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Municipality workers remove debris from the streets after flooding in Sheikh Jalal district, Baghlan province, Afghanistan May 12, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Devastating floods, COVID reporter released, Catalonia votes, Swiss contestant wins Eurovision
315: At least 315 people in northern Afghanistan have died in severe floods that also injured over 1,600 others, wiped out thousands of homes, and devastated livestock herds that feed the region. Aid agencies expect chaos. It’s been a bad month for floods worldwide — similar inundations in southern Brazil and Kenya have killed hundreds in recent weeks.
4: Lawyer and journalist Zhang Zhan has been released from prison in China four years after being detained for her reporting on the government’s draconian response to the COVID-19 outbreak. In jail, Zhang’s health suffered severely, with her weight dropping to below 90 lbs at one point. Her former lawyer says Zhang will either be returned home or sent somewhere to do a few months of “soft prison” time while cloistered from the rest of the world.
9: Candidates from nine parties competed for seats in local elections in the wealthy, independence-leaning Spanish region of Catalonia on Sunday, and the Socialist candidate supported by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is expected to squeak out a win. If no party wins a majority outright, the Socialists will likely need to hammer together a coalition to maintain control.
2: Students walked out on two major commencement speakers this weekend. Dozens of Duke graduates turned their backs on comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and Virginia Commonwealth University grads gave the same treatment to Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In addition to the walkouts, several more campuses saw major demonstrations surrounding their commencement activities.
Where the US & China agree - and where they don't
“This is largely a competitive relationship,” Burns tells Bremmer. It’ll likely be a systemic rivalry well into the 2030s between the two largest economies in the world and the two strongest militaries in the world, so what happens here is very consequential.”
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
Are the US and China frenemies now? Perspective from Nicholas Burns, US Ambassador to China
Listen: US Ambassador to China Nick Burns joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World Podcast to look at the complex and contentious state of the US-China relationship. What do the world's two biggest economies and strongest militaries agree on, and where are they still miles apart? After Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met at a summit in San Francisco last November, it seemed like frosty relations were starting to thaw. But while China and the US have committed to re-engage diplomatically after the 2023 Chinese spy balloon low-point, there is still a lot of daylight–and no trust–between the two. So how stable is the US-China relationship, really? Are we adversaries? Frenemies? Toxic co-dependents? Burns and Bremmer discuss Taiwan, aggression in the South China Sea, China’s economic woes and national security push, and where one of the most consequential bilateral relationships between any two countries in the world goes from here.
Ian Explains: Xi Jinping's nationalist agenda is rebuilding walls around China
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down how Xi Jinping is turning China inwards at a time when it can’t afford to close itself off. Since assuming the presidency in 2012, Xi has consolidated power within the Communist Party to become China’s most dominant ruler since Chairman Mao Zedong. Under Xi’s watch, China has rolled back democratic rights in Hong Kong, implemented crackdowns on the powerful tech, finance, and real estate sectors, restricted English in schools, and even expanded the definition of espionage so broadly that basic interactions with foreigners are viewed as suspect.
President Xi’s nationalist vision has become so dominant that it's written into the Constitution and official history of the People’s Republic. But will that vision make China hostile to the very ideas that fueled its economic transformation in the first place?
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television (check local listings) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
China's COVID lockdowns made its people depressed and hurt its economy
China’s economy keeps slowing down, and that could be a problem for the rest of the world.
On GZERO World, Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group, sits down with Ian Bremmer to explain why he’s become bearish on China’s economic outlook.
2023 was supposed to be the year China’s economy came roaring back after almost three years of brutal zero-COVID lockdowns that ground domestic spending and production to a halt. But Rein points to a few reasons why China’s rebound hasn’t exploded the way some economists predicted.
“I think people underestimated how much the lingering effects, not just economically but physiologically, that [zero-COVID] would have on China,” Rein says, pointing out that 50% of people in Shanghai suffer from anxiety and depression, according to the government.
Rein argues that because income levels in 2022 stayed so low, with millions of Chinese locked down and furloughed from their jobs, the revenge spending expected after zero-COVID ended never materialized. He also says that an increasingly hostile geopolitical environment under the Biden administration has made COVID recovery even more challenging.
Watch the GZERO World episode: China’s economy in trouble
And watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld and on US public television. Check local listings.
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China’s economy in trouble
China’s economy has averaged about 10% annual growth year over year for the past four decades. It’s undoubtedly the biggest economic success story of our lifetime, but how long can that last?
Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of the Shanghai-based China Market Research Group, sits down with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to talk China's post-COVID recovery, Xi's crackdown on the private sector, and why the last year has turned him from a bull to a bear on China's economic outlook.
Annual GDP growth has been on a relative decline since 2010, barring a big jump coming out of the pandemic. Decades of infrastructure investment have left local governments drowning in debt. Almost three years of zero-COVID politics ground China’s economy to a halt. Youth unemployment is surging to record highs and expected to keep climbing.
At the same time, President Xi Jinping is moving China away from the pro-investment policies of his predecessors in favor of ideological and national security priorities. But public support for China’s Communist Party is starting to show cracks, especially among citizens in wealthy cities who experienced the brunt of China’s brutal zero-COVID policies.
Can communist ideology mixed with capitalist ambition sustain growth into the future? Is Xi setting up China for another 4 decades of economic success? And what do China’s citizens make of its return to socialist roots?
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
- China flirts with deflation. Why is that a bad thing? ›
- We need to talk about China’s economy ›
- The Graphic Truth: China's old vs. new zero-COVID ›
- Birdsong and stolen cherries: Lockdown life in Shanghai ›
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Podcast: China's great economic slowdown
Listen: China is undoubtedly the biggest economic success story of our lifetime.
Between 1978 and 2017, China averaged almost 10% year-over-year GDP growth. Decades of pro-investment policies transformed China from a closed, centrally-planned economy to an economic powerhouse that could rival the US.
But in the last decade, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been moving the country back to its socialist roots, with major crackdowns in tech, real estate, and foreign investment. Xi’s vision is one of almost total state control, where businesses conform to the goals of the Chinese Communist Party, not the other way around.
Can communist ideology mixed with capitalist ambition sustain growth into the future? Is Xi setting up China for another four decades of economic success? And what do China’s citizens make of its return to socialist roots?
To discuss all that and more on the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with Shaun Rein, Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group, based in Shanghai.
Ian Explains: Why China’s era of high growth is over
Is China still on track to becoming the world’s largest economy? Ian Bremmer breaks down China’s great economic slowdown.
Between 1978 and 2017, China averaged almost 10% year-over-year GDP growth. Decades of pro-investment policies transformed China from a closed, centrally-planned economy to an economic powerhouse that could rival the US.
But President Xi Xinping has been moving China away from the pro-investment policies of his predecessors and back to its socialist roots. In recent years, the government has cracked down on everything from technology to finance to entertainment to foreign investment.
At the same time, 3 years of Zero-Covid policies sapped domestic spending and production. Decades of infrastructure investment have left local governments drowning in debt. China’s once-hot real estate market is in a massive slump. And youth unemployment is surging to record highs, threatening the very social pact that gives the Chinese Communist Party legitimacy in widespread support.
Can China’s communist ideology and capitalist ambition sustain growth into the future? Or does what goes up eventually have to come down?
For more on China’s lagging economy, watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
- China flirts with deflation. Why is that a bad thing? ›
- We need to talk about China’s economy ›
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