without most of today’s hassles.■
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health-and-other-apps-may-make-travel-easier

The holiday only just began
Tourism will rebound after the pandemic

It could even improve, if properly managed
Feb 11th 2021 |
IT IS AN unfortunate fact that the ease of throwing things into a wheelie-bag and travelling far and wide helped
spread covid-19 around the world. The effects on leisure travel and destinations that rely on tourism will be felt
for years to come. But just as the way we travel may improve as a result, so the chance for countries to rethink
tourism industries could turn a bruised and battered industry into a better one.
The pursuit of pleasure using cultural pursuits as cover goes back to the days of the grand tourists, who trawled
Europe’s artistic heritage as well as indulging in more hedonistic activities. As souvenirs they returned with
paintings, sculptures and sometimes syphilis. Travel was hard and expensive. The earl of Salisbury spent the
equivalent of nearly £500,000 today on his grand tour in the 18th century, according to MBNA, a credit-card firm.
Even 50 years ago foreign travel was a luxury pursuit. In 1970 a return flight from New York to London cost
around $500 (equivalent to $3,500 today).
Lower fares and the rise of the internet have made holidays cheaper and easier to arrange. Airlines, hotel chains,
car-hire firms and other businesses have moved online. Dedicated internet travel agents like Expedia and
Booking.com have emerged. Online peer-to-peer review sites offer a mostly honest assessment of hotels,
restaurants and tourist sites. Airbnb and its competitors have created a new class of accommodation. The
frictional costs of travel have fallen sharply.
Such is the stunning growth of tourism that the 72% decline in trips in the first ten months of 2020 on a year
earlier merely took international travel back to where it was in 1990. Leisure travel accounts for the biggest
slice but the rest contributes too. Business travellers stay in hotels, eat at restaurants and hire cars. Some visits
to relatives or friends may be barely distinguishable from a holiday.
Not only are there more trips, but the world is a bigger oyster. In 1950 the top 15 destinations—with America,
France, Italy and Spain the most visited—claimed 97% of tourist arrivals. By 2015 that share had dropped to
just over half. Europe, with it historic cities, countryside and beaches, still rules, taking just over half of all
international travellers. That is twice the share of the Asia-Pacific region, the next most popular area. Europe
rakes in the most receipts, around 37% of the global total, worth some $619bn in 2019. France and Spain are the
most popular countries for a visit. The top spots may not have changed, but their arrivals have. Chinese visits
overseas have grown from just 9m trips in 1999 to 150m in 2018.
Travellers’ preference for richer countries has created large industries. Spain relied on domestic and foreign
visitors for 11.8% of GDP in 2019, France 7.4% and Mexico 8.7%. Poorer countries lean even more on tourist
dollars. America is the biggest country for travel spending, some $1.8trn in 2019, but overseas visitors have put
tourism at the heart of many economies. In Aruba it accounts for nearly three-quarters of GDP; in most other
small Caribbean islands it is also the main economic activity. Other poorer countries are less reliant overall but
have vast tourist industries. Thailand welcomed around 10m foreign tourists in 2001. By 2019 it had grown
fourfold (with a quarter of the total coming from China), bringing in 1.9trn baht ($60bn) and contributing some
18% of GDP.
The emptying of tourist trails and resorts resembling ghost towns is causing massive upheaval. UNCTAD
estimated that losses could amount to 2.8% of world output if international arrivals dropped by 66% in 2020.
The OECD now reckons that the drop was more like 80%. And the expectation is that international arrivals will
probably not recover to pre-covid levels until 2023.
Tourism is a resilient industry. But it faces a downturn like no other. Firms reliant on visitors may not be best
placed to survive. According to the WTCC, around 80% of tourist businesses worldwide, from hotels to
restaurants to tour guides, are small businesses. Large hotel chains may have the balance-sheets to weather the
storm or the management skills to reconfigure their business to cater more to domestic travellers. Small
businesses probably lack the cash to invest in equipment for contactless payments or better cleaning and
hygiene to reassure returning tourists.
The uncertain path to recovery raises questions over what will remain. The UNWTO reckons that countries with a
big share of domestic tourism—America, China and India have the largest home markets—will recover more
quickly. Travel restrictions have kept China’s high-rollers at home, giving its fanciest hotels their best year ever.
But even domestic tourism is far from a saviour. Britain and Spain, for example, reckon on a decrease in
domestic tourism of 45-50% in 2020.
These problems have prompted various responses to keep businesses alive. Some countries such as France,
which launched an $18bn bail-out in May, have aimed cash directly at tourist businesses. Others are trying to
reassure tourists that their countries are safe by developing protocols and guidelines for tourism workers. Luís
Araújo, president of the Portuguese National Tourism Authority, says his organisation has arranged training for
60,000 workers at restaurants, hotels and travel agents to create a safer travel experience. Finland and Greece
are among countries with new training programmes aimed at improving the digital presence of tourist
businesses.
Some parts of the tourist economy will do better than others. Travel firms have noted a rising preference for
self-catering and private accommodation over hotels. Coastal and rural locations, far from crowds, will recover
faster than cities. Cyril Ranque of Expedia notes that his customers are more inclined to drive to domestic
locations but then to stay longer than before. But these trends, he believes, are “all temporary”.
Waiting for the rebound
The travel bug seems certain to outlast the virus. Its first manifestation may be “revenge tourism” as people get
away after a year of lockdowns and quarantines. But some things will change for good. A preoccupation in
previous centuries, health and hygiene will re-emerge as central to holiday planning. Guidebooks from
Baedeker, a German publisher, were never reticent about warning travellers of the filth they faced in foreign
climes even in the early 20th century, bemoaning the “evil sanitary reputation of Naples”. Destinations will
continue to boast of their scenery, cuisine and beaches but safety and hygiene will become as important, says
Ian Yeoman, a tourism academic at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. This may benefit longer-
established destinations, tilting visitors away from poorer countries.
Those countries will not be deliberately trying to avoid tourists, even so. Some remote places have used the
hiatus to build a better online presence, says Mr Ranque. He points to other innovations to make travel less of a
bother. Flexibility, to cope with last-minute changes of plans, will endure. Late or even last-minute bookings are
more common. Josh Belkin of Hotels.com reports that, because people are taking more staycations and
travelling by car rather than plane, they are booking hotels later, on average 13 days before a trip rather than the
20 before covid-19.
Many travel companies and airlines have introduced more flexible rebooking policies. Faced by a wave of
cancellations as covid-19 took hold, Expedia introduced “one-click cancellation” to deal with all elements from
flights and hotels to car hire. Firms that use its platform can deploy new tools to add special offers to listings to
encourage last-minute bookers and manage refunds. Gathering real-time data on searches, and sharing them
with businesses that relied on information from previous years to set prices, could also lead to a better match
between supply and demand and encourage more dynamic pricing. In future, personalised customer data should
allow travel firms to recommend holidays in a more focused way.
Covid-19 presents a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move towards more sustainable and resilient models of
tourism development”, says the OECD. “Tourism was seen as unambiguously good 20 years ago...now it’s a
double-edged sword,” says Paul Flatters of the Trajectory Partnership. Concerns about the impact of tourism on
the environment predate the pandemic. But tourism also broadens awareness of different cultures and
environmental issues and helps pay for wildlife conservation, as well as providing employment and economic
development.
Many destinations failed to strike a balance between tourist numbers and local sensibilities. Venetians have long
protested against vast cruise ships, prompting some firms to drop the city from their itineraries. Venice also
plans to impose a levy on all visitors from 2022. Anti-tourist slogans daubed on walls have greeted visitors to
Barcelona, which has clamped down on illegal holiday letting (as have Berlin and other places in which holiday
lets have replaced rental properties, forcing up prices for residents). Amsterdam is considering a ban on non-
residents buying cannabis in its notorious coffee shops, to encourage a better class of tourist. Machu Picchu,
where trails were overrun, imposed a pre-covid limit of 5,000 visitors a day. That will be cut to 675 to ensure
social distancing.
Covid-19 offers the chance not only to reset tourism to reduce the numbers who spend the least but also to
spread them out. Barcelona has run a campaign to encourage people to venture away from the old city. Thailand
has a scheme to promote 55 less visited parts of the country. Concentrating on attracting fewer tourists ready to
spend more is one way to promote a healthier business. And sustainability may become a more important guide
to choices as awareness of climate change and the less welcome effects of tourism grow. Getting the right
balance between economic, environmental and social benefits and costs has seen a new emphasis on
sustainability. Mexico thinks covid-19 will help with its “Mexico Reborn Sustainable” campaign, which aims in
part to create new routes that spread tourist dollars more widely and promote destinations that tap into fast-
growing nature tourism.
A dynamic tourism economy depends on the availability of a variety of services, from accommodation and good
services to attractions, activities and events. Whether a critical mass of services will remain everywhere is less
clear. Less choice and competition, if businesses go bust, may mean higher prices. The rapid growth of tourist
economies in recent years suggests they can be rebuilt swiftly. But for all those governments that redesign their
tourism strategies to keep down crowds and protect the environment, others may compete by racing to the
bottom, using deep discounts to fill hotels and planes. Tourist numbers will recover and continue to grow either
way. Greater efforts to manage them carefully should make for a better experience for everyone.■
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will-rebound-after-the-pandemic

The future
Travel will return, more exotically than ever

But it will look different, both in the short term and the long term
Feb 11th 2021 |
INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL is sure to recover, not least because its benefits have long been appreciated. “Travel and
change of place impart new vigour to the mind,” is a quote attributed to Seneca, a first-century Roman
philosopher of the Stoic school. That is as true of the relaxation of a package trip to the seaside or a trek in the
Himalayas as it is of visiting a close friend abroad or of a business leader seeking new opportunities. The goal
of stoicism was to encourage virtue and maximise happiness. Travel often brings both virtue and happiness. It
could be a bigger part of the bargain when the wheelie-bag era resumes.
The urge to travel is unlikely to be permanently dimmed by covid-19 even if the means to do it suffers a long-
lasting hit and some destinations take years to recover. All forecasts reckon on travel and tourism returning to
prepandemic levels over the next few years and then continuing on a path of growth. Looking back, there will
appear to have been a “blip in demand but no impact over 20 years,” says Michael Khan of Oliver Wyman, a
consultancy. Underlying motives and the longer-term factors of growing wealth and increasing leisure time
seem certain to reassert themselves. The rapid growth of Chinese tourism shows the importance that the newly
wealthy place on taking a well-earned break. A growing global middle class will see the Chinese joined by
Indians, Malaysians and Indonesians. This could bring significant shifts. Asia’s burgeoning middle class and the
preference for regional travel could mean that South-East Asia overhauls the Mediterranean as the world’s
preferred holiday destination.
The hope is that vaccines will bring a return of something approaching normality despite the emergence of a
more transmissible form of covid-19 in the final weeks of 2020, bringing another round of travel restrictions as
countries rapidly banned visitors from affected countries. For all such setbacks, a recovery could begin in
earnest in the second half of this year as vaccines start to tame the virus and those in lockdown for many months
take advantage of cheap tickets to get away, events delayed by families spread around the world are rescheduled
and executives take to the air again. Yet how will travel look different, in both the short and longer term?
More airlines, the main means of foreign travel, will fail and others will remain under closer state control. Some
long-haul fares will rise and short-haul carriers go bust. But this should create new opportunities for low-cost
competitors, helping keep prices in check. Health will become as central to travel as an airline ticket and
passport. The apps and platforms that will keep people safe by allowing sharing of health status should also help
make travel easier and smoother. Safety will become more of a selling-point alongside visitor attractions,
making for better-trained staff and richer experiences. Holiday destinations will start to look more carefully at
the drawbacks as well as the benefits of tourism. New technology and pressure from governments and more
environmentally aware passengers will eventually result in net-zero-emissions aircraft.
Despite recent rapid growth, foreign travel is still an experience for the few, not the many. As the world gets
richer and populations age, the numbers with the time and the means to take a holiday abroad will keep
growing. As aviation bosses are quick to point out, there is a vast untapped market: around 80% of the world’s
population has never set foot on an airliner. A trip abroad is still a rarity for most. A study by Stefan Gossling at
Linnaeus University in Sweden finds that only 11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018 and at most
4% flew abroad. Even in rich countries less than half the population caught a plane. A huge swathe of the
world’s population could be preparing for a holiday.
Further step changes in the price and speed of travel, opening up more out-of-the-way places and allowing more
choice, will change the whole business yet again. This could come most obviously from supersonic travel,
which despite the commercial failure of Concorde seems likely to return, lopping several hours off long flights.
Some startups are already developing small supersonic corporate jets. And there is potential scope for even
speedier jaunts if space tourism can be successfully brought into play. The technology to take passengers to the
edge of space could produce hypersonic flights, with the possibility of flying people around the world in next to
no time. The price of travel may not have much further to fall, but greater speed is certainly on the horizon. And
that will doubtless require another step change in luggage technology beyond the wheelie-bag.■
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return-more-exotically-than-ever

Sources and acknowledgments

Feb 11th 2021 |
Books:
“A History of Modern Tourism“, Eric G. E. Zuelow, Palgrave, 2016
Articles and papers:
International Tourism Highlights, UNWTO, 2020
World Tourism Barometer, UNWTO, Dec 2020
Aviation Strategy, Issue 257, Oct/Nov 2020
Travel: Big Questions with UBS Experts, UBS, October 2020
Covid-19 and Tourism: Assessing the Economic Consequences, UNCTAD, July 2020
Citi GPS: Global Perspectives and solutions, Chapter 10, Impact of Telework on Global Travel, Citigroup, June
2020
Reimaging the $9 trillion tourism economy-what will it take?, McKinsey, August 2020
Make it better not just safer: The opportunity to reinvent travel, McKinsey, June 2020
For corporate travel, a long recovery ahead, McKinsey, August 2020

Accelerating Travel Innovation After Coronavirus, Euromonitor International, November 2020
Air Passenger Market Analysis Iata , December, 2020
Economic Performance of the Airline Industry, IATA, November 2020
Covid-19 Global Traveller Sentiment Survey-Edition 2, Oliver Wyman, October 2020
The need for Speed: How Supersonic Jets Will Transform the Travel Industry, UBS, December 2020
Outlook for the Air Transport and the Airline Industry, IATA, November 2020
Global Hotels and Transport: What is business travel? Why do we do it? Will it survive Coronavirus?,
Bernstein, July 2020
To Recovery and Beyond; The Future of Travel and Tourism In the Wake of Covid-19, World Travel and
Tourism Council/Oliver Wyman, September 2020
Travel and Tourism: Global Economic Impact & Trends World Travel and Tourism Council, June 2020
Effects of Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) on Civil Aviation: Economic Impact Analysis ICAO, November 2020
Rebuilding tourism for the future: Covid-19 policy response and recovery, OECD, October 2020
AirLinks--Value Chain Insights Beyond the Pandemic: Sizing corporate travel recovery prospects, Credit
Suisse, September 2020
Q-Series—“By train or by plane?" The traveller’s dilemma after Covid-19 and amid climate change concerns
UBS April 2020
Global Market Forecast 2019-38 , Airbus, September 2019
Commercial Market Outlook 2020–2039, Boeing, 2020
2021 Coronavirus Poll, Global Business Travel Association, January 2021
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/special-report/2021/02/11/sources-

and-acknowledgments

Special report Sections Finance & economics
Business
Corporate earnings: Harbingers of boom Unions v big tech: Labour coders
. .
Privatisations in India: Flogging the family lead
.
Anglo-German business ties: From bad to wurst Bartleby: Diary of a plague year
. .
Schumpeter: Alpha pipers
.
Special report Sections Finance & economics
Harbingers of boom
America Inc has survived the oddest year in modern times. What next?
Stockmarkets are pricing in an economic snap-back and growth on top of it. That may be too rosy
BEFORE THE covid-19 pandemic investors favoured companies with strong sales growth, low debt and high
return on assets. In the past three months, they have been ploughing money into smaller, underperforming firms
that have barely survived the coronavirus recession. A robust economic recovery, Wall Street seems to think,
will pull the most covid-impaired away from the abyss and towards financial outperformance. Right now, says
Jonathan Golub of Credit Suisse, an investment bank, “the market is rewarding failure”.
The bet on weaklings is the latest sign, if more were needed, that 2020 marked a weird year in corporate history.
Far from imploding, as many feared after the virus clobbered stockmarkets in March, America Inc is looking
astonishingly healthy. It did not take long for analysts to start revising their profit forecasts back up (see chart
1). Even then, four in five big firms that have reported their latest quarterly results beat projections. Their
aggregate earnings exceeded estimates by nearly 17%.
The losers—chiefly in industries like hospitality, travel and energy, which rely on people mixing or moving
about—lost a lot. Of the 311 S&P 500 firms that have presented full-year results, 42 ended 2020 in the red, up
from 17 the year before. Their losses added up to $173bn, nearly five times as much as the comparable figure in
2019. But the winners won big: $832bn, all told, just 13% below last year’s profit pool. The tech titans without
whose products socially distant shopping, work, socialising and entertainment would be tough made more
money than ever (see chart 2). Wall Street is wagering that both winners and losers have room for improvement
(see chart 3).
Big firms are the most bullish. A survey last month by Corporate Board Member, a trade publication, found that
overall confidence has risen at public companies. Two in three board members rated their firm’s outlook “very
good” or “excellent”. Three-quarters of chief executives expect revenues and profits to increase, compared with
less than two-thirds in December. Half predict increased investment.
Lacking the access to capital enjoyed by bigger firms, smaller ones in the Russell 2000 index were bleeding red
ink mid-pandemic. Now things are looking up even for them. In the last quarter the Russell 2000 posted a gain
of 31%, against 12% for the S&P 500. The latest survey by Vistage, an executive-coaching outfit, found that
64% of bosses at small and medium-sized firms plan to expand their workforce this year, up by a fifth from the
previous quarter. Two-thirds think sales will increase in 2021. Over half expect profitability to rise.
There are two main reasons for this perkiness. First, investors are pricing in the successful rollout of vaccines in
America by the summer, which would help reopen the economy. Citigroup, a bank, calculates that Americans
have squirrelled away $1.4trn in unspent income over the past year. All told, $5trn or so is sitting idle in money-
market funds which could be spent—on everything from a new pair of shoes to new shares. Second, it is widely
assumed that Democratic control of the White House and Congress will mean continued fiscal and monetary
stimulus that could fuel demand further still.
This has led forecasters to project that S&P 500 revenues in 2021 will match or surpass those in 2019 for most
sectors, according to Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. By 2022 everyone bar America’s oilmen should be in
rude health. Gregg Lemos-Stein of S&P Global, a ratings agency, now foresees a speedier revival in health care,
building materials, business services and non-essential retail (see chart 4). On this view, share prices have room
to soar.
Two dangers lurk. If President Joe Biden fails to get something like his proposed $1.9trn stimulus through
Congress, investors and bosses may start panicking, regardless of the views of economists, many of whom
worry the plan is excessive. Given the uncertainty over post-pandemic demand for large industries such as air
travel, now that CEOs can see that Zoom is often a decent alternative, understimulation is a bigger risk than
overstimulation, says the boss of a big private-equity firm.
The other danger is the vaccine rollout. American states are jabbing arms at a decent clip; only Britain has done
a better job so far among big countries. But nine in ten Americans have yet to receive a single dose, let alone the
full two. A large share may refuse to be vaccinated. And the emergence of virulent new viral strains could mean
the transition from pandemic to no pandemic will not be binary but gradual. American business may need to
cope with a messier scenario of partial lockdowns and endemic disease for years.
In 2020 a strong stockmarket sat awkwardly on top of a sickly economy. In 2021 the opposite may be true,
thinks Michael Wilson, of Morgan Stanley, a bank. The recovery will be “extraordinarily robust”, he believes,
with both GDP and earnings growing briskly. But, he warns, the stockmarket has “already priced in too much
good news”. Last year’s corporate champions may find that their sales included a lot that were pulled forward.
The stragglers’ valuations already look rich. Disappointment is all too conceivable.
If the recovery slows, the gulf between Wall Street and Main Street may become untenable. Tobias Levkovich
of Citigroup is confident that firms will find opportunities even under conditions of continued topsy-turviness.
As for investors, the best ones “don’t try to predict the market”, says the private-equity boss. “They adapt
quickly.” This year will offer them plenty of opportunities to shine in that department. ■
Dig deeper
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has-survived-the-oddest-year-in-modern-times-what-next

Labour coders
Unions take on Amazon and Alphabet. Big tech watch out

An old force wants to shake up a younger industry
Feb 13th 2021 |
FOR DECADES America’s labour movement has been losing steam. Trade unions represent only 7% of private-
sector workers. No significant piece of pro-union legislation has passed in recent years. Right-to-work laws,
which undermine the clout of organised labour, have spread to 27 states. Now the union movement has been
showing signs of life in, of all places, the technology industry.
Last month software engineers and other workers at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced a new
Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), to “protect…workers, our global society, and our world”. The union has not
sought official status but charges 1% of total compensation and has just collected the first round of dues from its
800 or so members—given their plush salaries, a good-size pot to spend on lawyers. And on February 8th
union-eligible workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama were mailed 5,800 ballots. If a majority back the
creation of a union by late March, the facility will become the e-commerce giant’s first unionised one in
America.
Amazon’s and Alphabet’s unions seem worlds away. The warehouse staff hark back to labour’s blue-collar
roots. The AWU looks to some as a vehicle for wokeness; it is certainly a rarity in computing (see chart). But the
two strands of unionisation are interwoven. Google’s coddled coders are intent on improving conditions for
lower-paid data-centre workers and other TVCs (temps, vendors and contractors). “No lone wolf should howl
alone without a pack,” declares a developer on AWU’s website. On February 5th the union filed a labour
complaint against Modis, an outsourcing unit of Adecco. AWU alleges that Modis illegally suspended a data-
centre worker for questioning a ban on discussing pay.
Alphabet can afford to improve the lot of TVCs if it has to. It can also, up to a point, humour its progressive
software engineers; no serious financial harm has come of having to abandon bidding for contracts such as one
to provide cloud-computing services to the Pentagon, to which some peacenik Googlers objected.
Amazon has more to lose. A good deal for Alabaman workers may inspire others to clamour for the same rights.
Collective-bargaining demands, on the timing of shifts, expanding capacity or automating jobs, may dent
Amazon’s flexibility and speed, says Mark Shmulik of Bernstein, a broker. That could eat away at its already-
thin profit margins on retail operations, possibly forcing it to pass extra costs onto customers, who could shop
elsewhere.
AWU and the Alabaman workers are spurring others. “Workers across the digital economy are feeling the
moment,” says Tom Smith, national organising director for Communications Workers of America (CWA), an 83-
year-old union. The CWA recently formed the Campaign to Organise Digital Employees. CODE-CWA, as it is
known for short, is targeting all of tech, including notoriously harsh conditions in the video-game industry,
where 60-hour “crunch” weeks ahead of big releases are common. Mr Smith says more tech workers will unveil
union labour efforts shortly. Geeks of the world are, it seems, uniting. ■
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amazon-and-alphabet-big-tech-watch-out

Flogging the family lead
Narendra Modi promises to privatise Air India

The state promises to unload its dusty companies. For real this time
Feb 13th 2021 |
THE HINDU pantheon of gods has no shortage of deities with multiple arms. India’s government, with a hand in
industries from energy and steel to finance and travel, would fit right in. A long infatuation with central
planning transformed state-run business into a sprawling industrial empire encompassing 5% of the economy.
But acquiring appendages is easier than managing them. Profits as a percentage of revenues are just over 1% at
state-run companies, compared with 7-9% for the private sector. Many are a loss-making burden on the public
purse—more family lead than family silver.
In 2016 the Indian government under the then newish administration of Narendra Modi reviewed the 331 firms
under central-government control. It prepared a list of 28 that it believed could be sold without controversy. The
most prominent were Air India, the flag carrier, steel- and cement-makers, big energy companies, a hotel
operator and an assortment of entities whose time had passed, such as Scooters India (which last produced a
scooter in 1997).
Five years later the number of companies controlled by the state, far from shrinking, has swelled to 348. In
January Scooters India did fall off the list—by finally shutting down. The value of most survivors has
shrivelled. State banks are saddled with bad loans. State energy companies have fallen victim to the shale and
renewables revolutions. Air India’s rotten service has turned off customers. A note buried in the government’s
816-page survey of its holdings disclosed that production at the state-run condom-maker fell from 1.85bn units
in 2018 to 820m in 2019.
This month India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, has pledged to start offloading the leaden assets—in
earnest this time. The initial list to be put on the block contains 13 companies, including two unnamed state
banks. The biggest are Air India, Life Insurance Company of India (LIC, often seen as the government’s
emergency bail-out provider) and Bharat Petroleum, a large refiner. Unviable companies that cannot be sold,
Ms Sitharaman promised, will be shut down.
Such commitments make longtime India-watchers roll their eyes. Trade unions and bureaucrats have little to
gain from transactions which undermine their jobs and authority. On the rare occasions where a past sale
actually generated returns for the buyers, the bankers and officials involved were hauled before the authorities
and grilled about selling too cheaply. Ms Sitharaman’s announcement has already led to an outcry from Mr
Modi’s political opponents, for whom state ownership of the economy’s commanding heights is a point of pride
—never mind that those heights look distinctly unHimalayan.
Government officials have been meeting business groups to say this time is different. People close to those
encounters say the effort could be charitably described as sloppy. But that it is being done at all suggests a
degree of sincerity on the part of Mr Modi’s administration that previous efforts lacked. The reason is India’s
covid-battered finances. Without the $24bn Ms Sitharaman hopes to raise from the asset sales, the central
government’s fiscal gap would expand from about 9.5% to 12% of GDP, putting India’s sovereign rating at
greater risk of a downgrade.
Between LIC and Bharat Petroleum, which has a market capitalisation of $12bn and is half-owned by the state,
the government could be two-thirds of the way towards its goal, bankers in Mumbai report. An accounting firm
has been engaged to prepare LIC’s books, a necessary first step for a planned initial public offering. Tata Sons, a
big conglomerate, is said to be interested in Air India, which it used to own before nationalisation in the 1950s.
Three bidders have their eyes on Bharat, including two big global private-equity funds.
The first buyer in the new era of privatisation could be inadvertent. There is some speculation that the cash-
strapped government may grant Cairn Energy, a British firm, a state-owned oilfield as part of a settlement over
retroactive taxes. ■
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promises-to-privatise-air-india

Anglo-German business ties
For Deutschland AG, Brexit goes from bad to wurst

Companies in Germany lament the effect of Britain’s departure from the EU
Feb 13th 2021 | berlin
“WE FEEL BETRAYED,” laments Petra Braun, a southern German who with her partner, Peter Wengerodt, runs
Hansel & Pretzel, a German deli and bakery in Richmond, a suburb of London. Since leaving the European
Union just over a month ago, Britain’s once-welcoming government has made it hair-raisingly complicated and
costly to import sausages, marzipan, quark cheese, apple sauce and other authentic staples. This year she has yet
to receive any of the weekly deliveries of goods from her homeland.
The flipside of headaches for the likes of Ms Braun, whose small business employs 15 people, is a migraine for
big German exporters, some of which furnish the ingredients for her fare. Deutschland AG was never a huge fan
of Brexit. But the trade deal rushed through before the transition period ended at midnight on December 31st
put German bosses’ minds at ease. A month into the new regime, “supply-chain problems are hitting German
companies very hard”, says Joachim Lang of the BDI, the main association of German industry.
And it will get worse. Trade has slowed because of covid-19. As soon as it picks up again, commercial ties are
in for a “massive stress test”, warns Mr Lang. In April British customs will introduce new rules (such as pre-
notification and health paperwork for products of animal origin), followed in July by physical checks.
On February 9th the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce said that 60% of the 1,200
German companies trading with Britain it surveyed consider their current business situation in Britain to be bad.
Nearly as many expect further deterioration this year. One in six have either already shifted investments away
from Britain or are planning to do so. They see the bureaucracy related to customs as their biggest business risk,
followed by logistics and legal uncertainty.
Were it not for the pandemic these problems would make headlines in Germany, says Ulrich Hoppe, head of the
German-British Chamber of Industry and Commerce in London. In January DB Schenker, a German logistics
giant, stopped shipping consignments to Britain for a week. About 90% of them had incomplete or inaccurate
customs forms, explains Maximilian Floegel of DB Schenker. The main stumbling block has been the proof of
origin from the EU required under the trade agreement between the bloc and Britain. This is finicky to get for,
say, a shoe made in Italy with a sole imported from China. DB Schenker set up a Brexit task-force to help clients
with the customs bureaucracy. But, says Mr Floegel, “the problem remains acute.”
In December BMW, which pre-emptively moved engine production from Britain to Germany in 2019, warned
that a no-deal Brexit would cost hundreds of millions of euros, which the carmaker would pass on to clients in
Britain and on the continent. At least BMW had the resources to prepare for January’s customs checks and to
stockpile car parts in Britain. The pocket multinationals of Germany’s Mittelstand face an even bigger cross-
channel struggle.
Take Schott, a 250-year-old maker of sheet music for which Britain is the second-biggest market. The family
company started to get anxious at the end of last year about tariffs levied on each classical piece. Delays at the
border could leave British orchestras that rent its sheet music unable to get the scores in time for rehearsals,
once these resume. This won’t be the last of Brexit’s unintended consequences. ■
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ag-brexit-goes-from-bad-to-wurst

Bartleby
Diary of a plague year

A columnist confronts the pandemic
Feb 13th 2021 |
IT HAS BEEN a year since the pandemic started to affect Western societies. Here is how one columnist coped as
the months unfolded.
February/March: In the beginning, all was confusion. In the early stages a “last days of Saigon” feel pervaded
the city centre. The trains and offices became steadily less crowded; more and more shops closed for lack of
staff. Parents turned into hunter-gatherers, desperately foraging in the supermarket aisles for the last supplies of
pasta. Successful scavengers’ trolleys overflowed with rolls of toilet paper. People were braced for dystopia.
Office workers hastily caught up on the disaster-recovery plans they had previously ignored and were grateful if
they were able to get a good broadband connection. Bartleby remembered that he had left all his research back
at the office and made a sheepish return to a near-empty building. Heading back out with a rucksack of books
and papers, he felt like a very nerdish barbarian participating in the sack of Rome.
April: Some individuals were still struggling to master Zoom etiquette. Faced with an editorial meeting on a
bank holiday, Bartleby combined it with a soothing river walk. At some point, his phone (while still in his
pocket) became unmuted, meaning that his heavy trudge, and heavy breathing, was audible to every other
participant on the call. In blissful ignorance, he returned home to a blizzard of emails, tweets and WhatsApp
messages telling him to shut up. Sure enough, “you’re on mute” and “please mute yourself” became the
breakout phrases of 2020.
May: Perhaps the best month of the lockdown. The British weather was good, with the sunniest spring on
record, making it possible to work in the garden. The novelty of working from home had yet to wear off, and
the absence of the daily commute was still a blessing.
June: A “Groundhog Day” syndrome had set in. Every day seemed the same; weekends lost their meaning. The
main dilemma for the month was whether to cancel the summer holiday, or to hold on in the hope that the
decline in covid-19 cases was permanent. The prospect of any break in routine seemed absurdly alluring.
July: Foreign holiday cancelled. Start to fantasise about ways of shortening Zoom meetings. How about a
countdown clock, like the ones on television game shows, as speakers approach the one-minute mark, with a
loud buzzer at the end? Hint to all participants: when the person chairing the meeting asks, “Does anyone else
have any comments?”, the correct answer is invariably “No”.
August: Rain ruins short domestic holiday. Restaurants reopen and Britons recreate the feasts of Bacchanalia.
“Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we get locked down” seems to be the (prescient) motto. Meetings no
shorter on return to work. More extreme measures clearly required: a mild electric shock for those who speak
for more than two minutes? Or the “raise hand” button could be converted into a “thumbs down” function. If
more than half the participants press it, the speaker is cut off.
September: Just as The Economist organises weekly in-person gatherings so staff can start the process of
returning to work, cases begin to rise. Tip for readers: if Bartleby is invited to a summer party in 2021, it is a
sign of the impending apocalypse.
October: Head back to now-empty office to pick up more books. Feel like archaeologist analysing ancient
civilisation. In this era, humans sat in glass booths so they could be observed at all times. They also gathered in
“meeting rooms” to take part in religious ceremonies conducted by a priest known as the “manager”, who
recited a long list of meaningless tasks penitents must undertake.
November: British government imposes new national lockdown on November 5th. From this year on, the date
will no longer be commemorated as “Guy Fawkes night” but as “Boris Johnson day”. All citizens will celebrate
by wearing masks, washing their hands obsessively and avoiding their neighbours.
December: The house has lights, and a tree. But the real meaning of Christmas now becomes clear: no more
Zoom meetings for at least a week. Not just silent nights, but silent days as well.
January: The vaccines are on their way to save us. Perhaps at some point in 2021 Bartleby will be back on the
London underground, crammed in like a sardine while waiting for the platform to clear at Earl’s Court.
Suddenly, social isolation doesn’t seem so bad after all.
Dig deeper
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plague-year

Schumpeter
The cult of an Elon Musk or a Jack Ma has its perks—but also perils
Business leaders eager to cultivate acolytes should be careful what they wish for
Feb 10th 2021 |
“I AM BECOME meme, Destroyer of shorts.” This recent tweet by Elon Musk struck a messianic tone that his
disciples lap up. The past month has boosted the cult status of the uber-entrepreneur. The GameStop saga gave
him ammunition in his long-running battle with short-sellers, while also positioning him as a champion of the
little guy taking on Wall Street. This week fans were spellbound by the announcement that Mr Musk’s electric-
car maker, Tesla, had invested $1.5bn in bitcoin and would start accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of
payment. Earlier, a barrage of cheeky tweets from Mr Musk about dogecoin (“the people’s crypto”) had sent
serious investors scrambling to learn more about a digital currency that started as a joke.
Impish humour is a Musk hallmark, but the impact of his missives is no joke. They can set herds stampeding.
His bitcoin announcement propelled it to new heights. Tesla’s market value briefly climbed above $830bn, near
its peak. The history of business is littered with Pied Pipers but, as Peter Atwater, a social psychologist, points
out, none has matched Mr Musk for the number of things he has helped turn red-hot, from cars and crypto to
space travel and Clubhouse, a live-podcasting app he appeared on. That invites two questions. What makes the
Musk scent so intoxicating to so many? And what are the pros and cons of being a cult CEO?
Larger-than-life business figures enjoy various degrees of celebrity. One category includes chief executives of
big firms who, while charismatic, fail to inspire feverish devotion. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s outgoing boss,
commands admiration on Wall Street and envy in other corner offices, but is too restrained to attract drooling
groupies. Similarly, in his 20 years running GE, Jack Welch earned a reputation (since disputed) for red-toothed
success, but was too cold-blooded to mesmerise the masses.
The second group comprises tycoons who achieve cultlike status but whose businesses scarcely warrant the
adulation. Their trademark is often shameless self-promotion. Richard Branson has spent decades cultivating an
image as a corporate hippy-cum-pirate who takes on complacent incumbents in industries from aviation to
finance. Donald Trump touted himself as the arch-dealmaker. Both have hordes of wide-eyed fans. Neither has
built a business that comes close to $10bn in value or is built for stability.
The third category is more exclusive: those who build both cults of personality and huge businesses. Joining Mr
Musk in this club is Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, China’s tech titan. Millions of Chinese college students
and other wannabe entrepreneurs bought into the image he cultivated, of a humble teacher turned philanthropic
tech titan with a splash of cultural cool (he once appeared as a tai chi master in a martial-arts film). Admiration
of Mr Ma has often verged on religious fervour. In 2015 a group of online merchants created a shrine to him, to
bring them good luck on “singles day”, an e-shopping festival.
Messrs Musk and Ma walk a trail blazed by an Indian business legend: Dhirubhai Ambani, who founded
Reliance Industries, a petrochemicals-to-telecoms conglomerate. The son of a village schoolteacher who cut his
teeth trading polyester yarn, Ambani pioneered the equity cult. His trick, in a country where companies had
long relied mostly on banks for funding, was to see the untapped potential lower down the pyramid. He toured
India, convincing middle-class savers that they, too, could join the capitalist class. When Reliance went public
in 1977 it attracted 58,000 punters. The shareholders he drew in have done well: the share price has gained
275,000% since the flotation. When 30,000 of them turned up to pay homage at one general meeting, it had to
be moved to a park. These days only Warren Buffett attracts zealots in such numbers (or did before covid-19).
Cult status confers perks. Equity is cheaper when those buying it are devout retail investors, not hard-headed
institutions. Small investors are also more patient, heeding calls to “keep the faith” during profitless investment
splurges. Marketing costs are low; Mr Musk can use social media to burnish his (and Tesla’s) brand for nothing.
Fans are willing to overlook flaws that more dispassionate consumers won’t. Tesla’s build quality is hardly
world-class and regulators, most recently China’s, frequently flag up concerns. Yet it is hard to see that
reflected in the firm’s sales or share price. Lastly, mass appeal means political clout. Ambani’s popularity
helped him bend India’s trade policy to his advantage. Mr Musk’s helps explain soft treatment by governments
and regulators, over rogue tweets or reopening factories in the pandemic.
But combining star power and scale is not risk-free. Mr Musk forged his reputation as a David, fomenting
rebellions against Detroit and Wall Street elites. But now he is a Goliath: the world’s richest man who runs its
most valuable carmaker. Playing both roles is a dangerous game. This is made more so by being a cultural icon,
which leaves him more vulnerable to changing social taste—and taste can change in a trice online.
Ye shall fund you no idols
Sentiment could turn if his devotees start to doubt he has their interests at heart. Ambani was able to bat away
repeated allegations of financial manipulation; he beat back short-sellers with help from a group of brokers
known as “Friends of Reliance”. Mr Musk may not be so lucky. Acolytes who piled into GameStop stock after
his “Gamestonk!!” rallying cry on January 26th were buying near the top. His recent crypto-talk looks self-
serving in light of Tesla’s bitcoin move.
Finally, political advantage can turn into a bane. Just ask Mr Ma, who, overestimating his power, publicly
chided Chinese regulators last year. Irked, Beijing scuppered the planned listing of Ant, Alibaba’s financial
affiliate, and is forcing it to restructure. Joining the ranks of cult CEOs may lower your cost of funding. But it
raises the cost of miscalculation. ■
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elon-musk-or-a-jack-ma-has-its-perks-but-also-perils
Business Sections Science & ...
Finance & economics

Emerging economies: Some pleasant fiscal arithmetic Commodities: Twin peaks
. .
Picking up pace: Inflation will rise in the coming months Bank bosses: Fresh blood
. .
Buttonwood: Crossbar challenge Trade policy in America: Rinse and repeat
. .
Free exchange: Targeting practice
.
Business Sections Science & ...
Some pleasant fiscal arithmetic
Should governments in emerging economies worry about their debt?

As in the rich world, interest rates are below nominal growth rates in many places
Feb 13th 2021 | HONG KONG
FINANCE MINISTERS of yesteryear would have been shocked by the amount of borrowing their successors must
now contemplate. But they would have been just as gobsmacked by how cheap that borrowing has turned out to
be. In many countries, the interest rate on government debt is expected to remain below the nominal growth rate
of the economy for the foreseeable future. In other words, the “growth-corrected interest rate”, as some
economists call it, will be negative. That will be the case in all rich countries in 2023, according to projections
published earlier this month by S&P Global, a rating agency.
This scenario has prompted some economists, such as Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist of the IMF, to
rethink the fiscal limits of countries like America, Japan and the euro members. Governments should not “focus
on some magic number for the debt-to-GDP ratio”, Mr Blanchard said last month in a lecture hosted by Ashoka
University in India. These numbers “have been counterproductive in the past; they would be even more [so]
now”.
It is not only in rich countries, however, that the fiscal arithmetic looks topsy-turvy. In 53 of the 60 biggest
emerging economies, the interest rate is likely to fall short of the growth rate. In some cases, spectacularly so.
S&P expects the growth-corrected interest rate in 2023 to be -3.6% in India, -6.5% in China and -33.8% in
Argentina (see chart 1).
That raises an obvious question: should emerging economies also rethink their fiscal limits? Some have been
quick to do so. India’s budget this month envisaged a deficit of 9.5% of GDP this fiscal year (the overall deficit,
which includes state finances, could reach 15% of GDP, reckons JPMorgan Chase, a bank) and offered no plan to
bring it below the 3% limit prescribed by past fiscal rules. The latest economic survey by the government’s
chief economic adviser points out that India’s interest rate has been below its growth rate “by norm, not by
exception”. Quoting from Mr Blanchard’s work, the survey tries to “provide the intellectual anchor for the
government to be more relaxed about debt and fiscal spending during a growth slowdown or an economic
crisis”. But although doveish fiscal maths is the norm in many emerging economies, finance ministers must also
worry about the exceptions to it.
When interest rates fall short of growth rates, the budgetary algebra becomes a little contrary. Governments can
keep debt steady, relative to the size of the economy, even if they consistently overspend, as long as their
budget deficits are not too large. If their deficits (excluding interest payments) exceed this limit temporarily,
their debt ratio will rise temporarily. But it will then gradually decline to its previous level. If their deficits move
to a permanently higher level, the debt ratio also settles at a higher level. But it will not snowball, because the
power of compound interest is offset by the power of compound growth.
To grasp the weirdness, ponder the following scenario. Suppose a government can keep debt stable at 60% of
GDP with a deficit, before interest payments, of 3%. Then suppose a pandemic strikes, pushing debt to 80% of
GDP. You might think that this higher debt is harder to sustain, requiring a tighter budget than before the
pandemic. You would be wrong. To stabilise the new debt ratio, the government needs a 4% deficit instead.
Although this fiscal mathematics is peculiar, it is not novel. The growth-corrected interest rate has been less
than zero in emerging economies 75% of the time, according to Paolo Mauro and Jing Zhou of the IMF, who
have looked as far back as the data allow. Economists have nonetheless been wary of taking this arithmetic too
literally. Emerging economies have traditionally borrowed in hard currencies, such as the dollar. If their
exchange rate weakens, their foreign-currency debts can increase sharply, relative to the size of their economies,
even if interest rates remain modest. The cost of borrowing can also rise quickly if investors fear default, a fear
that can become self-fulfilling. And this rise in interest rates may not be gentle or early enough to provide much
prior warning.
In recent decades, most emerging economies have found it easier to borrow in their own currencies. That makes
their debt safer because their central banks can, in theory, print the money owed to creditors if need be. But the
fear of some kind of default still lingers. Wenxin Du of the University of Chicago and Jesse Schreger of
Columbia University have compared the yields on local-currency bonds to those on American Treasuries
“swapped” into the same emerging-market currency via derivatives. This allows them to disentangle credit risk
from currency risk. They find that emerging-market bonds typically pay a premium, which presumably
represents compensation for the risk of default (or some other form of expropriation, such as new taxes or
capital controls). This premium spiked in March 2020 before returning to less alarming levels (see chart 2).
Borrowing in rupiah or pesos introduces other dangers. If investors fear a fall in the currency, they demand a
higher interest rate. This is especially likely if the investors are foreigners with obligations in other currencies.
Countries like Indonesia borrow mostly in their own currency (over 60% of government debt is in rupiah) but
not from their own people (over half of its debt is owed to non-residents).
Even if government debt is sustainable, it may not be desirable. Economists have long worried that public
borrowing can crowd out private investment (or hurt the trade balance). That is less of a concern if the
government spends on investment. (India’s central government, for example, has budgeted a 26% increase in
capital spending in the coming fiscal year.) It is also less of a worry if the economy is operating below capacity:
public spending can then “crowd in” additional investment by improving incomes and profit prospects.
But before embarking on a spending spree, a conscientious government must bear other considerations in mind.
Is the economy below capacity because of a lack of spending, rather than public-health restrictions? Are
inflation expectations contained? Is monetary easing unable to revive demand instead? If the answers are yes,
governments can spend with greater conviction. But in fact the answers vary across the emerging world. China
is probably near full capacity. Inflation is too high in Argentina and Turkey. Most central banks have room to
cut interest rates (though India worries that cuts will not work until its troubled banks regain their footing).
Crowding out, if it happens, is probably more damaging in emerging markets. They have less capital per person
than richer economies, which should leave them with more rewarding investment opportunities. The low
interest rate paid by their governments is not necessarily a sign that the return on capital is low. It may also
reflect regulations forcing banks to load up on government paper. This kind of financial repression, once
widespread, persists in places like India and Argentina.
Mr Blanchard seems more cautious about emerging markets than some of those who cite his work. His Ashoka
lecture showed a “prudent level of tentativeness that I find very appealing”, said his host, Arvind Subramanian,
himself a former adviser to India’s government. Mr Blanchard thinks policymakers in the rich and poor world
alike should ask themselves two hard questions: how high might interest rates rise, relative to growth rates, in a
plausible stress case? And how tight a budget would be politically possible in response? The answers give a
rough indication of the debt ratio a country can comfortably expect to sustain.
That ratio is likely to be lower for many emerging economies than for advanced ones, he believes. They may
find it harder to rustle up tax revenue in a pinch. And their interest rates have a higher possible peak, even if
their average is lower once growth is deducted. In the past, conventional wisdom maintained that the safe debt
limit was 60% of GDP for advanced economies and 40% for emerging ones. “These were nonsensical numbers,”
Mr Blanchard said after his lecture. “But the inequality was right.” ■
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economics/2021/02/13/should-governments-in-emerging-economies-worry-about-their-debt

Twin peaks
Why the prices of both oil and the metals that seek to replace it are rising
For the first time in a year, oil prices top $60 a barrel
OIL IS MAKING a comeback, at least on the face of it. On February 8th the price of Brent crude rose above $60 a
barrel for the first time in more than a year. Battery metals, too, are enjoying a run-up. The prices of cobalt,
lithium and some rare-earth metals have soared since late 2020, with copper and nickel enjoying a longer climb.
It is tempting to see the surge as evidence of competing bets about the fuels of the future. For both oil and
battery metals, the reality is more complex.
Some of the rise in oil prices is, of course, linked to expectations about demand. Oil investors have taken hope
that rising Chinese demand might be matched elsewhere. In India, consumption of liquefied petroleum gas,
widely used as a cooking fuel, is up. In America, President Joe Biden’s proposed stimulus of $1.9trn may bring
a jump in economic activity and therefore oil demand. However, the pace of economic recovery is not assured.
The faltering roll-out of vaccines and the emergence of new, more contagious strains of covid-19 continue to
weigh on oil markets. Indeed climbing oil prices have much more to do with constraints in supply than with
confidence in demand.
Most important, Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries,
looks determined to support prices. In January the kingdom said it would cut production by an additional 1m
barrels a day in February and March. Elsewhere, output continues to be restrained. Among some African
producers, supply is starting to suffer from deferred investment in new projects and declining output from
existing ones. In America, crude output in January was 13% lower than a year before, according to Goldman
Sachs, a bank. Exports from Iran seem unlikely to pick up quickly. In an interview with CBS News aired on
February 7th, Mr Biden said he had no immediate plans to lift sanctions on the country.
For battery metals, demand has helped boost prices. Much of the interest is coming from China: in December
sales of plug-in electric vehicles there surpassed 224,000, a record high and 9.4% of total vehicle sales. That has
supported demand for cobalt, lithium and rare-earth minerals such as neodymium and praseodymium. But
constraints on supply have played an important role, too.
Covid-19 disrupted ports in South Africa, from where much of the world’s cobalt is shipped, and in China, the
world’s biggest miner and exporter of rare-earth metals. Nickel mines in Indonesia were also pandemic-struck.
In New Caledonia, a small group of Pacific islands that is the world’s fourth-biggest producer of nickel, protests
in December demanding public control of national resources blockaded several mines that are part-owned by
foreign firms.
As the 2020s continue, you might expect the prices of oil and battery metals to diverge, as demand for crude
ebbs and that for electric cars and other green technologies jumps. However, there may well be a period when
supply constraints mean that the values of oil and battery metals continue to rise in concert.
Start with oil. In the past, higher prices prompted more spending on projects, which increased production and
lowered prices. There are already signs that this mechanism is breaking down. In recent years dismal returns
and fear of regulation have made investors wary of capital expenditures. Their disdain for spending has
intensified, thanks to covid-19’s rapid depression of demand and the election of Mr Biden. Since taking office
in January, he has announced a temporary moratorium on new drilling leases on federal lands, as well as plans
for stricter regulation of methane emissions and greater scrutiny of pipelines. None of this has a huge,
immediate effect on oil supply, but serves to make investors even more sceptical of any big increase in
companies’ capital programmes. In January BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, urged companies to
disclose how their strategies align with a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Little wonder that in recent weeks
ExxonMobil and other oil supermajors, shaken by large annual losses, have reiterated pledges of capital
discipline.
Meanwhile a wave of green enthusiasm is sweeping the markets. Tesla, an electric-vehicle maker, is more
valuable than the eight next-biggest carmakers combined. JPMorgan Chase, a bank, reckons the share of electric
vehicles (excluding hybrids) in global new vehicle sales will rise from 3% in 2020 to 15% in 2030. Electric cars
account for about a quarter of demand for cobalt, a similar share for neodymium and praseodymium, and nearly
half of the demand for lithium, according to CRU Group, a consultancy. Other green technologies are supporting
prices, too. Copper is essential not only for electric cars, but also for solar panels, wind turbines and 5G
infrastructure. The recent rally may therefore be a sign of a strange pattern to come: higher prices for both oil
and the metals that may help replace it. ■
climate-change hub

economics/2021/02/08/why-the-prices-of-both-oil-and-the-metals-that-seek-to-replace-it-are-rising

Picking up pace
Inflation will rise in the coming months

But will it be sustained?
Feb 13th 2021 |

INFLATION IS likely to jump in the coming months, as last year’s oil-price drop falls out of the annual
comparison. Prices spiked in the euro area in January, owing in part to the expiration of a temporary value-
added-tax cut in Germany. Will the pickup be sustained? Investors are bullish in America, where a huge
stimulus package is in the works. In the euro area and Japan, though, inflation is expected to stay subdued.

economics/2021/02/13/inflation-will-rise-in-the-coming-months

Fresh blood
European banks need new chiefs

But headhunters are struggling to find them
Feb 13th 2021 |
EUROPEAN BANKS’ fourth-quarter earnings, releases of which are clustered around early February, have been
surprisingly perky. Those with trading arms, such as UBS or BNP Paribas, rode on buoyant markets. State support
helped contain bad loans; few banks needed to top up provisions. Markets should keep them busy and, as the
economy recovers, loan volumes should rise. Many banks plan to resume dividends this year.
Yet the chronic illness that has dogged the industry for years remains. Interest rates are rock-bottom,
compressing lending margins. Lenders must set aside lots of capital to placate watchdogs, which depresses
returns. Costs are sky-high; hard-hit by the financial and euro-area crises, lenders have under-invested in
digitisation. And Europe has too many banks, which constrains scale and profits. UBS forecasts the European
sector’s return on tangible equity (ROTE) will hit 8% by 2022—above last year’s 5.6%, but still below its cost of
capital of 10%. Its price-to-book ratio hovers around 0.5, below its lowest point in 2009.
Much of that has been outside bosses’ control. The current cohort, drafted in to restore lenders to health in the
2010s, has also managed to lift core capital ratios. But reviving profits and valuations—a must if banks are to
raise capital on public markets—requires a strategic rethink that “wartime” CEOs have shown little will or skill
for. A growing chorus of pundits, investors and board members want fresh faces to embrace the mission.
This is not to say that Europe’s bank bosses are entrenched (save some exceptions: Frédéric Oudéa has run
Société Générale, a French lender, for 12 years). The average boss at a big European bank has been in post for
four years, compared with seven in America. Succession planning at some banks, including Standard Chartered,
is said to be under way. But the same tired cast seems to be shuffled around. Of the nine European banks that
changed chiefs in 2020, seven picked either a male insider or a male banker from a local rival. Andrea Orcel,
chosen to lead UniCredit, an Italian bank, last month, helped build it up decades ago. Ralph Hamers, UBS’s new
boss, came from ING, a Dutch bank.
One problem is that the pool of candidates is drying up. When Mary-Caroline Tillman of Russell Reynolds
Associates, a headhunter, worked on bank CEO searches ten years ago, her shortlists included 15-20 qualified
candidates. Today she typically finds five or six. A lot of industry stars are now too old; a few others have lost
their sheen. Many suitable executives do not want the top job, which comes with more scrutiny from the press
than elsewhere. It is also less richly rewarded. Last year James Gorman, who runs Morgan Stanley, an
American bank, was paid $33m. ING faced public criticism in 2018 when it proposed raising Mr Hamers’s pay
to €3m ($3.6m).
Recruiting outsiders is also hard. Aspiring CEOs must be vetted by European regulators, implying a ton of
banking experience, says Elena Carletti of Bocconi University, who also sits on UniCredit’s board. In America
Wells Fargo is the only big bank subject to such rules. Language can create barriers, too. After falling out with
Jean Pierre Mustier, its French boss who is due to step down in April, UniCredit’s board is said to have
favoured Italian-speakers.
There is hope, however. Industry veterans praise a class of bankers climbing up the ranks, including Slawomir
Krupa (head of Société Générale’s markets unit), Christian Meissner (Credit Suisse’s new wealth-management
chief) and Nicolas Namias (the new boss of Natixis, an investment bank). Headhunters, meanwhile, are
grooming bright executives in adjacent industries, such as payments or insurance.
Whether they make it to the top or not largely depends on banks’ boards, many of which pay lip service to
transformation but plump for boring candidates. That partly reflects their own staid composition. Career bankers
with little tech nous often dominate, even though regulators do not necessarily require that non-executive
directors have banking expertise. To cure ailing banks, boards too need new blood. ■

economics/2021/02/13/european-banks-need-new-chiefs

Buttonwood
Lessons in betting against bubbles from the Big Short

Knowing for sure that something is askew may not be enough to make you money
Feb 11th 2021 |
HE NOW RUNS a chain of hotels in his native Ghana. But in the 1990s Tony Yeboah played football at a high
level, his two seasons at Leeds United sandwiched between longer spells in the Bundesliga. In England he is
fondly remembered for a wonder-goal against Wimbledon FC. Watch it on YouTube. Trapping a high ball
expertly on his chest, he juggles between defenders before smashing the ball off the crossbar into the net.
Great goals stay in the mind long after the game-to-game grind of a championship win fades from memory. So
it is with investing. Success often comes down to the compounding of incremental gains over time. The trades
that capture the imagination, though, are the bold ones with big payoffs. Among the biggest and boldest was
“The Big Short”, a bet against subprime mortgages before the 2008 crash, and also the title of a book by
Michael Lewis (and, later, a film).
That episode feels relevant again. The recent spectacular run-up in stock prices and the attendant mania in
pockets of the financial markets have the word “bubble” on many investors’ lips. A new paper* by Aaron
Brown of New York University and Richard Dewey of Royal Bridge Capital, a hedge fund, re-examines the Big
Short and sounds a note of caution. It argues that the bet against subprime mortgages was far riskier than is
often appreciated. The paper has a subtler message, too: the way in which a trading idea is expressed is as
important as the insight that underpins it.
People who lived through it can scarcely forget the subprime crisis. Still, here’s a recap. In the mid-2000s,
house prices were rising rapidly in many rich countries. In America, much of the growth in mortgage lending
was to “subprime” borrowers with low credit scores. These mortgages were pooled and turned into securities.
The riskiest tranches of these pooled mortgages took the first losses, providing a buffer for the AAA-rated
tranches. Such was the demand for AAA bonds that standards slipped. Just about anyone could get a subprime
mortgage.
America’s housing boom had all the hallmarks of a bubble: cheap money, a build-up of debt and a belief that
there was no risk. If you were so minded, how could you bet against it? A handful of clever people worked out
that subprime bonds were likely to suffer a higher rate of default than was suggested by their price or credit
rating. So they bet against the riskiest tranches of the worst pools. They entered into agreements with banks,
called credit-default swaps (CDS), which insured specific mortgage bonds against default. In 2007 and 2008,
default rates soared. The CDS insurance was triggered. The payoff was as spectacular as a Tony Yeboah goal.
Why didn’t more people bet this way? Mr Brown and Mr Dewey spoke to investors who considered the short
subprime trade, but passed on it. One turn-off was the Big Short’s steeply negative “cost of carry”: the premium
on CDS insurance was high. Moreover, mortgage CDS were illiquid instruments, making it tricky to get out of the
trade. A high cost of carry is a big bar when the payday might be years away—if it comes at all. The banks that
were the counterparties to the CDS could be dragged under. Maybe the government would make good all
mortgage-holders when the bust came. History did not play out this way. But investors could not be sure at the
time.
Traders found other ways to bet against the bubble. One was to sidestep the negative-carry problem by buying
risky tranches of subprime securities, with double-digit yields, and at the same time taking out insurance on
“safe” AAA tranches using CDS with a fairly low premium. The bet here was that a housing bust would blow up
both risky and safe tranches; but while waiting for the apocalypse you could benefit from positive carry.
Perhaps the safest way to profit from a bubble is the pick-up-the-pieces trade, in this case buying mortgage
bonds at fire-sale prices after the bust.
A subtext of the Brown-Dewey paper is that conviction can be your enemy. Knowing for sure that something is
very askew may not be enough to make you money. Still, the precariousness of the Big Short is a big part of its
legend. Yes, things might have played out differently. And if Tony Yeboah’s shot were an inch higher, then it
would not have been a goal. But it was not a fluke. He had scored an equally spectacular goal against Liverpool
a month earlier. That one went in off the crossbar, too.

economics/2021/02/11/lessons-in-betting-against-bubbles-from-the-big-short

Rinse and repeat
Washing machines reveal how trade and competition are linked

The saga of Whirlpool’s efforts to secure protection
Feb 13th 2021 | Washington, DC
AMERICAN WASHING-MACHINE makers received a parting gift from President Donald Trump. Days before leaving
office, he extended tariffs on imported machines by two years. The move was a victory for Whirlpool, an
appliance-maker that has sought protection for nearly a decade. The saga is a case study of the impact of
protectionism on competition at home.
American businesses can ask the government for three types of protection from foreign rivals: anti-dumping
duties, if imports are being sold below cost; countervailing duties, if foreign competition is subsidised; or
safeguard tariffs, if imports are surging. Petitions succeed around 60% of the time; in 2016 just over 7% of
America’s product lines were affected by a temporary trade barrier. (That compares with about 4% in the
European Union.)
When Whirlpool first sought help in 2011, it accused its South Korean competitors, Samsung and LG, of selling
at prices that were too low. (Its rivals said its failure to innovate was the problem.) The United States
International Trade Commission (USITC), which follows trade-remedy law written to protect producers, not
consumers, found for Whirlpool. That led to tariffs of up to 82% on some washing machines from South Korea
and Mexico (where Samsung had a factory).
Only six years before that, Whirlpool had used the promise of competition from Samsung and LG to justify
consolidation at home. Trustbusters had been suspicious of its acquisition of Maytag, an American rival, which
united more than 70% of domestic production of household washing machines. But, partly because they were
assured of stiff foreign competition, they let the deal go ahead. William Kovacic, then a member of the Federal
Trade Commission, was so peeved by the case that he now argues that merger approvals should require
companies to waive their right to seek tariff protection.
But the duties Whirlpool had secured were easy to dodge. When Samsung and LG started sending machines
from their factories in China to America, Whirlpool asked the USITC to hit imports from there, too. Accused of
undercutting again, the South Korean firms protested that “bundled pricing” distorted the facts. Washing
machines often looked like they were sold at low margins, but in fact were being bundled together with driers,
which were sold at high margins. When seen as an integrated unit, an apparently low-return washing-machine
business could in fact be making adequate profits. But the commission ruled in favour of Whirlpool again.
The source of imports had already changed, though—to Thailand and Vietnam. So, rather than continue with
the game of whack-a-mole, in 2017 Whirlpool made a bolder request: for a safeguard tariff, which hits imports
whatever their source. (It is also temporary, to give domestic firms time to become competitive.) The USITC
recommended tariffs of 20%, rising to 50% above a quota of 1.2m units in the first year, with the protection
fading over three years. Presidents can veto such requests, but Mr Trump did not.
The new restrictions were implemented in February 2018. As the law intended, imports fell, and American
production rose. According to a study by Aaron Flaaen of the Federal Reserve and Ali Hortaçsu and Felix
Tintelnot of the University of Chicago, retail prices of washing machines also rose, by 12%—with those of
dryers rising in step. Whirlpool made some investments, including in a new training centre in Clyde, Ohio. A
review of the tariffs in 2019 found that its profitability increased.
Yet Whirlpool came back for more. In November last year its lawyers complained that the tariff was meant to
give it three fat years of profits to recover from the harm caused by imports. But Samsung and LG had brought
in machines before the tariff came in, dampening its effect. Then came covid-19. Had the USITC known what
market conditions would be, Whirlpool’s lawyers argued, it would surely have recommended greater protection.
By then Samsung and LG had opened factories in America. (How much of this, and the resulting jobs, reflects
the tariff is up for debate, but it may have speeded up the decision to set up shop in America.) The Korean firms
argued that they were now part of the domestic industry—and did not need tariffs. They pointed out that the
domestic industry was clearly thriving: around 80% of washing machines bought in America were now home-
made. Still, the USITC decided that, without an extension, cheap imports would flood in. Mr Trump did not
disagree, so the tariffs will remain until 2023. (Whirlpool says the decision reflects its efforts to ensure fair trade
and to protect employees.)
The result will be close to a decade of protection, arguably at the cost of customers’ wallets. But Whirlpool has
little recourse for protection left, and now faces stiff competition at home. In November a representative of LG
said its new factory in Tennessee had in some cases shrunk the gap between order and delivery from 12 weeks
to a few days. Canny use of tariffs might help some producers some of the time. But competition cannot be
avoided for ever. ■

economics/2021/02/13/washing-machines-reveal-how-trade-and-competition-are-linked

Free exchange
China leads in precision-guided central banking. Does it work?

It has helped during the pandemic but done less to cure deep economic problems
Feb 13th 2021 |
IN ECONOMICS TEXTBOOKS, central banks wield power by raising or lowering interest rates. That depiction,
always a little simplistic, is now badly out of date. Since the financial crisis of 2007-09, and especially since the
onset of the covid-19 pandemic, central bankers have dramatically expanded their arsenals. They have bought
trillions of dollars in assets—mostly government bonds—to keep economies and financial systems from
freezing up. And they have become more hands-on, trying to steer cash to “real” businesses, not just to markets.
These actions reflect both the severity of the economic shock and the constraints on monetary policy in rich
countries, where short-term policy rates are already at or below zero. But when it comes to unconventional
interventions, it is a central bank in a very different situation—managing the world’s strongest major economy
—that is by far the busiest.
In contrast with other central banks, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has refrained from expanding its
balance-sheet. Yet it is ever more determined to guide money flows. Since 2014 it has introduced at least ten
separate targeted tools to that end, and tweaked them constantly. There have been credit facilities for small
businesses and farmers, new money for the construction of affordable housing, adjustments to banks’ required
reserves if they lend to favoured sectors, plus caps on loans to risky industries from property to steel. Such is the
scope of activity that economists in China now distinguish between two kinds of monetary policy: “aggregate
policies”, like interest rates, that affect the whole economy and “structural policies” that support this or that
sector. As central banks elsewhere gravitate towards more targeted actions, China’s record with structural
monetary policy deserves attention.
The pandemic has illustrated the merits of targeted monetary policy. Back-stopped by central-bank facilities,
Chinese banks deferred loan repayments for millions of companies and issued credit to those on the frontlines,
such as makers of medical supplies. A similar response has been seen in the rich world. But in China the point
of targeting goes beyond emergency relief. It is used to achieve other goals: in a report published on February
8th the PBoC said structural policies were like “drip irrigation” for the economy, helping channel financial
support towards technological innovation and environmental protection.
The big attraction of structural monetary policy for China is that, in theory, it tackles a dilemma at the heart of
the financial system: credit growth is needed to sustain rapid economic growth, but overall debt levels are
already very high, particularly among state-owned companies. In explicitly encouraging banks to lend to less-
indebted companies in promising sectors, policymakers have a set of three objectives: generating more growth,
with less debt, while also modernising the economy.
To hear it from the PBoC, the experience has been a resounding success. It says it has catalysed 15.1trn yuan
($2.4trn) in “inclusive loans” (credit to very small businesses), more than double the amount three years ago,
reaching some 32m firms in all. The average interest rate on these loans in December was 5.1%, not much
higher than the interest rate on government debt. Small businesses, left to fend for themselves, would never
enjoy such good terms.
But a closer look at the data raises questions about the efficacy of targeting. The overall shape of the economy
has changed little. The liability-to-asset ratio for state firms—a measure of their indebtedness—is only slightly
lower than it was five years ago, when the PBoC ramped up its structural policies. Moreover, the jump in
“inclusive loans” is misleading. Small firms, broadly defined, account for just a quarter of overall bank lending,
little changed over the years. Without targeting, perhaps the imbalances would have been even worse. But it is
hard to escape the conclusion that the practice has had a marginal impact on financial flows.
Despite the PBoC’s official bluster about structural monetary policy, many economists who work in its regional
branches are more sceptical. They have started to crank out research papers, mostly in Chinese, on the topic. Fu
Hongrui and Zhong Zhenzhen argue that communication is a stumbling block. For central banks to hit their
mark, it helps if companies and investors understand their intent, so that they have the confidence to push in the
same direction. The PBoC, however, provides only basic information about its targeted operations, with scant
details about who actually receives its credit. This, argue the researchers, blunts the benefits. In another paper
Yin Xingshan and two other PBoC economists argue that structural monetary policies do not get at the roots of
China’s problems. True solutions would include transforming state-owned companies into profit-focused
entities and increasing competition in the banking sector. The central bank on its own will struggle to cure the
economy’s “chronic disease”.
Structural weaknesses
The PBoC, which lacks formal independence, cannot very well say no when the government wants it to be more
activist. It has taken to describing “precision” as one of the core aims of its policies. But some of its economists
worry about the consequences. Chen Ge, a central-bank researcher, enumerates a series of risks. To obtain
special loans from the PBoC, banks need to post collateral. There is little to stop them throwing ineligible loans
into the mix. The central bank thus faces balance-sheet hazards if some of the dodgier assets go bad. Moreover,
it is hard to monitor whether banks use the credit as promised. And if companies and banks become more reliant
on the PBoC for direct support, it will grow progressively harder to unwind the interventions.
The answer, Mr Chen concludes, is for the government to step in and do more with its fiscal space, taking
weight off the PBoC—a prescription that will sound wearily familiar to central bankers elsewhere. The PBoC may
be following a different path. But it is arriving at a similar destination. ■

economics/2021/02/13/china-leads-in-precision-guided-central-banking-does-it-work
Finance & economics Sections Books & arts
Science & technology

The American Association for the Advancement of Science: Both ends against the middle
.
Oncology: Precisely! Sustainable construction: Urban growth
. .
Silicon chats: Conversational computers have come a long way
.
Finance & economics Sections Books & arts
Both ends against the middle
Microbial ecosystems in the mouth and gut are linked to many ills
Understanding how will help treatments
Feb 10th 2021 | CYBERSPACE
“ITHINK IT’S unlikely that any condition in the body is one where the microbiome isn’t involved.” That is the
considered opinion of Iain Chapple, one of the speakers at this week’s meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held online this year instead of in Phoenix, Arizona, as originally planned.
Dr Chapple was, until 2020, head of dentistry at Birmingham University, in Britain, and is still an active
researcher in the field. Mouths are notorious breeding grounds for hostile bacteria, as anyone who has ever had
a toothache can attest. But even a healthy mouth is inhabited by lots of bugs (pictured above).
Meanwhile, at the other end of the alimentary canal, the large intestine contains so many microbes that they
probably outnumber the cells of the human body. Both bacterial populations have coevolved with their hosts for
millions of years, so Dr Chapple is almost certainly right about the intimate connection between them and the
body. A pair of sessions at the AAAS discussed some of the latest relevant findings.
Dr Chapple has been seeking a link between gum disease and rheumatoid arthritis. In periodontitis, to give gum
disease its proper name, the number of bacteria in the crevice between a tooth and its surroundings rises from
thousands to millions. The gums being well supplied with blood vessels, such bacteria can hitch a ride to the
rest of the body. This fact has been linked not only with arthritis, but also with diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease
and, according to Purnima Kumar of Ohio State University, who helped to organise the session in question, over
50 other conditions.
Gummed up
Rheumatoid arthritis comes in many forms, but all involve the immune system attacking the body’s joints. Dr
Chapple’s studies indicate that Porphyromonas gingivalis, one of the hitchhiking bacteria, can provoke such a
reaction. The next step, he suggests, is to look at a group of arthritis-free individuals who have periodontitis and
see whether they subsequently develop arthritis more frequently than average members of the population.
The arthritis link is still tentative. That with diabetes is not. Bacteria associated with periodontitis have long
been known to disrupt the body’s ability to absorb glucose, resulting in the heightened levels of that sugar in the
bloodstream which are diabetes’s distinctive feature. The connection seems to work the other way around, too.
High glucose levels disrupt the body’s inflammatory system, leading to a host of complications, including gum
disease.
In new research, Dr Kumar has mapped networks of connections between various bacterial species and the
components of the immune system with which they interact. She has done this in three groups of people: those
with periodontitis, those with both periodontitis and diabetes, and those with neither. Her work has shown that
these networks break down completely in people with both diseases. That limits the immune system’s influence
and prevents it cleaning house. Treating people’s periodontitis boosted their networks, but did so more slowly in
those with diabetes.
Both the arthritis and the diabetes connections are interesting. But the most intriguing possible connection of all
is that between periodontitis and Alzheimer’s disease. Mark Ryder of the University of California, San
Francisco, thinks they are linked by substances known as gingipains. These cause the entanglement of neuronal
proteins called tau. Tau tangles are a symptom of Alzheimer’s, and people with this illness have high levels of
gingipains in their hippocampi, a pair of brain regions involved in memory formation. Small-scale trials suggest
that gingipain inhibitors may improve cognition, but bigger samples are needed for conclusive results. Dr Ryder
has therefore launched a trial involving 570 patients, the results of which are expected by the end of the year.
An army marches in its stomach
At the other end of the alimentary canal, evidence is accumulating of a connection between the microbiome and
another neurological illness, Parkinson’s disease. This started with the observation that many people who
develop Parkinson’s first experience digestive difficulties such as constipation. That prompted the discovery
that certain species of gut bacteria are often present in abnormally large numbers in those with Parkinson’s.
One such species is E. coli (see below). This is a common bug, but according to Timothy Sampson, a researcher
at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, only in Parkinson’s patients is it found attached to
the inner surface of the colon. The protein it attaches itself with is called Curli, and Curli bears a strong
similarity to alpha synuclein, a protein the accumulation of which in the brain causes Parkinson’s-related
symptoms. Molecules of alpha synuclein spur the production of more of their kind, and this accelerates the
spread of the disease, so this discovery has provoked speculation that Curli-bearing E. coli could be provoking
the body to behave in self-destructive ways.
Gutsy bacteria
Dr Sampson has tested this hypothesis in mice. He bred a strain of E. coli that cannot make Curli and injected
mice with it, while injecting others with unmodified bacteria. Those that received Curli-producing bacteria
expressed higher levels of synuclein and demonstrated symptoms like involuntary rigidity which, when seen in
people, are associated with Parkinson’s disease. That is tantalising. Should this result hold up in future trials, Dr
Sampson hopes it might be possible to identify those who are susceptible to Parkinson’s long before they begin
to show symptoms.
Digestive troubles also seem linked to autism—a link strengthened when Sarkis Mazmanian of the California
Institute of Technology studied the gut floras of people with autism and identified elevated levels of several
relevant bacterial products. Speaking at the meeting, Dr Mazmanian discussed his research on one of these
substances, 4-ethylphenol (4EP). This is transformed by the body into 4-ethylphenylsulphate (4EPS). In studies in
mice, he has shown that 4EPS activates brain regions linked to emotional behaviours and may also reduce
connectivity between neurons in important ways. He and his team claim, as well, that mice with 4EP-producing
bacteria in their guts display social behaviour which mirrors symptoms of autism in human beings. In particular,
the animals seem more anxious (they are more likely than their peers to hug the walls of an enclosed space), and
less sociable (their communicative squeaks are shorter).
This work is controversial. Some have questioned the statistical robustness of Dr Mazmanian’s earlier papers;
others, the very notion that murine behaviour can say anything useful about a complex human condition.
Overcoming that second objection means experimenting on people. And this is what Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown of
Arizona State University is doing. Having found that certain microbes are consistently absent from children
with autism, she and her team attempted a wholesale repopulation by emptying the guts of several autistic
infants of their resident flora and inoculating faecal enemas taken from healthy contemporaries.
This study yielded intriguing results. The diversity of microbes in her patients’ guts increased throughout a ten-
week period of treatment. That led to positive consequences which remained in some children even two years
after the treatment had finished. As might be expected, their gastrointestinal symptoms abated. But their
behaviour improved, too.
Dr Krajmalnik-Brown is well aware of the limitations of this investigation. For one thing, it involved no
controls, so the possibility exists that she was observing a placebo effect. Nor were food journals kept for the
children after the initial treatment had concluded, so a change in diet may have been responsible for the positive
results. She hopes to correct some of these gaps in larger trials that are now under way with the aim of getting
regulatory approval for the procedure as a form of treatment. She also hopes to make therapeutic microbial
cocktails in the laboratory, rather than relying on natural samples.
One further matter of interest in the microbiomes at opposite ends of the alimentary canal is the extent to which
they interact. Does the mouth, for instance, dictate which microbes make their way down to the gut? Or does it
wield its influence only when the microbiome in the gut allows it to do so? Or is there no link at all? At the
moment, these are questions without answers. But mapping the microbial connections between the canal’s two
ends will surely provide material for many conferences to come. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/science-and-

technology/2021/02/10/microbial-ecosystems-in-the-mouth-and-gut-are-linked-to-many-ills

Oncology
Studying cancer genomes gene by gene could improve treatment

It is a new approach to precision medicine
Feb 13th 2021 |
PRECISION MEDICINE holds that, because people are unique, so too are their diseases. It aims to prescribe
treatments tailored to the genetic and biochemical characteristics of individual patients. Achieving this, in the
context of oncology, is the purpose of the Cancer Dependency Map (DepMap), which is being developed jointly
by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, near Cambridge, in Britain, and the Broad Institute in the city in
Massachusetts of that name. Cancer is a good candidate for the application of precision medicine. because it
arises when previously well-behaved cells start reproducing uncontrollably, usually as a result of a mutation in
their genetic code. Numerous mutations can have this result, so many tailored treatments may be possible.
DepMap seeks to find both mutations and treatments.
The first step, as Jesse Boehm, who runs the Broad’s side of the project, explained to this week’s AAAS meeting,
is to grow cancerous tissue in laboratories, where it can be studied at researchers’ convenience. Before DepMap
began, around 1,700 lines of lab-grown cancer cells were available. To try to increase this number, the project’s
scientists turned to social media. Working with American cancer charities they encouraged patients across the
country to send in biopsies of their tumours. That has given them more than 2,000 new samples, from which
they have been able to create more than 400 extra cell lines. Encouragingly, 30% of these represent cancers that
are either rare or occur mostly in children—both groups that researchers need more examples of.
Once the cancerous cells have been persuaded to start growing in DepMap's Petri dishes, the next step is to
examine them for weaknesses. So far, the teams have tested around 6,000 drugs—about half the number ever
licensed for any disease—against more than 500 cancers. They have already turned up some promising
candidates. Tepoxalin, an arthritis medicine for pets, appears to kill cancers in which a gene called ABCB1 is
overactive. Disulfiram, used to treat alcoholism, seems toxic to certain tumours that lack genes involved with
the processing of heavy metals.
New technology means it is not only drugs which can be analysed systematically. Matthew Garnett, of the
Sanger Institute, discussed using CRISPR-CAS9 to do the same for genes. CRISPR-CAS9 is a set of chemical scissors
employed by bacteria to chop up and deactivate DNA introduced by viruses that prey on them. Repurposed as an
all-purpose DNA-cutting device, it has become one of biology's most useful tools.
Cut to the chase
Dr Garnett described how researchers at the Sanger had used CRISPR-CAS9 to disable, one by one, nearly every
gene in hundreds of cancer-cell lines. This permitted them to discover which genes are essential for a tumour's
survival and might therefore make promising targets for new drugs. He gave the example of WRN, a gene
involved in fixing damaged DNA. Cancer cells are often already deficient in DNA-repair mechanisms, and some
seem reliant on WRN for survival. Based on those results, Dr Garnett said, drug companies are already
developing drugs designed to suppress either WRN itself, or the protein it produces.
Deconstructing cancer cells’ genomes has yielded other insights, too. Dr Boehm noted that examining the rate at
which genes are expressed—that is, used to make proteins—is often more useful for predicting vulnerabilities
than looking for mutations in the genetic code. This, he said, is especially true of some childhood cancers,
which often exhibit few mutations.
An encouraging start, then. But there is a long way to go. Dr Boehm estimated that, despite having analysed all
the genes and thousands of drugs for around 1,000 different sorts of cancer, the project remains about 90%
unfinished. This may be an underestimate. As Fiona Behan, another of the Sanger’s DepMap researchers,
pointed out, besides examining individual genes in isolation, disabling several at once may also yield useful
insights. In that case, though, the number of possible combinations would be astronomical.
Moreover, not all results in Petri dishes bear fruit in human beings. Andrea Califano of Columbia University
observed that cancer cells which have adapted to grow in laboratories often have different patterns of gene
expression from those that grow in bodies. Nevertheless, as Dr Garnett told the meeting, the success rate for
developing new cancer drugs is, at the moment, depressingly low. If DepMap can uncover plausible targets for
developers to aim at, that may start to change. ■

technology/2021/02/13/studying-cancer-genomes-gene-by-gene-could-improve-treatment

Green construction
Building sustainable cities with wooden skyscrapers

The AAAS heard how cities with lower carbon emissions could be built
Feb 13th 2021 |
MORE THAN half the world’s population dwell in cities, and by 2050 the UN expects that proportion to reach
68%. This means more homes, roads and other infrastructure. In India alone, the equivalent of a city the size of
Chicago will have to be developed every year to meet demand for housing. Such a construction boom does,
though, bode ill for tackling climate change, because making steel and concrete, two of the most common
building materials, generates around 8% of the world’s anthropogenic carbon-dioxide emissions. If cities are to
expand and become greener at the same time, they will have to be made from something else.
As it happens, Chicago might become part of the answer. In recent years, as architects have become
increasingly interested in modern timber-construction methods, wooden buildings have been getting steadily
taller. The current record is held by the 85-metre-tall Mjostarnet building in Norway (see picture), completed in
2019. But this would be dwarfed by the River Beech Tower, a 228-metre edifice proposed for a site beside the
Chicago river.
As the AAAS meeting heard this week, wood is one of the most promising sustainable alternatives to steel and
concrete. It is not, however, everyday lumber, chipboard or plywood that is attracting the interest of architects.
Rather, it is a material called engineered timber. This is a composite of different layers, each designed to meet
the requirements of specific components such as floors, panels, cross-braces and beams. Besides engineering the
shape of a component, designers can align the grains in the layers to provide levels of strength that rival steel, in
a product that is up to 80% lighter. Engineered timber is, moreover, usually prefabricated into large sections of a
building in a factory. That cuts down on the number of deliveries that have to be made to a construction site.
All this makes a big difference to carbon-dioxide emissions. Michael Ramage of the University of Cambridge
told the meeting of a 300-square-metre four-storey wooden building constructed in that city. Erecting this
generated 126 tonnes of CO2. Had it been made with concrete the tally would have risen to 310 tonnes. If steel
had been used, emissions would have topped 498 tonnes. Indeed, from one point of view, this building might
actually be viewed as “carbon negative”. When trees grow they lock carbon up in their wood—in this case the
equivalent of 540 tonnes of CO2. Preserved in Cambridge rather than recycled by beetles, fungi and bacteria, that
carbon represents a long-term subtraction of CO2 from the atmosphere.
If building with wood takes off, it does raise concern about there being enough trees to go round. But with
sustainably managed forests that should not be a problem, says Dr Ramage. A family-sized apartment requires
about 30 cubic metres of timber, and he estimates Europe’s sustainable forests alone grow that amount every
seven seconds. Nor is fire a risk, for engineered timber does not burn easily. According to a report by the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, large structural timbers are fire resistant because
their inner cores are protected by a charring layer if burnt. It is therefore hard for a fire to destroy them. And, for
extra incombustibility, fireproofing layers can be added to the timber. All in all, then, it looks as if wood as a
building material may get a new lease of life. ■
climate-change hub

technology/2021/02/13/building-sustainable-cities-with-wooden-skyscrapers

Silicon chats
Conversational computers have come a long way

But still have a long way to go
Feb 11th 2021 |
PEOPLE HAVE been conversing with computers since the 1960s, when Joseph Weizenbaum of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology created a “chatbot” called Eliza. Eliza was designed as both an electronic parlour trick
and as a gentle mockery of psychotherapists. Its chief conversational gambit was repeating its interlocutors’
statements back to them in the form of questions. Yet Weizenbaum was surprised to discover that some of
Eliza’s human interlocutors began to treat it as if it truly understood what they were telling it.
A great deal of progress has been made since Eliza’s day. Every modern smartphone ships with a built-in voice
assistant. Big computing firms such as Amazon and Google sell “smart speakers”—digital helpmeets that users
can ask to provide everything from weather forecasts to film trivia. At the annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science participants were treated to a discussion of the present state of the
art—and to a demonstration of its limitations.
Marilyn Walker of the University of California, Santa Cruz, described a system called ATHENA, one of five
finalists in the 2020 iteration of the annual “Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge”, run by Amazon. The
Challenge’s challenge, as it were, is to design conversational programs that users of Amazon’s Alexa smart
speakers can have a conversation with, as opposed simply to asking the system to perform tasks.
By exploiting Amazon’s scale, conversational-AI researchers get access to hundreds of thousands of test
subjects, and a wealth of user data. ATHENA itself was involved in 118,000 conversations that users had rated
afterwards. For its part, Amazon got hold of more than 240,000 hours of conversations between its customers
and the various entrants.
Unlike Eliza, which ran on a self-contained computer, ATHENA relies on the internet. It has different
conversational modules that can chime in with possible replies to a user’s words. Some are generalists, and
based on web-search engines. Others are specialists, pulling their knowledge from online sources such as
WikiData, a volunteer-edited source of machine-readable information on everything from film stars to
astronomical ones.
The result, said Dr Walker, was a system with access to a broad but shallow set of knowledge. One strategy for
mimicking a real conversation was to sprinkle in related trivia. In the middle of what was supposed to be a
reflective discussion about the Moon, for instance, ATHENA volunteered that, on that particular day, it was a
waxing crescent, and offered to calculate when it would next be full.
The researchers found, though, that conversations involving such trivia were not as engaging as ones in which
the system tried to provide more of its own opinions, and to elicit similar responses from its interlocutors. That
is hard. Most such opinions have to be hand-crafted by human programmers, said Dr Walker, which is time-
consuming. (ATHENA, after all, runs on a piece of silicon in a server rack somewhere, and thus has no
understanding of the world it is being asked to opine about.) Dr Walker hoped that improvements to the
system’s response ranker—which tries to select appropriate responses from among those generated by its
various conversational modules—might improve things. But she conceded that, for now at least, the state of the
art produces systems with responses that are “fluent, but may not be very relevant”.
Nancy Cooke, of Arizona State University, presented evidence about the implications of such limitations in
practice. Working with America’s air force, she had been conducting experiments into what happens when one
member of a team operating a reconnaissance drone is replaced by a computer.
The silicon replacements are designed to understand natural language, and to use it to interact with their
biological brothers-in-arms. But, compared with all-human teams, the computer-aided drone operators
performed poorly. The problem, said Dr Cooke, was that the computers behaved as “selfish teammates”. They
were happy to ask their human compatriots for information, such as where the next stop on a mission was. But
they did not share alike in turn. Over time, the humans adapted by becoming brusquer themselves, and the
amount of information being shared fell.
Susan Brennan, a psychologist at Stony Brook University, offered one explanation. Conversation, she pointed
out, is not simply a case of actors taking turns to speak. Instead, it is a process between participants who use
contextual clues to solve ambiguities, and which relies on their understanding of each other’s minds and
intentions to fill in gaps, to know when to interrupt, when to volunteer information, and when to yield.
Computers—at least for now—can do none of these things. The most powerful AI language models are trained
on vast corpuses of text running to billions of words. However, written words, as Dr Brennan observed, are but
a limited and incomplete record of a spoken conversation. This sort of contingent interaction is vital when
children are first learning languages, she said. “AI knows words. But not how to interact.”

technology/2021/02/11/conversational-computers-have-come-a-long-way

Science & ... Sections Graphic detail
Books & arts

Scientists and aliens: Black-sky thinking Robert Maxwell: A made-up life
. .
Caste and gender in India: Death traps Johnson: At a loss for words
. .
Science & ... Sections Graphic detail
Black-sky thinking
A distinguished astronomer sees evidence of extraterrestrial life

And takes on his fellow scientists
Feb 13th 2021 |
Extraterrestrial. By Avi Loeb. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 240 pages; $27. John Murray; £20
THE OBJECT came hurtling in from deep space, from the direction of Vega, a star 25 light-years away. It crossed
the orbital plane of the solar system, within which the Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun, on
September 6th 2017. Now under the influence of the sun’s gravitation, the object accelerated to around
200,000mph as it made its closest approach to the star on September 9th. Its trajectory then took it out of the
solar system. A month after the object had arrived, it was well on its way back to interstellar space, moving
towards the constellation of Pegasus.
As it catapulted past the sun and began to head off, no one on Earth had any idea of the object’s existence.
Astronomers at the Haleakala Observatory in Maui only discovered it on October 19th; it was hidden in the data
collected by their network of telescopes, as a point of light that travelled too fast to be trapped by the sun’s
gravity. They gave it a name: ‘Oumuamua.
In the weeks after this discovery, astronomers quickly confirmed that ‘Oumuamua (which loosely means
“scout” in Hawaiian) was the first interstellar object recorded as having passed through the solar system.
Initially it was thought most likely to have been an asteroid or a comet; but as 2017 drew to a close, the
available data continued to puzzle scientists. Their analyses indicated that ‘Oumuamua was small (around 400
metres long) and shiny (perhaps ten times shinier than any asteroid or comet seen before). It seemed to have an
elongated, cigar-like shape, at least five to ten times longer than it was wide. (Later it was generally deemed to
have been flatter, like a pancake, as in the impression in the picture.) Astronomers had never seen anything like
it.
In addition to these physical peculiarities, ‘Oumuamua had travelled along a path through the solar system that
could not be explained by the gravity of the sun alone. “This, for me, was the most eyebrow-raising bit of data
we accumulated over the roughly two weeks we were able to observe ‘Oumuamua,” writes Avi Loeb, an
astronomer, in “Extraterrestrial”, his account of the interstellar visitation. “This anomaly about ‘Oumuamua…
would soon lead me to form a hypothesis about the object that put me at odds with most of the scientific
establishment.”
For, after studying the available evidence, Mr Loeb concluded that the simplest explanation for the exotic
strangeness of ‘Oumuamua was that it had been created by an intelligent civilisation beyond Earth.
More things in heaven and Earth
By definition, scientists are meant to follow wherever the evidence leads them. Personal biases and prejudices
can cloud the judgments of those seeking to understand the rules of nature—but the methods of modern
scientific research, developed over hundreds of years and keenly honed in the past century, seek to reduce the
impact of subjective human factors that could otherwise impede progress.
Observations and data are the material on which scientists build their hypotheses. Those hypotheses are then
ritually torn apart by other scientists and—if they can withstand sustained critiques and are not contradicted by
further evidence from the real world—they might lay claim to being true. In science, changing your mind in the
light of fresh information is seen as a good thing. If a new conjecture gathers supporting evidence and
eventually supplants years of previous thinking on a topic, scientists are duty-bound to abandon the defunct
ideas and embrace the new ones. The more radically an idea diverges from the mainstream, however, the greater
the scrutiny it will inevitably face. Carl Sagan, an American astronomer, once summed this up: “Extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence.”
That is the theory, at least. But like any profession, the path of scientific research can be influenced (both
positively and negatively) by fashions and personalities, which can also determine who receives funding and
which ideas get heard. Take the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, commonly known as SETI. Since the
1960s astronomers have been listening to the skies for any signs of radio signals sent out by technologically
capable life beyond Earth. For most of its existence, though, SETI has been marginalised, dismissed as a lesser
use of time and resources than the more prestigious study of black holes, subatomic particles, stars, galaxies and
other “real” physics. The steadfastly radio-silent skies have not burnished SETI’s image as a discipline to be
taken seriously.
Loeb’s visions
Mr Loeb says he has always found the hostility to SETI bizarre. Modern mainstream theoretical physicists, he
points out, accept the study of spatial dimensions beyond the three (length, breadth and depth) with which
people are familiar. Experimental evidence for these dimensions, however, does not exist. Similarly, many
leading cosmologists think that this universe is one among an infinite number of others that exist together in a
“multiverse”. But, again, experimental evidence for that proposition does not exist. String theory, the putative
“theory of everything” that is meant to bind together the physics of the cosmos with that of subatomic particles,
is considered scientific even though there is no direct evidence to prove it is real.
E.T. go home
Compared with these abstract theories, the notion that there could be life elsewhere in the universe, when it is
known to exist on Earth, should not seem so radical a subject of study. Mr Loeb thinks resistance to it comes
from two sources. First, the “laughable” popular narratives in which aliens lay waste to Earth’s cities and
possess superhuman wisdom. He is no fan of science fiction that ignores the laws of physics.
But the more important reason, he says, is a conservatism within science, which is sustained by the desire of
individual scientists to keep risk low and funding high:
By limiting interpretations or placing blinders on our telescopes, we risk missing discoveries…The

scientific community’s pre judice or closed-mindedness—however you want to describe it—is particularly
pervasive and powerful when it comes to the search for alien life, especially intelligent life. Many
researchers refuse to even consider the possibility that a bizarre object or phenomenon might be evidence
of an advanced civilisation.
The fact that accusations of conservatism in mainstream science are being levelled by an astronomer situated at
the very heart of the scientific establishment may seem ironic. Mr Loeb has, after all, spent most of his career at
prestigious American institutions, including a recent spell as the head of the astronomy department at Harvard
University. He is also chairman of the board on physics and astronomy of the US National Academies.
His prominent status in astronomy circles has ensured that Mr Loeb’s radical hypothesis has attracted
widespread attention. All the same, and as he reports in his book, it would be “putting the matter mildly” to say
that his idea has been met with disapproval by his scientific colleagues. Writing in Nature Astronomy in July
2019, a research team assembled by the International Space Science Institute concluded that it had found “no
compelling evidence to favour an alien explanation for ‘Oumuamua”. It dismissed Mr Loeb’s theory as one not
based on fact.
This is not his first brush with scientific celebrity. In 2016 he was the astrophysical brain behind Breakthrough
Starshot, a $100m project funded by Yuri Milner, a Russian tech billionaire, the goal of which is to dispatch a
fleet of tiny probes called Starchips to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. They are to be equipped with
cameras able to relay any signs of life they might find back to Earth.Mr Loeb worked out that it might be
possible to accelerate a Starchip to around 20% of the speed of light if it were fitted with an ultra-thin sail and a
100-gigawatt laser were directed towards it for a few minutes. So launched, the Starchips would in theory make
the 4.4-light-year journey to Alpha Centauri in between 20 and 30 years.
The Breakthrough Starshot project was announced a year before the discovery of ‘Oumuamua. The hunt for life
elsewhere may well have been on Mr Loeb’s mind when he was contemplating the object’s most intriguing
anomaly: the weird way it had moved past the sun.
In June 2018 scientists reported that ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory had deviated slightly from the one it might have
been expected to follow if it had been determined purely by the sun’s gravitational attraction. As it passed the
sun the object was pushed away by an unexplained force. Comets sometimes behave like this when they get
close to the sun, but in their case the force is easy to explain: a tail of dust and gas is ejected from the ball of ice
as it is heated by the sun, which gives the object a rocket-like push. Yet no such tail was detected near
‘Oumuamua.
Sailing close to the sun
Mr Loeb had another hypothesis: perhaps sunlight was bouncing off the object’s surface like the wind off a thin
sail. A thin, sturdy, light sail, of the sort that he had himself proposed for the Breakthrough Starshot project,
would be technically feasible for a more advanced civilisation. In any case, such a sail could not occur
naturally; it would have to be engineered by intelligent beings.
He may or may not be right about ‘Oumuamua. But that hardly seems to make much difference to what is
ultimately the mainthesis of his book. Conservatism may not be unique to astrophysics, he argues, but it is
“depressing and concerning” given the huge number of anomalies still perceived in the universe. Mr Loeb is
surely correct that scientists studying the vastness of the cosmos should entertain risky ideas more often, for the
universe is undoubtedly more wild and unexpected than any extremes conjured by the human imagination.
“Extraterrestrial” considers the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere, but its core message, an update to
Sagan’s maxim, is aimed squarely at life on Earth: “Extraordinary conservatism keeps us extraordinarily
ignorant.” ■
Dig Deeper
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distinguished-astronomer-sees-evidence-of-extraterrestrial-life

Renegade tycoons
The rise and falls of Robert Maxwell

Even in death, the disgraced businessman was larger than life
Feb 13th 2021 |
Fall. By John Preston. HarperCollins; 352 pages; $28.99. Viking; £18.99
UNUSUALLY FOR him, Robert Maxwell arrived alone on November 1st 1991 to board his superyacht, the Lady
Ghislaine, in Gibraltar for an impromptu cruise. Even more unusually, he seemed to be in a good mood, despite
the pressure he was under as he feverishly shuffled assets in a vain bid to stave off the collapse of his media
empire. Four days later, a Spanish rescue helicopter was winching his bloated body from the sea off Gran
Canaria, using a sling meant to save cattle from floods because he was too heavy for an ordinary harness. Even
in death, Maxwell was larger than life.
A botched first autopsy fed speculation about how the publishing tycoon had died. Had he simply fallen into the
water, or was it suicide? Could he have been bumped off? When it emerged a few weeks later that £350m (then
$603m) was missing from the pension fund of one of his two main companies, Mirror Group Newspapers, and
tens of millions more from the other, Maxwell Communication Corporation, both the dire state of his wildly
over-leveraged businesses and his criminal attempts to hold on to them were revealed. Had he lived, the 68-
year-old would have wound up in a prison cell.
There have been many biographies of Maxwell, but the story of this monstrous, enigmatic, bullying, narcissistic
crook of gigantic appetites, who at his peak was one of the most recognisable businessmen in the world, may
well be largely unknown to anyone under 40. John Preston tells it with great verve and the benefit of extensive
interviews with, among others, Maxwell’s one-time rival Rupert Murdoch, who says he always regarded him as
“an absolute fraud and a charlatan”, and three of Maxwell’s children—though not Ghislaine, his youngest, who
is in jail in New York awaiting trial on charges linked to her relationship with the sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell was born in 1923 to a Jewish family in Solotvino, a salt-mining town in what was then
Czechoslovakia, where anti-Semitism was institutionalised. Ludvik Hoch, as he was originally called, grew up
in desperate poverty with a brutal father. Narrowly escaping death after joining the anti-Nazi resistance, he
somehow ended the second world war as a notably ruthless young British officer with a talent for languages, a
Military Cross pinned to his chest by Field-Marshal Montgomery, and a new name. With his energy, complete
absence of scruple and eye for the main chance—all his subsequent success was based on his insight that, after
the war, there would be huge demand across Europe for scientific publishing, which his company, Pergamon,
could supply—he realised he could make serious money.
Mr Preston zips through Maxwell’s business and political journey (he was briefly a Labour MP who drove the
House of Commons mad with his refusal ever to shut up). His resilience was extraordinary. He powered on
despite losing half a lung to cancer, the death of two children and, in 1971, being deemed not fit “to exercise
proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company” in a government report.
The portrait that emerges is more subtly drawn than previous ones. For all his bombast, chicanery and revolting
personal habits, and his vile treatment of pretty much everyone who was beholden to him, not least his family, it
is hard not to feel a stab of pity for Maxwell as the end draws near. He seems always to have been running away
from his terrible childhood, assuming new identities as he went. He abandoned Judaism until late in life, yet was
haunted by awful guilt for not having been able to save family members from the death camps. He was
incapable of personal friendship (perhaps the only exception was the man who used to dye his hair and
eyebrows). Ceaseless activity masked his essential loneliness.
Maxwell left a trail of wreckage: this reviewer’s father was one of the Mirror Group pensioners he stole from.
But was he any worse than the cynical lawyers, bankers, politicians—and some journalists—who fawned on,
flattered and abetted a man long nicknamed the “Bouncing Czech”? Peter Jay, a former economics editor of the
Times and British ambassador in Washington, who spent three miserable years as Maxwell’s “chief of staff”,
has perhaps the book’s best insight: “There was something not so much amoral about him, as pre-moral. It was
as if he was literally uncivilised, like some great woolly mammoth stalking through a primeval forest wholly
unaware of things like good and evil.”
And the mystery of his death? Mr Preston does not rule out suicide, but his family think it more likely that he
fell while peeing over the side of the boat in the small hours, as he was wont to do. ■
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and-falls-of-robert-maxwell

Death traps
“The Good Girls” shows the costs of caste and poverty in India
Sonia Faleiro investigates the opaque deaths of two teenage girls
Feb 13th 2021 |
The Good Girls. By Sonia Faleiro. Grove; 352 pages; $26. Bloomsbury Circus; £16.99
AT THE END of May 2014 a photograph went viral on Twitter. It showed two girls hanged on a tree in Uttar
Pradesh, in India. Their relatives were refusing to hand over the bodies to the state authorities, who they
believed would never deliver justice for Padma and Lalli, inseparable cousins aged 16 and 14.
Like millions of others, Sonia Faleiro was horrified two years earlier by a gang rape on a bus in Delhi, where
she grew up. That crime triggered protests and, ultimately, changes in policy. She set out to investigate what
rapidly became the country’s most high-profile case since then.
The outrage in Delhi showed that, in India, “the wheels of justice move only under pressure from the powerful”.
Violent crime was unremarkable; Uttar Pradesh, India’s “murder capital” and most populous state, recorded
12,361 abduction and kidnap incidents in 2014. But the low-caste Shakya family would not let their loss be
dismissed by police whom they saw as inept and corrupt, and who were dominated by the Yadav caste then
running the state government. The family eventually filed official allegations against three local brothers and
two policemen. Amid the furore, all five were taken into custody.
International coverage followed the domestic kind. Television crews swarmed into the girls’ village of Katra
Sadatganj; politicians’ helicopters landed among its tobacco and mint crops. Narendra Modi was sworn in as
prime minister two days before the girls were found, but the “good days” that he promised seemed remote in a
place where most households lacked running water and electricity. Forbes magazine’s latest global power list
included several Indian women; meanwhile, two girls hung like “dangling puppets” in fields that were their only
toilet. The gulf between India, nascent superpower, and its rural population—two-thirds of the total—was
glaring.
After police bungling and a botched post-mortem, the Central Bureau of Investigation took over the case. They
found no proof of rape. The family’s eyewitness accounts—describing four Yadav men snatching the girls—
were contradictory. Ms Faleiro, previously the author of an acclaimed book about Mumbai’s dance bars, asks
probing questions. Why had Lalli’s father bought a phone for Padma that auto-recorded calls? Where was his
own phone, which held evidence of a conversation between Lalli and a local youth who now stood accused of
rape and murder? Why were the girls’ bodies unmarked?
The truth that emerges underscores “the powerlessness of the poor” and the stranglehold of the caste system and
honour codes. If the Delhi case highlighted the dangers of public spaces, the hangings showed that “an Indian
woman’s first challenge was surviving her own home”. Asked how he might have defended the girls’ tainted
reputations, Lalli’s father replied, “We would have killed them.” Mr Modi emphasised women’s safety, yet took
a fortnight to acknowledge the girls’ deaths.
Ms Faleiro’s pithy, cliffhanging chapters fuse true crime with big-picture analysis, blending data with
interviews and detail. The result is a sobering portrait of a country where progress has been undermined by
inequality, short-termist politics and Mr Modi’s divisive Hindu nationalism. It is a powerful indictment of a
society failing its most vulnerable members. ■
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girls-shows-the-costs-of-caste-and-poverty-in-india

Johnson
If only English had a word for…

Here are some useful expressions it could borrow from other languages
Feb 13th 2021 |
IMAGINE A FRIEND is heading out to face a difficult task. As a last word of encouragement before they disappear,
you want to buck them up. What might you say? If you are speaking English, the likeliest choice is “good luck”.
If you stop to think about it, that is a little odd. Though you might indeed hope luck smiles on your friend,
neither they nor you can do much about the tumbling dice. What you really want to wish them is fortitude, not
fortune. Which is why the French, in this situation, say “bon courage”, not “good luck”. A French expression
for “good luck” (bonne chance) exists, too, but you are more likely to wish that to someone who needs luck
specifically—perhaps heading to the racetrack rather than a tough appointment.
Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, noted recently on the Language Log blog that
English does not allow you to pair any old adjective with any old noun in a fixed expression. You may wish
someone “good morning”, “good afternoon” or “good night”, but not “good weekend”. You can say that phrase
if you like, but your neighbour would look at you quizzically if you lob it over the fence on a Friday evening. In
other languages it is perfectly conventional.
Special occasions are another way in which pleasantries differ. English-speakers wish each other a happy
birthday, but speakers of many other languages say “congratulations”, as if (to the English ear) the birthday girl
had done something impressive merely by surviving another year. The Dutch also say “gefeliciteerd” to
members of the family, including the one who really deserves congratulating: the mother. This is close to
obligatory, whereas it would constitute a strange (if charming) surprise in English. Dutch-speakers miss the
habit when living among Anglophones.
It is natural to be critical of languages that lack expressions you consider indispensable. For instance, the
Scandinavian languages lack a word for “please”, one of the first taught in other tongues because it softens what
otherwise might be a brusque-sounding request from a novice speaker. But Scandinavians are not rude: they
achieve the same end through other, longer formulations, from “May I ask for?” in public to tacking on “so you
are sweet” in a request to an intimate. Meanwhile, Scandinavians must wonder why Anglophones do not wish
each other something like the Swedish “tack for senast” when they see a friend again (meaning “thank you for
the previous time we saw each other”). It is odd, even rude, to omit this, and having no English equivalent is
vexing for those who are used to it.
It is tempting to draw deep cultural conclusions from the presence of this or the absence of that in a language.
But impressions can be misleading. The Italians wish each other “buon lavoro”—basically “have a good
workday”—though their culture is not known to be especially work-focused. And German has the delightful
“Feierabend!”, used to wish someone well as they leave work, though Germans are not known for a love of
knocking off and relaxing. To conform with stereotypes, at least, the two languages should swap those
expressions.
Yet some idioms really do say something about a culture. The expansiveness of Japanese’s “sumimasen”
reveals a lot about Japan: though usually translated as “sorry” or “excuse me”, it is used in a much broader
range of situations than those corollaries. A detailed online guide to Japanese culture recommends it as the
single word of Japanese to know if you learn just one. The Japanese might say it when someone holds a door for
them, or even for interrupting someone’s journey in the lift by getting on at an intermediate floor. They are not
cravenly apologetic, but their society values displays of respect for others. They must wonder why no single
English word has the suppleness and coverage of sumimasen.
But not having a word for something doesn’t mean you can’t coin one—or borrow it. The English say bon
voyage and bon appétit, and there’s no reason to stop there. When in-person work begins again, try a “buon
lavoro” as your better half heads off, or a “Feierabend!” as a colleague leaves for home. When you see a friend,
thank them like a Swede for the previous time you saw them, and if you break up someone’s descent in a lift,
try a friendly “Sorry about that!” Congratulate your mother-in-law on your spouse’s birthday, and prepare for a
delighted smile back. It may seem awkward or tricky at first, but you can make it stick if you try. Bon courage.
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english-had-a-word-for

Books & arts Sections Obituary
Graphic detail
Covid-19 vaccines: Jabs and jab-nots
.
Books & arts Sections Obituary
Jabs and jab-nots
There will be enough vaccines for all—if rich countries share

Half of the world’s supply has been reserved for just 15% of its population
Feb 13th 2021 |
COVID-19 HAS spread at a formidable clip of late, but the vaccines designed to stop it are spreading even faster.
In the two months since mass vaccination began, at least 148m doses have been administered—more than the
number of people who have ever tested positive for the disease. A further 39m are now getting a jab every
week.
The new vaccines have been designed and tested with unprecedented speed. According to a tally kept by
Airfinity, an analytics company, 378 covid-19 vaccines are in various stages of development. Of those, three
(made by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca) have met the stringent rules for regulatory approval in at least one
Western country; two more (made by Novavax and Johnson & Johnson) should get the green light soon. Two
vaccines from China and a promising Russian one have also been authorised in some countries.
The makers of these eight vaccines have signed contracts to deliver 7.9bn doses this year, and say they have
capacity to fulfil orders for 4.3bn more. Of these, only a small fraction have already been produced, and
manufacturing delays are likely. Moreover, even after jabs leave the factory, getting them into people’s arms
can take months. Nonetheless, at least in theory, vaccine makers should be able to produce 2.1 shots—more
than a full regimen—for each of the world’s 5.8bn adults by the end of 2021. (Children are not yet eligible,
pending research on safety and efficacy.)
Yet even if all goes according to plan, much of the world will suffer a longer wait, because jabs will be
distributed unequally. The 54 richest countries account for 18% of adults on Earth, but 40% of vaccine orders—
enough to give each of their adults 2.5 two-dose regimens. Even though the EU has contracted for more vaccines
than it can use, some member states, like Germany, have made their own deals. Canada has ordered a whopping
11 doses per adult.
Elsewhere, expected supply is tighter, at 1.5 doses ordered per adult. Russia and China can probably make do
with their domestic jabs. And the Serum Institute, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, plans to save half of its
output for local use in India.
Many other countries are relying on COVAX, a global coalition to distribute covid-19 vaccines. It is expected to
provide at least 1.8bn doses to 92 poor and middle-income countries this year, in proportion to their populations
(though subsequent allocations will depend on where the pandemic is most severe). Weighting by total
population favours countries with lots of children, who count when determining vaccine quantities but are
unlikely to get the shots. For example, Niger, where 50% of people are aged under 15, will receive 2.1 doses for
every adult from COVAX. In contrast, North Korea, whose adults make up 80% of the population, will get just
0.7 doses for each one. ■
Sources: Airfinity; Gavi; Max Roser, Our World in Data; United Nations; World Bank; The Economist
Dig deeper
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be-enough-vaccines-for-all-if-rich-countries-share

Graphic detail Sections Economic ...
Obituary
Paul Crutzen: Seer of the Anthropocene
.
Graphic detail Sections Economic ...
Seer of the Anthropocene
Paul Crutzen died on January 28th

The atmospheric chemist and meteorologist was 87
Feb 13th 2021 |
IT WAS UNPREMEDITATED, Paul Crutzen told people afterwards, something sudden and unbidden. At the same
time, it had been building up for decades. It may well resonate for centuries.
The year was 2000, and he was in Cuernavaca at a scientific meeting devoted to understanding the way that the
Earth operates as a system. In one session the word “Holocene” was used again and again. An unfamiliar word
to many outside science, an unexceptionable one to those within: a simple and value-free way of referring to the
little sliver of geological time that began in the last throes of the most recent ice age, 11,700 years ago. But he
found himself increasingly irritated by hearing the term used to encompass both the world of today and the
world of the first farmers, a world of a few million people and of a few billion, a world of fires in hearths and a
world of oilfields. He could not accept the view that humans just happened to occupy their period in the same
way that dinosaurs happened to occupy the Jurassic and trilobites the Ordovician. And so he interrupted. “Stop
saying the Holocene! We’re not in the Holocene any more.” Hubbub; surprise: “So where are we then, Paul?”,
his colleagues asked. “When are we?” He cast around, hesitated, then decided: “The Anthropocene”.
The idea that humans act as a force of nature, and that the extent of that action meant the Earth had crossed a
threshold into a new mode of being, was not new. But his outburst gave it wings. Partly it was a matter of
timing: the full import of climate change and the lack of much success at curbing it, despite decades of effort,
were beginning to sink into scientists’ minds. Partly it was that “the messenger was the message”. No one had
done more to understand the ways that humans were changing, and could change, the nature of their planet than
Paul Crutzen had.
His parents were poor. His primary-school years were spent in an Amsterdam occupied by German forces; some
classmates died in the hongerwinter of 1944-45. His high-school exam results were depressed by an ill-timed
bout of fever, meaning he could not get a scholarship to university. Not wanting to burden his parents with fees,
he went to technical school to train as a civil engineer. In the late 1950s, having married a Finnish woman he
met on holiday in Switzerland, he gave up the engineering of bridges in Amsterdam for that of houses in
Sweden, closer to her family.
It was there that in 1958 that he saw a computer-programming job at Stockholm University’s Department of
Meteorology advertised in the paper. He had no experience in programming; but then, nor did many people at
the time. He got the job, took courses on the side and, in the 1960s, started out on a research career. Many of his
colleagues were looking at the impact of humans on the environment, but he wanted to do pure science. So he
turned to the chemistry of the stratosphere.
The problem which caught his attention was that the chemical reactions thought to destroy the ozone in the
stratosphere were much slower than the sunlight-driven reactions known to create it. There thus had to be
another “sink”. He found it in nitrogen oxides; even in the tiny amount nature provides at the top of the
atmosphere, they could catalyse ozone destruction efficiently enough to do the job. It was an elegant, brilliant
idea. It was also, for a man who had started out not wanting to look at human impacts, a startlingly inopportune
one.
At the time he was doing this work there was a heated debate in America over the advisability of building
supersonic airliners to ply the stratosphere—the engines of which, he and others realised, could produce
nitrogen oxides in ozone-layer-crashing profusion. Soon afterwards the ozone-destroying effect of nitrogen
oxides produced in fireballs the size of cities was raised as a long-term consequence of nuclear war. A year later
Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina showed that chlorine from CFCs, industrial chemicals used in refrigerants
and aerosols, might act in the same way as nitrogen oxides, eating up ozone with terrible abandon. That finding
launched a decade-long struggle to outlaw the production of CFCs—a goal written into international law in the
Montreal protocol of 1987. He, Molina and Rowland shared a Nobel prize for their work in 1995.
His role in these debates provided him with an education in politics to match his earlier ones in engineering and
atmospheric science. Again, he proved an adept student. When, in the mid-1970s, his friend Stephen Schneider
suggested that climate scientists should brief politicians and the public systematically about the findings which
were beginning to worry them, he agreed, but said it would be slow work. He and Schneider did not get their
wish until the late 1980s, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up: an innovation built
on the success of the Montreal protocol.
For decades he studied and catalogued the ways that humans were making changes on the level that had caused
his outburst in Cuernavaca. His research covered swathes of atmospheric chemistry, notably that which occurs
in the huge smoky, smoggy clouds created by forest fires and unchecked industry. In the course of that work he
wrote the first influential paper on the blacked-out sky, failed harvests and mass starvation of the hongerwinter
writ large that would follow nuclear war. He was deeply committed to averting such human and ecological
catastrophe. When in 1995, while running the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, he heard of his Nobel prize, he
celebrated with sekt rather than champagne: not because of his modest, Dutch, cycling-to-work frugality, but
because of France’s blinkered position on nuclear testing.
If, as seems quite likely, the International Commission on Stratigraphy eventually extends formal recognition to
the idea of the Anthropocene, the fallout from such testing, now settled into sea-floor sediments, may well be
chosen as the geological formation that marks its base. And it also seems likely that, for as long as that epoch
lasts, those who study it will be following the lead of Paul Crutzen.■
climate-change hub
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died-on-january-28th

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Economic Indicators
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Economic data, commodities and markets

Feb 13th 2021 |
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