MANY RESIDENTS of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, have grown so used to air-raid warnings that they pay little heed. They prefer to think, or pray, that the common pattern will prevail: that the city’s air-defence systems will work, more or less, or that the alerts will prove merely precautionary. But for those who do take shelter, the tunnels of the underground railway network are an obvious choice. Thanks to Chinese equipment, there is some relief to be found there during what can be a long and tedious wait for the all-clear.

Less than a year before Russia mounted its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, work was completed on kitting out the metro with a high-speed 4G mobile network. It uses hardware from Huawei, a Chinese telecoms firm of which Western countries are suspicious—several now ban the use of Huawei’s (even faster) 5G technology because of fears that it may enable China to harvest users’ secrets. As they sit on foldable stools or snooze on mats, while commuters rush by, the bomb-wary may well be using the 4G system on Chinese-branded handsets. Phones made by Xiaomi are among the most popular in Ukraine.

China, while professing to be neutral, supports Russia, such as by helping it dodge Western sanctions. But China’s business and political ties with Ukraine are not broken. Under a UN-brokered deal that allowed safe passage of ships carrying Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, China was the biggest recipient of their cargo. Russia withdrew from the pact in July, but China remains an important buyer as traffic picks up along a new shipping corridor. When the fighting eventually halts—no matter to which side’s satisfaction—many wonder whether China’s firms might see golden opportunities as Ukraine looks for help with the task of rebuilding.

China has interests in Ukraine that stretch beyond its clear desire for the war to weaken Western alliances and leave Russia much as it is, in tune with China’s worldview. Before the invasion, both China and Ukraine hoped to reap economic benefits from their relationship. China had overtaken Russia as Ukraine’s largest single trading partner (though as a bloc, the European Union was still the biggest). Chinese firms were already doing deals for the building or financing of infrastructure (a new line for the metro is one that may eventually materialise). In 2021 Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, that Ukraine should be China’s “bridge to Europe”. For all Mr Xi’s sympathies with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, that would have been music to the Chinese leader’s ears.

The EU hints at the possibility of post-war business deals for China in Ukraine as a way of swinging it more to Ukraine’s side. “We do consider it essential that China makes a major effort to convince the people of Ukraine that China is not Russia’s ally in this war,” said the EU’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, in a speech in October at Peking University. He suggested that China step up humanitarian aid and propose an initiative to protect Ukraine’s cultural heritage from destruction by Russia. Such gestures, he said, would “dramatically” improve China’s image in Ukraine and put it in a “good position to contribute” to the country’s reconstruction.

China is trying to buff up its image by presenting itself as a peacemaker. In February it issued a 12-point proposal to settle the conflict. The plan aroused little enthusiasm, especially in Ukraine and among its Western supporters, as it did not call for Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory. Ukraine has suggested that China act as a guarantor of a peace deal. China has been non-committal, perhaps worried about having to show its hand should Russia violate the terms. But China’s proposal did say that the country was “ready to provide assistance and play a constructive role” in post-war rebuilding. To many observers, that looked as if China was interested in mobilising its huge capacity for the rapid roll-out of high-quality infrastructure.

But will China play much of a role in what could become the biggest frenzy of construction in Europe since the one that followed the second world war? This will depend in part on how the shooting ends. In the unlikely event Russia winds up in control of Ukraine, China would have a stark choice to make: siding with Russia in such a scenario would risk a meltdown of relations between itself and the West. Assuming the government in Kyiv remains in control of most of Ukraine—and has an appetite for Chinese help—China would have to calculate how much its contribution would risk annoying Russia, whose friendship it sees as vital to its own security.

No Belt No Road

China’s involvement in Ukraine leading up to the latest invasion may offer clues to the way its thinking will work. On the face of it, Ukraine would appear an obvious target for Chinese investment. It joined the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure-building scheme, in 2017. And it is well placed as a potential conduit for Chinese goods destined for European markets and has resources that China wants, ranging from wheat and maize to iron ore. But observers in Kyiv see a long-standing pattern of caution in China’s business dealings. Its share of foreign direct investment in Ukraine has been “very tiny”, says Yurii Poita of the Kyiv-based New Geopolitics Research Network. A Ukrainian foreign-ministry official says that “not a single project has been done” in Ukraine under the belt-and-road banner.

It once looked very different. In 2013 Ukraine’s then pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, visited China and secured what he said were deals involving $8bn of Chinese investment in an array of projects from airlines and shipbuilding to agriculture. Those plans were thrown into disarray by a popular uprising against Mr Yanukovych that resulted in his flight to Russia in 2014 and a decisive political shift by Ukraine away from Moscow. Russia swiftly responded by seizing Crimea, in the south of the country, and instigating a separatist war in Donbas, an eastern region.

The turmoil and violence discouraged Chinese investors. But some analysts in Kyiv believe there may have been another reason for their hesitancy: that China did not want to upset Russia by forging too close a relationship with a government that Russia despised, in a country that was once part of the Soviet Union. “I think the Russians did a lot to persuade China that it’s their sphere of influence,” says Maksym Skrypchenko of the Transatlantic Dialogue Centre, a think-tank in Kyiv.

It did not encourage China that Ukraine looked to the West for security. When a private Chinese aerospace firm, Beijing Skyrizon, began attempting a takeover of Motor Sich, a Ukrainian maker of aircraft engines, America complained that Skyrizon was linked to the Chinese army. Ukraine duly blocked the sale in 2021. Skyrizon then filed a case against the government, demanding billions of dollars in compensation. In 2022 Ukraine used wartime powers to nationalise the firm. Skyrizon accused the authorities of “unjustified plundering of the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese investors”. Ukraine has not yet followed Western countries by banning the use of Chinese technology in 5G networks. But Huawei must be wondering whether that day is far off.

Public attitudes in Ukraine may not help Chinese businesses either. In 2019 opinions of China in Ukraine were among the most favourable in Europe, with 57% expressing positive views, according to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank in Washington. The invasion in 2022 has soured the mood. Rating, a polling agency in Kyiv, reported in June that 34% of Ukrainians it surveyed saw China as hostile, compared with 12% at the end of 2021. There may be good economic reasons for seeking Chinese help with reconstruction, says Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the foreign-affairs committee in Ukraine’s parliament. But, he adds, the country should bear in mind the “political price and moral price” of accepting it.

Ukraine and its supporters are already planning for the reconstruction phase. They have held two conferences—in Lugano, Switzerland, in 2022 and this year in London—to discuss Ukraine’s post-war recovery. China did not take part in either. The Ukrainian foreign-ministry official says he hopes it will join subsequent meetings. “If they want to be part of this, they should start engaging with international efforts,” he says. In Beijing, however, that may seem like abandoning a beloved friend. Providing Russia with moral support is still China’s priority—not figuring out how a country that China’s state-controlled media portray as a Western puppet can win a distant-seeming peace. ■

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IN MUCH OF the world the death of Henry Kissinger on November 29th elicited pained debate. Was the former American diplomat a towering statesman—or a war criminal? Much ink has been spilt making the case either way. But in China, there is no argument.

A day after Mr Kissinger’s death the country’s official news agency, Xinhua, said he was “best known in China and all over the world for the wisdom of diplomacy to seek common ground while reserving differences”. Neither Xinhua nor any other state-media outlet made much of his peccadilloes, much less his alleged war crimes.

China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, sent his condolences to President Joe Biden, calling Mr Kissinger “a world-renowned strategist“. Prominent Chinese scholars praised Mr Kissinger for his use of “realism to the extreme in a virtuous and rational way” and his ability “to transcend differences in his dealings with other countries without strong political and ideological biases”.

On Weibo, a popular social-media platform, discussion of Mr Kissinger’s death drew over 700m views. There was little mention of his ruthlessness, but much admiration for his interest in China. Mr Kissinger made dozens of trips to the country, including one in July, not long after turning 100. On that visit he spent hours in meetings with Mr Xi. He also met other Chinese officials who, at the time, were refusing to see top members of the Biden administration.

Mr Kissinger has been revered in China since the early 1970s when, as national security adviser to Richard Nixon, he orchestrated the president’s historic trip to the country. The preparations took place in secret. Feigning illness while on an official visit to Pakistan, Mr Kissinger stole away to Beijing for secret meetings with Zhou Enlai, then China’s prime minister (pictured together). This daring statecraft laid the groundwork for the normalisation of Sino-American relations years later.

Nixon is also admired in China, where the Watergate scandal is seen as a footnote to his story. Mr Kissinger’s legacy gets similar treatment. In other countries, not least America, he has been accused of setting the stage for a coup in Chile, blessing genocidal campaigns by Pakistan and Indonesia, and mercilessly expanding the war in Vietnam to Cambodia and Laos. But few Chinese are aware of this criticism, let alone the vitriol hurled at Mr Kissinger by people such as the late Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist who once called him “a reeking piece of ordure”.

There is something ironic, and telling, about China’s love of Mr Kissinger. His foreign policy was defined by efforts to contain America’s rival at the time, the Soviet Union. He treated smaller countries like pawns. China often criticises America for such actions, accusing it of “cold-war thinking”. But Mr Kissinger’s tactics were part of a broader strategy that aimed to balance the powers—and which held that big countries mattered most. In his pragmatic view of things, principles often took a back seat to national interests. That is a type of thinking China understands well.

Mr Kissinger had his own interests in China. After leaving government in 1977 he founded a lucrative consulting firm that often opened doors for Western executives in the country. He remained engaged in Sino-American affairs until the end. His influence in Washington had waned, but when Mr Xi came for a summit with Mr Biden in November, Chinese diplomats wanted Mr Kissinger to play a role. But he was too frail.

The visit to China in July would be Mr Kissinger’s last. Perhaps sensing that this was the final act in the diplomat’s long relationship with his country, Mr Xi told him: “We’ll never forget our old friend.”■

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On the eve of her 27th birthday this month, Agnes Chow updated her Instagram feed for the first time in two and half years. The former activist (pictured) was jailed in 2020 for taking part in pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong a year earlier. Upon her release on bail in 2021, national-security agents in the city confiscated her passport. She is still under investigation. On Instagram she said that she lived in fear, avoiding politics and struggling with anxiety and depression.

She also outlined the extraordinary steps that the authorities in Hong Kong took in an effort to change her views. She was forced to write a letter expressing regret for her actions and vowing not to contact other activists. In August five agents escorted her to Shenzhen, a city in mainland China. They took her to an exhibit touting the country’s achievements since it began to reform its economy. She was made to pose for photographs at the headquarters of Tencent, a technology giant. In the end, she had to write a thank-you letter to the police for showing her “the motherland’s great development”.

Ms Chow had to do all that in order to get her passport back. Earlier this year she was accepted into a master’s programme in Canada. In September, a day before she was due to leave, the document was returned to her. Now in Toronto, she has decided not to go back to Hong Kong, perhaps for the rest of her life. “I don’t want to be forced into doing things against my will any more,” she wrote on Instagram. “My body and spirit will collapse.”

As the story of Ms Chow shows, the police and officials in Hong Kong are adopting tools often used on the mainland to control residents. These range from forced confessions and so-called “patriotic tours” to re-education campaigns in prisons. Young people are a particular target. Even as the city tries to woo back tourists and businesses under the banner of “Happy Hong Kong”, its leaders are planning to expand the use of such tactics.

Officials in Hong Kong have condemned Ms Chow for jumping bail. “Fugitives will be pursued for life unless they turn themselves in,” said John Lee, the city’s chief executive. He added that Ms Chow is a “liar” and a “hypocrite” who is suspected of “collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security”, a vague charge often used to punish activists. Those foreign forces are still trying to infiltrate Hong Kong, said Mr Lee, so the local government intends to enact new security-related measures next year. Article 23 of Hong Kong’s constitution, the Basic Law, mandates the government to form such legislation, but public opposition has delayed the task until now.

Radical measures

In order to control people like Ms Chow the government has also developed what it calls a “deradicalisation” programme. This usually takes place in prison. According to officials, hundreds of detainees have taken part. Most were protesters. A young participant called Tsang Chi-kin was recently interviewed for a television series sponsored by Hong Kong’s police. Shot during a pro-democracy protest in 2019 and later arrested, Mr Tsang said the programme taught him to manage his emotions. “We must think clearly before acting to avoid being incited and instigated by others.”

The programme involves meeting a psychologist, studying Chinese history and culture, and attending career-planning sessions. One government video shows detainees playing the drums. They perform a song called “Chinese People”. “I am proud to be Chinese,” says a detainee. “Chinese drums were invented by us Chinese people. I feel very accomplished to be a part of the People’s Republic of China.”

Hong Kong officials seem to think the deradicalisation programme is working. There have been no big protests since 2019. But the pandemic and China’s broader crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong are the main reasons for that. Released detainees say they resent the attempted “brainwashing”. Such coercive methods are good for one thing, though: pushing young people like Ms Chow away. ■

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China and the European Union could not have set expectations much lower for their summit on December 7th in Beijing. Before Xi Jinping hosted Charles Michel, president of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, EU officials warned that substantive agreements on trade, climate change or geopolitical differences were unlikely.

The EU visitors were expected to raise China’s closeness to Russia and to ask about alleged sales by Chinese companies of dual-use items, such as semiconductors or drone parts, that help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Alas, China’s line on Ukraine has hardened in recent months. Chinese officials have left Western diplomats with the impression that they expect Vladimir Putin to avoid a humiliating defeat, and to see Western unity crumble, making a frozen conflict a likely outcome. Just in case China’s indifference to moral pressure was not clear enough, on December 4th Mr Xi hosted Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, for the second time this year. Mr Xi spoke of strengthening political trust with Mr Lukashenko, a Putin ally and pariah in EU circles.

Arguably, the China-EU summit was not as urgently needed as last month’s meeting between Mr Xi and President Joe Biden in California. For months the Chinese government had severed channels of communication with America. In contrast China-EU dialogues and working groups never stopped. That said, recent high-level China-EU contacts are described as “talking about everything, without concrete results”.

Yet the lack of drama should not be mistaken for calm. A giant confrontation over trade looms. Tensions are high because, as so often before, Chinese state planners and local officials have subsidised overcapacity in a promising sector. Over the years, Europe’s industrial landscape has been reshaped several times by China opening far more firms and factories than markets need. Whereas in the past the threat involved basic commodities such as steel, lately China has achieved dominance in advanced sectors which European firms once led, like wind turbines or solar energy.

Another such sector is cars, an industry with a powerful grip on public hearts and minds. China has focused on battery-powered electric vehicles. Even after consolidation in the sector, over a hundred firms still produce such cars. A few brands are world-class. Most are cheaper than Western rivals. Chinese firms became dominant through a mixture of subsidies and coercive transfers of foreign technologies, but also hard work and foresight, as they leap-frogged slow-to-change foreign firms. Between them they make far more cars than China’s market demands.

Some European governments are ready to resort to crude protectionism. In October the European Commission launched an investigation into Chinese electric vehicles and whether their makers receive subsidies that break international trade laws and harm EU firms. The probe could see punitive tariffs imposed. It has already angered China. German carmakers—whose China operations remain huge, though less profitable than before—are anxious about retaliation. In a recent speech, Ms von der Leyen retorted to German politicians that Europe faces unsustainable competition. “There is clear overcapacity in China, and this overcapacity will be exported. Especially if overcapacity is driven by direct and indirect subsidies,” she said. “This will worsen as China’s economy slows down, and its domestic demand does not pick up.”

In early December Chaguan attended the Stockholm China Forum, a private gathering in Singapore of American, Chinese and European officials and scholars convened by the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank, and Sweden’s foreign ministry. One theme was Chinese overcapacity in manufacturing and its potential to disrupt European attempts to “de-risk” relations with China.

When considering the European perspective, it helps to think about EU goals as sides of a triangle. On one side is the bloc’s determination to embrace green, low-carbon technologies. On another is its desire to end damaging dependencies on Chinese products and inputs. And on the third side is its goal of preserving industrial jobs. As of now, Europe cannot have all three sides of its triangle.

Hard to square

The EU could prioritise the first goal, focusing on the environment by importing Chinese-made electric vehicles and other clean tech. But that would ignore fears about lost businesses and jobs. European officials worry that millions of subsidised Chinese cars could be dumped on its markets each year, especially as tariffs and other rules close American markets to batteries from China. Of course, guarding European jobs and businesses by blocking Chinese vehicles would raise the opposite problem: Europe would be less green than it wants to be. Such protectionism would also harm drivers.

A bigger challenge pertains to the second side of the triangle. China is determined to keep the EU reliant on its supply chains. Indeed, in 2020 Mr Xi called such dependencies a “powerful counter-measure” for controlling foreigners. Since then China has imposed export controls on critical minerals, including a form of man-made graphite that European firms need to make advanced batteries. The EU could work to avoid dependencies on Chinese technologies while trying to keep factories humming at home. But without Chinese minerals, for instance, those same factories cannot produce electric cars or batteries at scale, forcing Europe to forgo or delay its low-carbon revolution. For years to come, then, Europe must choose between the planet, independence from China and shielding industry at home.

China, for its part, continues to invest heavily in manufacturing. Chinese officials appear to believe that their country’s market power and control of clean technologies will force Europe to back down. They hope that Ms von der Leyen’s commission lacks support from key EU governments. Perhaps they are right. If they are wrong, this could end with a trade war. ■

Read more from Chaguan, our columnist on China:
China’s economy is suffering from long covid (Nov 30th)
Why Xi Jinping sounds friendlier to America (Nov 23rd)
Xi Jinping repeats imperial China’s mistakes (Nov 16th)

Also: How the Chaguan column got its name

TO WEAN THEIR country off imported oil and gas, and in the hope of retiring dirty coal-fired power stations, China’s leaders have poured money into wind and solar energy. But they are also turning to one of the most sustainable forms of non-renewable power. Over the past decade China has added 37 nuclear reactors, for a total of 55, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body. During that same period America, which leads the world with 93 reactors, added two.

Facing an ever-growing demand for energy, China isn’t letting up. It aims to install between six and eight nuclear reactors each year. Some officials seem to think that target is low. The country’s nuclear regulator says China has the capacity to add between eight and ten per year. The State Council (China’s cabinet) approved the construction of ten in 2022. All in all, China has 22 nuclear reactors under construction, many more than any other country.

The growth of nuclear power has stalled in Western countries for a number of reasons. Reactors require a large upfront investment and take years to construct. The industry is heavily regulated. China, though, has smoothed the path for nuclear power by providing state-owned energy companies with cheap loans, as well as land and licences. Suppliers of nuclear energy are given subsidies known as feed-in tariffs. All of this has driven down the price of nuclear power in China to around $70 per megawatt-hour, compared with $105 in America and $160 in the European Union, according to the International Energy Agency, an official forecaster.

China is not immune to the safety concerns that have turned many in the West against nuclear power. After the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in 2011, China temporarily put its construction programme on hold. It has maintained a ban on inland nuclear plants, which have to use river water for cooling. Earlier this year China reacted angrily when Japan began releasing treated and totally harmless wastewater from the Fukushima plant into the ocean. In general, though, nuclear energy does not stir or divide the Chinese public the way it does people in other countries.

That’s good, because if China is to phase out coal and become carbon neutral by 2060, it will need an energy source that can help it reliably meet baseload demand (the minimum level of power required to keep things running). Wind and solar are less suited to this, as they depend on the co-operation of nature. But nuclear fits the bill. When it comes to energy generated, China’s nuclear stations outperform today’s installed solar capacity (though not wind). And most reactors are located on the coast, close to big population centres, unlike most wind and solar projects, which pose a challenge in terms of transferring the power they generate over long distances.

In the early days of its programme China imported its nuclear technology. It still must rely on other countries for the uranium that fuels reactors. But most of its new and planned reactors are based on Chinese designs, especially the Hualong One. Now it is keen to export such units (it has already made deals with Pakistan and Argentina). With much of its equipment sourced at home, China’s programme has not been hindered too much by the Biden administration’s export controls, which aim to cut off China from advanced technologies of American origin.

Some of China’s scientists and engineers have been put to work on a new project—developing nuclear fusion. Fusion plants do not require uranium and produce much less radioactive waste than fission plants do. But the technology, which aims to mimic the sun’s internal workings to create an inexhaustible supply of energy, has proved elusive.

Fusion reactors control plasma with superconducting magnets in a process called confinement. A Chinese reactor holds the record for the longest confinement at high temperatures: around 17 minutes. But the country’s scientists, like those elsewhere, are confronting a problem of fundamental physics: holding plasma together at extreme temperatures for extended periods requires more energy than the reaction itself can produce. If China can solve that problem, it might hasten the end of dirty energy—for everybody. ■

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On China’s fever-prone social media, netizens have been sweating with anxiety as hospital waiting rooms fill up. On November 29th a provincial newspaper posted a message on Weibo, a microblog service, describing an unnamed hospital in the north. The waiting area, it said, was filled with the sound of coughing and the crying of children. After receiving confirmation that her daughter had tested positive for a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, one woman, having waited hours, still had 300 people ahead of her in the queue for a consultation.

The item rapidly became one of Weibo’s hottest-trending posts: its hashtag received tens of millions of views. It was quickly deleted. China’s censors apparently want to keep the temperature down. But in recent days similar stories have filled the internet. Some have included pictures of packed fever clinics and even of children doing their homework while hooked to intravenous drips. The covid-era custom of wearing masks in public had all but ended in China. Amid a recent surge of respiratory diseases, especially among children, it is making a comeback.

On November 22nd the World Health Organisation (WHO) asked China for more details of the outbreaks, raising concerns all over. On the following day Chinese officials told the WHO that there was no new or unknown cause of these ailments. They said the infections were being caused by a range of familiar pathogens, such as the Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacterium, as well as adenovirus, covid-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. The WHO said some of the increases were “earlier in the season than historically experienced, but not unexpected” given the lifting of covid controls, and were similar to patterns observed in other countries. It quoted the Chinese officials as saying that hospitals were not being overwhelmed.

Drips all around

But it is clear that China’s health-care system still suffers from problems that make it prone to unusual stress. One is the weakness of primary health care. The number of general practitioners (GPs) has more than quadrupled since 2012, but there are still far fewer of them per person than there are in rich countries and they are often poorly trained. Many Chinese prefer to go straight to hospitals for diagnosis and treatment rather than consult a GP. This causes lengthy queues, especially at the best facilities. Another handicap is pressure on doctors to generate revenue. Ill-informed patients demand unnecessary treatments, which doctors are often willing to prescribe (such as intravenous infusions even for minor ailments).

China has stopped publishing regular statistics on covid vaccinations, but last year take-up was low among the elderly. Less than 4% of over-60s typically get a flu jab. So it will be a tough winter for China’s hospitals—and for the country’s most vulnerable people. ■

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IF PLACES COULD be diagnosed with long covid, then Shangqiu—a sleepy city of 3.7m people, in central China’s wheat belt—would be a good candidate. A full year after the chaotic, ill-planned collapse of China’s “zero-covid” policies, evidence abounds of lingering harms done to Shangqiu’s economy, and to residents’ morale.

Local finances were strained even before China began nearly three years of lockdowns and mass virus-testing drives. Shangqiu, in Henan province, is classed in the poorest third of Chinese cities, when ranked by income per person. Still, in the final, doomed months of China’s “all-out people’s war” on covid-19, city leaders spent lavishly on pandemic controls.

In May of last year Shangqiu built a 1,000-room quarantine hospital, at a cost of 135m yuan ($19m). This followed an injunction from central authorities to trace close contacts of infected people, take them from their homes and isolate them. Today that camp—a sprawling complex of modular cabins and testing huts in long rows—lies empty on the city’s eastern edge, surrounded by fields of winter wheat. Farmers have put its driveway to good use, at least, spotting a place to dry corn cobs for animal feed. City budgets remain in rough shape. In a stand-off with the government over funding, Shangqiu’s bus company threatened to halt services earlier this year, citing “very serious” pandemic-caused losses.

Yet when Chaguan rode the train to Shangqiu on this first anniversary of zero-covid’s abandonment, he heard no demands to hold city leaders to account. Instead, residents shared anxieties about the economy and the future. Party leaders can take comfort that citizens of Shangqiu mostly endorsed the authorities’ stern handling of the pandemic—at least when talking to a foreign reporter. In contrast, leaders should worry about a crisis of confidence gripping China’s heartland.

During a recent lunchtime lots of restaurants in Shangqiu’s old town were empty, and many shops padlocked and closed. A wedding-dress rental business stood out for bustling activity. Watched by a yapping brown poodle, assistants crammed sequinned gowns into bags. The owner, a woman in her 30s sporting a school-uniform-style blazer and skirt, explained that business is good. Couples are rushing to hold wedding parties postponed by two and a half years of covid lockdowns. Unlike liberal-minded big cities, Shangqiu is a traditional place where marrying by the age of 25 is the norm, she added. Because the following day was auspicious in the lunar calendar, 20 weddings had been planned, each earning her shop as much as 4,000 yuan. Spending per wedding is down, though. The pandemic taught families to save for a rainy day. Even public-sector jobs are no haven, after city finances took a battering. The store-owner’s brother-in-law works for the police department. At the moment, his salary is always late, she reported. As a result, he is careful about spending, even once his salary arrives.

At a jewellers around the corner, a manager described an initial rush of consumption after China reopened a year ago. “We felt the economy coming back,” she recalled. But in recent months clients have stopped making discretionary purchases, buying only the “three gold items” that accompany a traditional Henan engagement: a ring, earrings and a necklace. Asked about zero-covid’s legacy, she replied: “It’s been a year now. We can’t let the pandemic take the blame all the time.” The next moment, though, she recalled lockdowns when “we could not make money.” That has left “common people” far more cautious about spending. It has also left them more anxious about their physical health, she ventured. She described a society waiting for “life to feel normal again”.

A backstreet education company in Shangqiu offers evening classes in book-keeping. Even though good jobs are hard to find at the moment, course enrolments are down by a third since last year, a tutor confided. Adult education is an aspirational business, with most clients inspired to “better themselves” after seeing friends succeed, she explained. Put another way, in bad times crises of confidence can feed on themselves.

In Shangqiu signs of a frozen property market are all around, from apartment complexes advertising unsold homes to construction sites devoid of activity. In a deserted shop selling household appliances, a lone worker explained that customers only come to buy necessities, such as a new kitchen exhaust hood. She bought her own flat ten years ago for 220,000 yuan. It is worth almost double that today. Yet prices are sliding, she added.

All alone in a crowded country

Unusually, the electrical-goods seller challenged government accounts of the pandemic. She expressed bafflement that previously strict controls vanished in late 2022, and disputed the official line that by then the virus was mild and caused few deaths. “As a matter of fact, many people died, even some young people, not just old people,” she recalled. She remembers the pandemic as a frightening time, when incomes dried up, but people still had to make car-loan and mortgage payments. People have learned to save up in case a similar crisis returns: “You need to rely on yourself.”

To a car salesman in the city centre, the bursting of a “property bubble” is China’s main economic problem, and would have happened even without the pandemic. He described the four apartments he and his wife have bought since 2010, seeing property as a safe investment. In his telling, the pandemic was a reminder that incomes and house values are linked, and that prices cannot rise for ever. He worries that the government’s current, piecemeal measures to stimulate consumer demand will be ineffective.

Shangqiu’s public mood reveals a dilemma for China’s leader, Xi Jinping. An austere sort, he says that welfare safety-nets encourage laziness. When hard times strike, including during the pandemic, he scolds the masses to behave responsibly. Ordinary Chinese have paid heed. Seeing a world of unforeseeable risks, they are responding defensively. Covid’s legacy will be long. ■

Read more from Chaguan, our columnist on China:
Why Xi Jinping sounds friendlier to America (Nov 23rd)
Xi Jinping repeats imperial China’s mistakes (Nov 16th)
A Chinese dispute with the Philippines is a test of America (Nov 9th)

Also: How the Chaguan column got its name

THOUGH HE LAY dying of brain cancer, Tu Changwang had one last thing to say. The Chinese meteorologist had noticed that the climate was warming. So in 1961 he warned in the People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, that this might alter the conditions that sustain life. Yet he saw the warming as part of a cycle in solar activity that would probably go into reverse at some point. Tu did not suspect that the burning of fossil fuels was pumping carbon into the atmosphere and causing the climate to change. In that issue of the People’s Daily, a few pages before his paper, there was a photo of grinning coalminers. China was rushing to industrialise with the aim of catching up economically with the West.

Today China is an industrial powerhouse, home to over a quarter of the world’s manufacturing—more than America and Germany combined. But its progress has come at a cost in terms of emissions. Over the past three decades China has pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, in total, than any other country (see chart 1). It now emits over a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases each year, according to Rhodium Group, a research firm. That is about twice as much as America, which comes second (though on a per-person basis America is still worse).

Much, then, depends on China if the world is to keep global warming since the Industrial Revolution well below 2°C, as governments pledged at the UN’s annual climate summit in 2015. When those governments gather in Dubai for this year’s summit, which opens on November 30th, China will have both good and bad news for them.

On the positive side, China’s emissions will soon stop rising. Some analysts think they will top out this year. There is little doubt that the peak will come before 2030, which is the goal China has set for itself. It is building nuclear power stations faster than any other country. It has also invested heavily in renewable energy (see chart 2), such that it now has around 750 gigawatts of wind and solar generating capacity, about a third of the world’s total. By the end of the decade the government aims to have 1,200 gigawatts of such capacity, more than the total power capacity of the European Union at the moment. China will probably well exceed that target.

But it is not just China’s embrace of renewable energy that is helping it curb emissions. Its production of carbon-intensive steel and cement has been dropping. After decades of building roads and railways, the government is splurging less on big infrastructure projects. A long expansion of the property sector has ended in a meltdown that has shaken the economy—but led to fewer emissions. Going forward, few analysts expect China’s GDP to grow as fast as it did at the end of last century and the beginning of this one. Put another way, China’s dirtiest phase of development is probably behind it.

Another mountain to climb

More important than the peak, though, is what happens next. China has pledged to eliminate net emissions of greenhouse gases (or to become “carbon neutral”) by 2060. Analysts think this will be a much harder target to hit. Even after that massive injection of renewables, dirty coal still supplies about 55% of China’s energy. That’s down from 70% in 2011, but the amount of coal China burns continues to increase, as demand for electricity rises. Last year China mined a record 4.5bn tonnes of coal and approved around two new coal-fired power plants for construction every week on average.

Many of these may never be built. Declining utilisation rates of existing coal plants undermine the case for further construction. But China is not moving away from coal as fast as environmentalists would like or analysts say is necessary to meet its 2060 target. Part of the problem is that the country has a lot of it. With little oil or gas, coal provides China a secure source of energy. Digging it up creates jobs. Building a coal plant, whether it is needed or not, is also a common way for local governments to boost short-term economic growth.

China’s power grid was built with coal in mind. At plants that burn the stuff, humans decide when to ramp things up or down. But when it comes to solar and wind power, nature is the boss. So the grid needs to be made more flexible. When there is a surplus of energy in one spot, it must be able to store it or move it elsewhere. Otherwise China will not be able to accommodate lots of new wind turbines and solar panels in the future.

Most countries need to make similar changes to their grids. The challenge facing China, though, is unique, says David Fishman of the Lantau Group, an energy consultancy. The bulk of the country’s solar and wind resources are in the west. But the power they generate is needed mostly in the east, where the country’s biggest cities are located. Transferring it such long distances is tricky. Another problem is that provincial governments have a lot of say over how their portion of the grid operates. They don’t like depending on each other for energy. So, for example, a province might choose to use its own coal plant over a cleaner energy source located elsewhere.

Those who are concerned about China’s progress also worry about methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Some countries can cut their methane emissions in simple ways, such as by repairing leaky gas pipes. But most of the methane coming from China wafts out of coal mines or is produced by microbes in rice paddies. Fixing the problem is hard without closing mines or changing farming practices. So at the UN climate summit in 2021, China refused to join more than 100 other countries, including America, which pledged to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030. China has said that it would address the issue in its national climate plan for 2035, which may not be published for another two years.

In the face of these challenges, China’s leaders must be bold. But their climate ambitions may have already peaked, says Li Shuo, the incoming director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York. He believes power cuts caused by surging coal prices and droughts, which disrupt hydropower, have spooked officials in recent years. Now they worry that climate-friendly policies will undermine the country’s energy security (green types argue that some reforms, such as making the grid more flexible, would have the opposite effect). Mr Li expects China’s emissions to plateau rather than decline.

Save yourself

China, though, has good reason to prioritise the climate. Some of its biggest cities, including Shanghai, lie on the coast and could be swallowed by rising seas. The arid north lacks drinking water. Extreme weather is already taking a toll. Last year deaths associated with heatwaves in China increased by 342% compared with the historical average, according to a study published by the Lancet, a medical journal. This summer floods damaged much of China’s wheat crop.

Meanwhile, China has become a leader in green-energy technology. The rest of the world is largely dependent on Chinese solar-panel and battery supply chains. This year China overtook Japan to become the world’s largest car exporter, thanks in part to Chinese dominance in electric vehicles.

So there is some hope that China will play a productive role at the climate summit in Dubai. With ambitions to lead the global south, it will not want to look as if it is neglecting an issue that is foremost on the mind of many officials in developing countries. Optimists also note the meeting between Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, and John Kerry, his American counterpart, in November. They agreed on some small steps, such as collaborating on carbon-capture projects.

Yet China has also made it clear that it will not bow to pressure on climate change. Earlier this year Xi Jinping, its leader, reiterated his aim of reaching a carbon peak by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. “But the path, method, pace and intensity to achieve this goal should and must be determined by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others,” he said.■

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