The Economist Latin America December 3, 2022

China’s government was confronted with the boldest show of civil disobedience in decades. The unrest began after a deadly fire in Xinjiang. Many Chinese blamed covid-19 restrictions for making it harder for victims to escape a blazing apartment block. Protests against the controls erupted in several cities. Some protesters risked jail by calling for Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to relinquish power. Extra police curbed the unrest in most cities. As the coronavirus spread rapidly in China, officials said lockdowns should be “imposed and eased quickly”. Efforts to vaccinate old people, long neglected, were stepped up. Mr Xi remained silent throughout. Jiang Zemin, the leader of China’s Communist Party from 1989 to 2002, died. Mr Jiang oversaw a wave of economic opening, but not much political reform. His colourful personality…

Annual inflation in the euro zone fell in November, to 10%. Energy prices also eased a little, as Europe’s mild autumn suppressed the demand for heating, dampening the wholesale market for natural-gas. Those prices have started to rise again, as colder weather settles in. The average inflation figure masked regional variations. Inflation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is above 21%. In Germany it is 11.3%, though that is also down on October. In Finland inflation jumped, to 9%. The bigger-than-expected fall in inflation sparked speculation about the European Central Bank’s next move on interest rates. Before the latest data came out, Christine Lagarde, the ECB’s president, said that the bank “is not done” raising rates. It meets on December 15th. In America Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a hawkish…

CHINA INVENTED covid-19 lockdowns. During the first weeks of the pandemic, the government of Xi Jinping corralled tens of millions of people to stop the disease spreading out of Wuhan. Almost three years later, lockdowns have become China’s undoing. A combination of protests and rising cases means that Mr Xi will have to navigate between mass lockdowns and mass infection—and possibly end up with both. The coming months will pose the biggest threat to his rule since he came to power in 2012 and the biggest threat to the authority of the Communist Party since the protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989. Sporadic local pickets are common in China. But demonstrations erupted across the country after at least ten people died in a fire in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, where residents…

China’s government was confronted with the boldest show of civil disobedience in decades. The unrest began after a deadly fire in Xinjiang. Many Chinese blamed covid-19 restrictions for making it harder for victims to escape a blazing apartment block. Protests against the controls erupted in several cities. Some protesters risked jail by calling for Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to relinquish power. Extra police curbed the unrest in most cities. As the coronavirus spread rapidly in China, officials said lockdowns should be “imposed and eased quickly”. Efforts to vaccinate old people, long neglected, were stepped up. Mr Xi remained silent throughout. Jiang Zemin, the leader of China’s Communist Party from 1989 to 2002, died. Mr Jiang oversaw a wave of economic opening, but not much political reform. His colourful…

NINE MONTHS after the invasion of Ukraine, oil money continues to fill Vladimir Putin’s war chest. Even as the West has imposed sanctions, Russia’s crude exports have held up and the Urals oil price remains close to its average in 2014-20. Russia’s current-account surplus this year is expected to be $265bn, second only to China’s. But the story is not over yet. On December 5th the European Union will at last implement a plan originally cooked up in May. It will ban seaborne imports of Russian oil. It will also prohibit European firms from insuring, shipping or trading Russian crude anywhere in the world—unless the oil is sold at a price below a cap set by the West. Ever since the war began in February this year, the West has grappled…

IN THE PAST two decades video gaming has gone from a nerdy hobby to a blockbuster industry, with revenues over five times bigger than the cinema box office. Today it is home to one of the largest tech mergers in history. In January Microsoft agreed to pay $69bn to buy Activision Blizzard, a game studio. Yet the megadeal may not go ahead. America’s Federal Trade Commission—one of 16 regulators around the world to have taken an interest—will probably say soon that it will sue to block it. Trustbusters have two main worries (see Business section). The first is the jewel in Activision Blizzard’s portfolio: “Call of Duty”, a military-themed first-person shooter game, the latest version of which sold over $1bn-worth of copies in just ten days. It is available on both…