World in Brief - The Economist Roundup

 

World in Brief

The Economist Roundup

Deflation haunts China’s economy

While the rest of the world has struggled to bring inflation down from the steep levels seen in 2023, in China prices have been sliding. Consumer prices fell 0.3% year on year in December, according to official statistics released on Friday. Deflation is expected to continue in the coming months—the result of weak consumer demand, triggered by the downturn in the country’s real-estate market.

Trade data released on Friday also offer a hint to China’s economic trajectory. Exporters are still recovering from the slump in post-pandemic sales of electronic goods, but a recovery in outbound trade seems to be underway. Exports rose by 2.3% year on year in December, the strongest rise in eight months. With the domestic economy flagging, the country's leaders are juicing the manufacturing sector with credit from the country’s state-owned banks. Faster trade growth is probably in the pipeline.

Chinese football and Asian Cup

If all had gone to plan, football fans would have flocked to China’s stadiums in 2023. The country was meant to host the Asian Cup, a regional tournament held every four years. Players will instead kick off in an air-conditioned arena in Qatar on Friday. China relinquished hosting rights in 2022 after its zero-covid policy delayed preparations. Qatar, fresh from throwing a World Cup, has stepped in.

It is one of several recent footballing failures in China. Chinese football officials have been accused of corruption. Overseas stars have been returning home, sometimes unpaid. And the national team has had little success. Hong Kong—the lowest-ranked team at the Asian Cup, having qualified for the first time since 1968—beat China in a friendly on January 1st.

Xi Jinping, a lifelong fan of the sport, wants his country to become a footballing superpower. Mr Xi published a 50-point plan for growing the game in 2015. But even the football-mad president recently admitted that he was “not so sure” about the standard of China’s players.

Supersonic flight returns, quietly

On Friday NASA will unveil its X-59 Quesst aircraft, which is a test bed for a possible supersonic passenger plane. Supersonic travel has been a thing of the past since Concorde, an Anglo-French jet, stopped flying in 2003. Concorde proved expensive to run, partly because its “sonic boom” was thought too loud for built-up areas, which limited the routes it could fly. The X-59 is slower than Concorde, with a cruising speed of about Mach 1.4 (roughly 1,500 kilometres per hour) compared with Concorde’s Mach 2. But its “quiet supersonic technology”—from which it takes its “Quesst” name—is meant to produce a gentler sonic “thump” that is less jarring to those on the ground.

Test flights are due to start later this year. And NASA is not the only outfit keen to revive supersonic air travel. Boom Supersonic, an American firm, also hopes to make the first flight of its prototype aircraft in the coming months.

 

A spokesperson for Houthi militias said that five people were killed after America and Britain launched over 70 strikes against targets in Yemen, dramatically expanding the scope of the Middle East conflict. The Houthis vowed to keep targeting Israeli ships and those headed for Israel. The Iran-backed group has attacked 27 commercial ships since mid-November in response to Israel’s war in Gaza, forcing many shipping lines to re-route around the Cape of Good Hope.

 

Israel began its defence at the International Court of Justice against a charge of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel said that the case put forward by South Africa on Thursday presented a “distorted factual and legal picture”, ignoring the lethal attacks which Hamas, a militant group, carried out on October 7th. Israel vehemently denies South Africa’s charge, arguing that it is fighting a war of self-defence.

 

China brokered a ceasefire deal in Myanmar designed to bring an end to months of fighting between the country’s military junta and an alliance of rebel groups in the country’s north. Their recent offensive, which led to intense fighting near the border with China, posed the biggest threat to the regime since it took power in a coup in 2021.

 

Consumer prices in Argentina rose by 211% in December—the biggest year-on-year increase since 1991, when the country emerged from a period of hyperinflation. The monthly inflation rate reached 25.5%, slightly lower than expected, after Javier Milei, the president, sharply devalued the peso shortly after taking office. Mr Milei has promised tough austerity measures to try to curb inflation.

 

As the civil fraud trial against Donald Trump drew to a close, the former president decried the lawsuit as a “fraud on me”. The judge, Arthur Engoron, denied Mr Trump’s unorthodox request to deliver his own closing arguments, but allowed him to speak briefly before the court. Mr Engoron said he would rule on the case—which is mainly about the damages Mr Trump owes—in the coming weeks.

 

American officials failed to adequately track about $1bn worth of military aid sent to Ukraine, a Pentagon report concluded. The materiel was subject to special monitoring, which usually applies to certain missiles and night-vision devices. Although improper tracking “may increase the risk of theft”, the report’s authors did not look for evidence of weapons going missing. Congress is currently torn over sending more aid to Ukraine.

 

Russian holiday-goers are set to be the first known tourists allowed into North Korea since it closed its borders as a pandemic response in early 2020. A five-day jaunt was arranged by an agency in Primorsky Krai after the eastern region’s governor visited the hermit kingdom’s capital for talks. The countries pledged closer ties after a series of meetings in September.