Families and freedom: Why East Asia needs a social revolution

The world this week

Politics
Business
KAL’s cartoon
This week’s covers
Leaders


The future of war
A new era of high-tech war has begun
Technology has transformed the battlefield. Democracies must respond accordingly

East Asia’s lopsided revolution
The new Asian family
East Asian governments must try to manage a momentous social change they cannot prevent

An enduring error
“Greedflation” is a nonsense idea
Inflation is the result of economic policy mistakes and war, not corporate avarice

Britain’s water mess
The real problem with Britain’s water companies
Blame financial blunders and timid regulation, not privatisation

Supreme sort
Why affirmative action in American universities had to go
And why what comes after could be better

Deep-sea mining
The world needs more battery metals. Time to mine the seabed
Getting nickel from the deep causes much less damage than getting it on land

Letters

On Denmark’s Social Democrats, vaping taxes, the Indian diaspora, Daniel Ellsberg, Sierra Leone, the Multiverse, Douglas Adams
Letters to the editor
By Invitation


Affirmative action
Lee Bollinger laments the ruling by America’s Supreme Court against affirmative action
China and Russia
Alexander Gabuev on China’s strategic calculations after the turmoil in Russia
Privatisation
Thames Water may be troubled but privatisation has served Britain well, argues Michael Howard
Briefing


Neighbourhood botch
Why China should be friendlier to its neighbours
If it wants to challenge America’s global leadership, it will need their backing
Asia


Modern families
East Asia’s new family portrait
Blocked and reported!
India, an aspiring digital superpower, keeps shutting down the internet
Banyan
Sri Lanka is uncovering mass graves but not the grisly truth of its civil war
China


Firm control
China’s Communist Party is tightening its grip in businesses
Scrutiny on the bounty
Hong Kong puts a price on the heads of democracy activists
Glorious mamas
Challenging the stigma associated with single mothers in China
Chaguan
China’s message to the global south
United States


Right at the end
What to make of the Supreme Court’s tumultuous term
Major League Cricket
Can baseball fans be won over by the world’s second biggest sport?
Quant, um
Chicago hopes to become a world centre for quantum research
MAGA mummies
Republican presidential candidates canoodle with Moms for Liberty
Citizenship
Dick Ravitch, New York’s fiscal superman
Affirmative inaction
How American universities will react as race-based admissions end
Lab monkey shortage in America
America has a shortage of lab monkeys

Middle East & Africa


Middle East diplomacy
What MBS wants from Joe Biden
Another battle for Jenin
Israel launched its biggest raid on the West Bank in over 20 years
Shake it up
Nigeria’s new president acts fast
Sensible Sall
Senegal’s President Macky Sall says he won’t stand for a third term
Civil war in Sudan
Genocide all over again?
The Americas


Dumping the Trump of the tropics
Jair Bolsonaro is barred from office for eight years
Little boy blues
This year’s El Niño will hit Peru especially hard
The worms return
Cuba’s Communist government taps the diaspora for cash
Europe


Russia, Europe and Ukraine
Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots
Bomblets away
Ukraine wants American cluster bombs—quickly
Europe’s defence
The Baltic states fear that NATO is being complacent
Europe’s worst performer
Can Sweden’s two-track economy avoid a recession?
Charlemagne
The burning of the banlieues
Britain


Privatisation in Britain
How to understand the woeful state of Britain’s water utilities
Class struggle
Labour’s cabinet would be Britain’s most state-educated since 1945
Britain’s national health service
The NHS in England gets a plan for fixing its broken workforce
Rural shows in Britain
Britons love country fairs. Why?
Roger Scruton
Why right-wing Europeans are flocking to an English thinker
Not yet stopping the boats
Britain’s tough asylum plans are held up in court and by the Lords
Bagehot
Britons turn into Borat when it comes to health, housing and avocados
International


Shaping up and tooling up
NATO is drafting new plans to defend Europe
Special report


Lessons from Ukraine
The war in Ukraine shows how technology is changing the battlefield
Electronic warfare
The latest in the battle of jamming with electronic beams
Military logistics
Why logistics are too important to be left to the generals
Total war
Technology is deepening civilian involvement in war
Russian adaptation
How Ukraine’s enemy is also learning lessons, albeit slowly
Naval warfare
How oceans became new technological battlefields
Best practice
Western armies are learning a lot from the war in Ukraine
Battlefield lessons
Video: How we studied the lessons of Ukraine
Warfare after Ukraine
Sources and acknowledgments
Business


Punch-up in the public square
The Musk-Zuckerberg social-media smackdown
Full metal straitjacket
In its tech war with America, China brings out the big guns
The long hydrogen sunrise
Can a viable industry emerge from the hydrogen shakeout?
Bartleby
How white-collar warriors gear up for the day
Schumpeter
A Lego-lover’s guide to preparing for the AI age
Finance & economics


Price wars
Economists draw swords over how to fix inflation
A belated victory
How to win the battle against inflation
Coming a cropper
Copper is unexpectedly getting cheaper
Party cooler
Does it pay to be a communist in China?
The city sleeps
How far will Wall Street job losses go?
Buttonwood
Can anything pop the everything bubble?
Free exchange
Erdoganomics is spreading across the world
Science & technology


Raiding Davy Jones’s locker
Deep-sea mining may soon ease the world’s battery-metal shortage
Digging up the jungle
New technology could cement Indonesia’s dominance of vital nickel
Hitting peak peak
A gigantic landslide shows the limit to how high mountains can grow
The Fred Flintstone diet
A Belgian company wants to create woolly-mammoth burgers
Culture


Built to order
Governments are using culture to spur economic regeneration
Man of dishonour
A new book revisits the trial of Philippe Pétain in 1945
Weaving magic
Mary Jackson has turned sweetgrass basketry into a fine-art form
Home Entertainment
Forough Farrokhzad gave voice to Iranian women’s despair and defiance
The Economist reads


How to write
What to read to become a better writer
Economic & financial indicators

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
Graphic detail


One size does not fit all
Prescription rules for obesity drugs may unfairly exclude non-whites
The Economist explains


The Economist explains
Why Hong Kong is criminalising a song
The Economist explains
Can Russia’s navy thwart attacks by repainting its ships?
Obituary


Through the dark clouds shining
Donald Triplett was the first man diagnosed with autism