The Economist Latin America January 7, 2023

After nearly three years of self-imposed isolation, China said it would reopen its borders on January 8th. People arriving from abroad will no longer have to quarantine. The move comes as covid-19 tears through the country. Hospitals are struggling to deal with the sick. The outbreak is now spreading to smaller cities and rural areas with fewer medical resources. Several countries, including America and Britain, are now demanding that incoming travellers from China take a covid test first. Ukraine ushered in the new year with a devastating missile strike on a Russian barracks in occupied Donetsk province. At least 400 soldiers were killed, Ukrainian sources said, though Russia has admitted only to 89 losses. For its part, Russia continued its strikes on civilian targets, but to limited effect as Ukraine becomes…

FOR THE better part of three years—1,016 days to be exact—China will have been closed to the world. Most foreign students left the country at the start of the pandemic. Tourists have stopped visiting. Chinese scientists have stopped attending foreign conferences. Expat executives were barred from returning to their businesses in China. So when the country opens its borders on January 8th, abandoning the last remnants of its “zerocovid” policy, the renewal of commercial, intellectual and cultural contact will have huge consequences, mostly benign. First, however, there will be horror. Inside China, the virus is raging. Tens of millions of people are catching it every day (see China section). Hospitals are overwhelmed. Although the zerocovid policy saved many lives when it was introduced (at great cost to individual liberties), the government…

After nearly three years of self-imposed isolation, China said it would reopen its borders on January 8th. People arriving from abroad will no longer have to quarantine. The move comes as covid-19 tears through the country. Hospitals are struggling to deal with the sick. The outbreak is now spreading to smaller cities and rural areas with fewer medical resources. Several countries, including America and Britain, are now demanding that incoming travellers from China take a covid test first. Ukraine ushered in the new year with a devastating missile strike on a Russian barracks in occupied Donetsk province. At least 400 soldiers were killed, Ukrainian sources said, though Russia has admitted only to 89 losses. For its part, Russia continued its strikes on civilian targets, but to limited effect as Ukraine…

TEN YEARS ago this month, David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister at the time, gave a speech at the London headquarters of Bloomberg, a news organisation. In it Mr Cameron outlined his cunning plan to cement Britain’s place in the European Union, by triggering a fundamental reform of the bloc and then offering Britons an in-out referendum on membership. That went well. The 2016 vote to leave the bloc has exacerbated Britain’s economic malaise, gumming up trade and muting investment. It has soured Britain’s relationship with many of its natural allies and weakened the bonds of its own union. Worst of all, it has infected British politics with a destructive strain of magical thinking. Mr Cameron himself was an early victim, badly overestimating the EU’s willingness to change its fundamental principles in…

FOR THE better part of three years—1,016 days to be exact—China will have been closed to the world. Most foreign students left the country at the start of the pandemic. Tourists have stopped visiting. Chinese scientists have stopped attending foreign conferences. Expat executives were barred from returning to their businesses in China. So when the country opens its borders on January 8th, abandoning the last remnants of its “zerocovid” policy, the renewal of commercial, intellectual and cultural contact will have huge consequences, mostly benign. First, however, there will be horror. Inside China, the virus is raging. Tens of millions of people are catching it every day (see China section). Hospitals are overwhelmed. Although the zerocovid policy saved many lives when it was introduced (at great cost to individual liberties), the…

FEARS ABOUT the fate of European industry abound. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing gas crunch have dealt it a cruel blow. BASF, the world’s largest chemicals-maker, is shifting production away from its headquarters in Ludwigshafen in Germany. Nearly a quarter of the country’s revered Mittelstand firms are reported to be considering moving part of their operations abroad. And even as energy prices have fallen back, America’s protectionist and subsidy-laden Inflation Reduction Act is feeding fresh worries that industry might be lured away from the old continent. One unlikely bright spot is the part of Europe with the grimmest weather. As we report this week, a new economy based on renewable energy is taking shape in and around the North Sea (see Business section). Rather as hydropower fuelled Lancashire’s cotton…