The Economist Asia Edition March 26, 2022

Politics Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said there was “nothing left” of Mariupol after three weeks of indiscriminate Russian shelling. The 100,000 remaining residents are desperately short of food. The Pentagon said that Russian soldiers had entered part of the port city. But defenders continued to resist. More than 3.5m people have fled Ukraine since Vladimir Putin’s invasion began. Elsewhere Russia struggled. NATO estimated that it had lost more than 7,000 soldiers in a month. Ukrainian troops went on the offensive in parts of the country, attempting to retake Kherson, a southern city. Russian forces near Kyiv, the capital, have not advanced for two weeks, though missiles continue to strike the city. Mr Zelensky said that any peace deal with Russia would have to be approved by a nationwide referendum. He…

ENERGY AND commodities lie at the dark heart of Vladimir Putin’s regime and the threat it poses to the world. Four trillion dollars of oil and gas exports over the two decades of his rule have paid for the tanks, guns and Grad missiles now killing Ukrainians. Natural-resource earnings have entrenched a rentseeking elite that has created an offshore archipelago of yachts, nightclubs and Caribbean front companies, stifled representative politics and indulged Mr Putin’s megalomaniacal fantasies. As Russia supplies 10-25% of the world’s oil, gas and coal exports, many countries, especially in Europe, are vulnerable to coercion by it. For them, the war in Ukraine has been a shock that adds urgency to the creation of an energy system which depends more on sun, wind and nuclear reactors than on…

AN OUTBREAK OF covid-19 on the scale China is experiencing would barely register in most countries. Much of the world has decided to live with the virus. Not China, though. So far in March it has recorded around 27,000 new local symptomatic cases—and each one is viewed as a threat to the government’s “zero-covid” policy. For two years China has smothered outbreaks using mass-testing, strict lockdowns and by tracking its people in ways that would make Mark Zuckerberg blush. Chinese leaders think their policy a huge success. The Economist estimates that the country’s death rate from covid is 5% of America’s. The Chinese economy has expanded by 10.5% in the past two years, compared with 2.4% in America and 0.4% in advanced economies generally. China’s covid controls “demonstrate the advantages”…

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S epoch-changing miscalculation over Ukraine was the outcome of a trio of mission-defining misjudgments. One was that Ukraine’s government would collapse quickly. Another was that his modernised army would be dominant. The last was that America, in irreversible decline, was no longer capable of leadership. For Ukraine to be defeated, Mr Putin had only to get one premise right. The first two misjudgments have caused general surprise. The third has stirred up general interest, among allies and foes alike. In recent years America has seemed less committed to the institutions it created after the second world war, largely as a result of its own disastrous occupation of Iraq following the attacks of September 11th 2001. Barack Obama chose to “reset” relations with Russia after it invaded Georgia in 2008…

GOVERNMENTS THAT are trying to shield voters from soaring energy and fuel costs are coalescing around a simple idea: help people buy petrol. This week Rishi Sunak, Britain’s chancellor, cut fuel duty by 5p ($0.07) per litre, a 9% reduction, for a year—the most ever in cash terms. From April 1st France will rebate 15 cents ($0.16) per litre of fuel for four months. Many other European countries including Italy and Sweden have also announced cuts. Last year Japan introduced a fuel subsidy of ¥5 ($0.04) a litre, which was recently raised to ¥25. In America two states have suspended their petrol taxes and a bill has been introduced in Congress to do the same to the federal levy. These tax cuts are a mistake. They will waste money and…

IN 1963, AS decolonisation swept through Africa, politicians heady with pan-African ideals called for a common continental market. They saw it as a way to transcend colonial economic models based upon extracting and exporting natural resources. Sadly there has been all too little progress since. Intra-African trade remains small compared with the continent’s external trade. Primary commodities account for more than 70% of Africa’s exports. Just 18% of exports by African countries are to others on the continent—a lower share than equivalent figures for Asia (58%) and Europe (68%). The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is meant to help change this (see Middle East & Africa section). This ambitious pact has been ratified by 41 of Africa’s 55 countries. Making it easier for them to trade with one another…