The Economist Asia Edition January 28, 2023

After months of debate, Ukraine is to be sent tanks by its Western supporters. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, bowed to mounting pressure and said he would send German-made Leopards. He also agreed to drop a long-standing German ban on the re-export of Leopards by other European countries that have them. As part of an international agreement that involved a fair degree of ill-will, America said it would send its main tank, the M1 Abrams. But the tanks will take time to arrive, and Ukrainian soldiers will need weeks of training on them. There is a war on you know Volodymyr Zelensky cracked down on government corruption and the privileges of some Ukrainian officials. The deputy defence minister resigned after food was procured for the army at inflated prices. Several…

Investors who hoped that 2023 would bring a change in fortunes to America’s tech companies following their walloping in the markets in 2022 were left disappointed by Microsoft’s earnings. The company reported solid revenue and profits for the final quarter of last year, but said the growth in demand for its cloud services, the main driver of its business, had softened as clients curtailed spending. It was the first of America’s tech giants to publish results for the fourth quarter. Markets are nervously awaiting earnings reports from the others. The word is out Meanwhile Microsoft confirmed that it had increased its investment in OpenAI, the startup behind the ChatGPT artificial-intelligence bot. ChatGPT has become an AI sensation since its release on the market last November. Taking direction from just a…

GOLDMAN SACHS has always seen itself as exceptional. When the bank floated its shares in New York in 1999 it declared: “We have an uncompromising determination to achieve excellence in everything we undertake.” Conspiracy theorists have long paid it the backhanded compliment of imagining that it secretly runs the world. Yet lately the only exceptional thing about the Wall Street icon has been its mistakes. Since October Goldman has made a Uturn on its plan to build a big consumer bank; booked one of its worst quarterly results for a decade, measured by return on equity; and attracted a probe by the Federal Reserve (see Briefing). The firm is not yet in serious trouble, but it is trapped by its own mythology. Its recent struggles show how hard it will…

AFTER THREE chaotic years, investors have several reasons to be cheerful about the world economy. In America inflation is tumbling, raising hopes of a “soft landing”, in which price growth comes under control without a recession. Fortune has smiled on Europe, where a mostly warm winter has caused energy prices to plummet. And China’s economy, freed from Xi Jinping’s destructive “zero-covid” policy, is poised to rebound. Markets are joyous. The S&P 500 index of American stocks has risen by 5% since the start of the year. Share prices in Europe and emerging markets are up by even more. Alas, it is too soon to declare an end to the world economy’s problems. In America consumer prices fell in December, and annual inflation may dip below 2% this year thanks to…

THE LOVE-HATE relationship goes on. For almost two years China’s leaders cracked down on borrowing to build and bet on property, plunging the market into a crisis. Now that the economy has been weakened by the failures of the “zero-covid” policy, the government is racing to rescue real estate. Ni Hong, China’s housing minister, has said his ambition this year is to restore confidence; a series of measures announced in the past few months seek to make it easier for developers to raise capital. These efforts are reviving the property market. Unfortunately, they leave it just as vulnerable to boom and bust as ever. The downturn of 2022 was the most severe in recent memory. Sales of floor space plunged more sharply than ever before. Property investment fell for the…

WHEN RIVAL countries have much deeper pockets and are digging into them, what is a government to do? That is the question facing Britain as it mulls what its industrial strategy should be. A good way to think about the answer is to look at the country’s automotive industry. Carmaking in Britain has long enjoyed ups and endured downs. But the down it faces now is graver than any in decades. The shift from internal-combustion engines to electric vehicles is prompting an overhaul of the industry, which will spend about $1.2trn on electrification globally by 2030. Carmakers need new supply chains and new skills. Above all, they need batteries—lots of them, ideally within easy reach of assembly plants. To be a base for mass production, Britain must be home to…