Joblessness in China is rising, prompting fears of social unrest. But how high is the true unemployment rate?THE employment outlook is “grim” according to Yin Weimin, China’s minister of human resources and social security. So grim, in fact, that on November 26th the People’s Bank of China slashed rates by more than a percentage point—the most in 11 years—to boost growth. The slowing economy has led factories to cut jobs, and there are mounting fears ...

The Obama-Clinton soap opera is set to run for another few yearsAT THE height of the recent Democratic civil war, Samantha Power, an Obama adviser and a student of genocide, told a Scottish newspaper that Hillary Clinton was a “monster”. Ms Power had no choice but to resign. But she was only giving voice to what most Obamaites happily said in private. Mr Obama’s apparent decision to offer the job of secretary of state to ...

Russia’s legal system is deeply flawedDESPITE Mr Putin’s promise to establish a “dictatorship of the law”, the judiciary in Russia is far from just. At least that is the view of Sergei Pashin, a former judge and now a law professor. He should know: in 2000 he was dismissed after supporting a young man who had political objections to serving in the army. Mr Pashin was later restored to office, but the young man he ...

A growing business, but perhaps not for longSEXUAL titillation, said Simon Warr confidently on November 25th, is not the point of a lap-dancing club. Mr Warr should know: besides being the head of Britain’s Lap Dancing Association, a lobbying outfit, he is co-owner of Spearmint Rhino’s European operations, which include eight clubs around Britain. Unfathomably, though, Mr Warr’s audience—the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee—were not convinced. Nor was his case helped when ...

Gordon Brown’s fiscal stimulus has set the agenda for the next electionONCE they started falling, the totems toppled like ninepins this week. For 11 years, New Labour preached the gospel of fiscal prudence: money would be borrowed only for investment, and public net debt kept below 40% of GDP. Economic boom and bust were over; steady prosperity was the shape of things to come. Against this benign background, Britain’s rulers felt “intensely relaxed” about the ...

Bold, unorthodox remedies are needed to jolt the world economy back to lifeTHE prognosis is looking ever more grave. What began 15 months ago with a seizure of the credit markets has become a disease with an alarming list of real economic symptoms. America, Britain, the euro zone and Japan are already in a recession that threatens to be the worst, in some places, for a quarter of a century and possibly since the Depression. ...

It’s only rock and roll but the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like itITS name recalls both Mao Zedong’s dictum about where political power comes from and the rose revolution in Georgia in 2003, one of several movements that unseated authoritarian regimes in post-communist societies. So it is perhaps not surprising that the fan base of Guns N’ Roses, an American rock band, seems not to include the higher ranks of the Chinese Communist Party. Then ...

Tobacco firms want the right to participate in global efforts to limit the lethal consequences of nicotine addiction—but 160 governments say no SOME people would say it was tantamount to foxes asking to be consulted about the welfare of chickens. But the global tobacco industry, while no longer denying that its products do terrible damage, has long insisted that in any discussion about how to limit the medical effects of the weed, it is a ...

A scheme to encourage cheap transport on two wheelsPEDAL power has never really taken off in Africa. Cycling enthusiasts blame the sweltering heat, potholes, and the dumping of Chinese bikes unsuitable for glutinous dirt roads for the ascendancy of belching minivans, even over short distances. Still, bike-crazy pockets of the continent show what is possible. Smugglers on the Kenya-Uganda border popularised the boda-boda taxi (originally, border-border) in the 1970s: boda-bodas still ply village-to-market routes across ...

As the sheen comes off glitzy Dubai, the other Gulf states are getting nervous too“THEY said you couldn’t create islands in the middle of a city,” shouts a property advertisement over a jammed Dubai motorway. “We said, what’s next?” The range of answers has become gloomier by the week, as the debate moves from whether the Dubai property bubble will burst to just how bad it is going to get. Some nervous bankers think property ...

Russia is not the Soviet Union, but what is it? A recovering world power—or a corrupt oligopoly with a market economy of sorts? Arkady Ostrovsky (interviewed here) explains why it is bothON DECEMBER 25th 1991 the Soviet flag above the Kremlin was lowered for the last time and the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, made his resignation speech. “The totalitarian system has been eliminated…free elections…free press, freedom of worship, representative legislatures and ...

A dangerous new front-line in the global war against terrorismTERROR has stalked Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, all too many times before. In 1993 more than 250 people died in a series of bomb attacks, seen as reprisals for the demolition by Hindu fanatics of the mosque at Ayodhya. In 2003, more than 50 people were killed by two car bombs, including one just outside the Taj Mahal hotel, next to the monumental tourist attraction, the ...

The president-elect is proceeding with all deliberate speedIN THE absence of any real detail about what he plans to do, it is Barack Obama’s staff choices that provide the best indications as to what sort of president he will turn out to be. And so far the signs are encouraging, both in terms of the process and the results. Mr Obama is moving much faster and more smoothly than most incoming presidents manage—without rancour, hiccups ...

The next president has been told that, for security reasons, he will have to give up his beloved mobile device. We’ve intercepted his last e-mails: here’s the first“YOUR promise to close Guantanamo is popular. Including a clear announcement on this in your inaugural will make for great headlines. But if you have to give a firm date for closure, kick the can at least a year down the road. Remember: W. wanted to close the ...

Captain Pandit cuts the crew, but Citigroup’s problems run deepWITH even the largest vessels now vulnerable to pirates, these are dangerous times for shipping. The same goes for financial supertankers such as Citigroup. Since taking the helm last December, succeeding the hapless Chuck Prince, Vikram Pandit has launched a series of measures to put the sprawling banking group back on course. But after four straight quarters of losses, there is no sign of profits on ...

Soaping away your outer dirt may lead to inner evilPUBLIC displays of untidiness, such as graffiti, may promote bad behaviour (see article), but when it comes to personal cleanliness the opposite appears to be true. A study just published in Psychological Science by Simone Schnall of the University of Plymouth and her colleagues shows that washing with soap and water makes people view unethical activities as more acceptable and reasonable than they would if they ...

It’s official (nearly): Iraq’s government wants America’s army out by the end of 2011WHEN General David Petraeus, now America’s most celebrated military commander, arrived in Iraq in 2003 at the head of an airborne division, he asked a journalist: “Tell me how this ends?” For years nobody had a good answer. But now, thanks to a military pact between America and Iraq, a conclusion is in sight: America’s war in Iraq will end in three ...

The economic slowdown is having one good effectCALIFORNIA tried to save the world again this week. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s governor, rounded up politicians and officials from across the globe (expending quite a bit of carbon) and urged them to tackle climate change more aggressively. To set an example, he ordered state power companies to obtain one-third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. California is indeed leading the way in cutting greenhouse-gas emissions—but ...

The shameful peace“I HAD only one thought,” declared Simone de Beauvoir as Hitler’s troops advanced on Paris in June 1940, “not to be caught like a rat in occupied Paris.” So much for first reactions: like so many others of the French cultural elite, de Beauvoir, after a brief flight to the Loire valley, was soon back in Paris’s Cafe de Flore and other haunts of the Left Bank intelligentsia.And why not? Paris was the ...

The deal to disarm North Korea is unravellingHE MAY be a few pixels short of a picture these days, but as an auctioneer North Korea’s nuclear-capable Kim Jong Il is without peer. Back in 2005 he accepted a generous bid of all sorts of goodies, for a second time, to shut down his plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon (an earlier deal had foundered when North Korea was caught cheating). Now Mr Kim seems to be preparing ...