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The World Ahead 2022
Ten trends to watch in the coming

year
A letter from Tom Standage, editor of “The World Ahead 2022”
Nov 8th 2021

BY TOM STANDAGE: EDITOR, THE WORLD
AHEAD 2022
I f 2021 was the year the world turned the tide against the pandemic, 2022
will be dominated by the need to adjust to new realities, both in areas
reshaped by the crisis (the new world of work, the future of travel) and as
deeper trends reassert themselves (the rise of China, accelerating climate
change). Here are ten themes and trends to watch in the year ahead.
1 Democracy v autocracy. America’s mid-term elections and China’s

Communist Party congress will vividly contrast their rival political systems.
Which is better at delivering stability, growth and innovation? This rivalry
will play out in everything from trade to tech regulation, vaccinations to
space stations. As President Joe Biden tries to rally the free world under the
ag of democracy, his dysfunctional, divided country is a poor
advertisement for its merits.
2 Pandemic to endemic. New antiviral pills, improved antibody treatments

and more vaccines are coming. For vaccinated folks in the developed world,
the virus will no longer be life-threatening. But it will still pose a deadly
danger in the developing world. Unless vaccinations can be stepped up,
covid-19 will have become just another of the many endemic diseases that
a ict the poor but not the rich.
3 In ation worries. Supply-chain disruptions and a spike in energy

demand have pushed up prices. Central bankers say it’s temporary, but not
everyone believes them. Britain is at particular risk of stag ation, due to
post-Brexit labour shortages and its dependence on expensive natural gas.
4 The future of work. There is a broad consensus that the future is

“hybrid”, and that more people will spend more days working from home.
But there is much scope for disagreement on the details. How many days,
and which ones? And will it be fair? Surveys show that women are less keen
to return to the o ce, so they may risk being passed over for promotions.
Debates also loom over tax rules and monitoring of remote workers.
“ The coming year will be dominated by the need to adjust

to new, post-pandemic realities
6 Crypto grows up. Like all disruptive technologies, cryptocurrencies are

being domesticated as regulators tighten rules. Central banks are also
looking to launch their own, centralised, digital currencies. The result is a
three-way ght for the future of nance—between the crypto-blockchain-
DeFi crowd, more traditional technology rms and central banks—that will
intensify in 2022.
7 Climate crunch. Even as wild res, heatwaves and oods increase in

frequency, a striking lack of urgency prevails among policymakers when it
comes to tackling climate change. Moreover, decarbonisation requires the
West and China to co-operate, just as their geopolitical rivalry is deepening.
Keep an eye on the solar-geoengineering research team at Harvard. In 2022,
they want to test the use of a high-altitude balloon to release dust to dim
sunlight—a technique that may, at this rate, be needed to buy the world
more time to decarbonise.
8 Travel trouble. Activity is picking up as economies reopen. But countries

that pursued a zero-covid “suppression” strategy, such as Australia and New
Zealand, face the tricky task of managing the transition to a world in which
the virus is endemic. Meanwhile, as much as half of business travel is gone
for good. That is good for the planet, but bad for tourists whose trips are
subsidised by high-spending business travellers.
9 Space races. 2022 will be the rst year in which more people go to space
as paying passengers than government employees, carried aloft by rival
space-tourism rms. China will nish its new space station. Film-makers
are vying to make movies in zero-g. And nasa will crash a space probe into
an asteroid, in a real-life mission that sounds like a Hollywood lm.
10 Political footballs. The Winter Olympics in Beijing and the football

World Cup in Qatar will be reminders of how sport can bring the world
together—but also of how big sporting events often end up being political
footballs. Expect protests directed at both host countries, though boycotts
by national teams seem unlikely.
The rapid development of mrna coronavirus vaccines, a bright spot in 2021,

drew on decades of work to create what looked like an overnight success.
Which other emerging technologies might be about to burst into
prominence? Our special section considers 22 candidates for 2022. Finally,
this publication has a new name: The World in is now The World Ahead,
which better positions us for the future. We hope that reading it will do the
same for you.
Tom Standage: Editor, The World Ahead 20227
This article appeared in the From the editor section of the print edition of The
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “From the editor”
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Rivalry between America and China

will shape the post-covid world
Each side is striving to show the superiority of its system of government
Nov 8th 2021

BY ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES: EDITOR-
IN-CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST
I n his classic account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides concluded
that the con ict was the consequence of growing Athenian power
instilling fear in Sparta. In “The Thucydides Trap”, an in uential essay
published in 2015, Graham Allison of Harvard University examined whether
the same dynamic would apply to America and China. He identi ed 16
historical episodes where an established power’s position was disrupted by
a challenger. In 12 of those cases the shift ended in war. A repetition today
was not inevitable, he concluded, but escaping the trap “requires
tremendous e ort”.
Mr Allison’s analysis was studied closely in Washington and Beijing.

Nonetheless, in the past ve years the relationship between the world’s
superpower and its Asian challenger has deteriorated in a manner that
suggests few are paying heed to history. Under Xi Jinping, China has become
more aggressively assertive abroad and more authoritarian at home. Under
Donald Trump and now Joe Biden, American policy towards China has
shifted from hubristic faith that it could be integrated into the existing
American-led world order to something closer to paranoid containment,
marked by suspicion of China’s intentions and a fearful bipartisan
consensus that America’s global pre-eminence is at risk.
This growing antagonism has already caused plenty of damage, from the
tari war to heightened tensions over Taiwan. It has enfeebled the global
responses to covid-19 and climate change. Unfortunately, as bad as things
seem now, they could easily get worse. The world that emerges from the
pandemic will be shaped by an adversarial rivalry that is not just about each
side’s relative power, but has become an existential competition as each side
strives to demonstrate the superiority of its system of government.
“ Each side is striving to show the superiority of its system

of government
Mr Biden has already described it as such, saying that Western democracies

are in a “contest” with autocratic governments over which system works
better in a rapidly changing 21st century. For Xi Jinping the framing is
similar and the evidence already overwhelming: collective state control, he
repeatedly asserts, is plainly superior to dysfunctional Western democracy.
“The East is rising and the West is declining,” as Chinese o cials have
become fond of saying.
Xi who must be obeyed

The party will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent instability or criticism
of any kind. The risk of embarrassing protests at the Olympics by citizens of
pesky democracies perturbed by China’s “re-education” camps in Xinjiang,
for instance, has been addressed by imposing a strict covid “bubble” that
does not allow any foreign spectators to attend. On the domestic front, any
whi of disquiet within the party at Mr Xi’s rejection of any term limit for
his rule will be met with brutal purges. O cials will celebrate the dawn of a
“new era”: that of Mr Xi, in total control of the party for as long as he wishes.
Meanwhile, Western democracies will showcase all their frustrating

messiness. In Europe a winter of energy shortages, with high prices and
even rolling blackouts, will infuriate voters and frighten politicians. France’s
presidential election will be an ugly spectacle of populist demagoguery, the
tone set by Eric Zemmour, a hard-right, anti-immigrant television
personality who is positioning himself as the French Trump. In the end
Emmanuel Macron will probably be re-elected, as the populist right-wing
vote splits, but a campaign dominated by resentment and culture wars will
not feel like an advertisement for democracy.
The biggest disappointment will be America itself. Mid-term election years

are usually ones in which little is achieved legislatively and the party that
holds the White House loses seats in Congress. 2022 will be a particularly
extreme example of this mid-term curse. Even if he succeeds in getting a
version of his “Build Back Better” package of infrastructure and social
spending passed, Mr Biden begins 2022 with his popularity still dimmed by
rising in ation and supply shortages. With an eight-seat margin in the
House of Representatives and a 50-50 split in the Senate, the Democrats are
at grave risk of losing control of both. And the Republican Party, wholly in
thrall to Mr Trump, has adopted his false narrative that the 2020 election
was stolen and has been changing laws, in numerous states where it
controls the legislature, to tip election oversight in its favour.
As the year goes on, the near certainty that, health permitting, Mr Trump
will be the Republican presidential candidate in 2024 means America’s
political debate will be overshadowed by fears of the biggest constitutional
crisis since the civil war. Outside America, those who thought Mr Trump an
awful aberration will be shaken by the prospect of a comeback.
Meanwhile, in the economic arena…

If the theatre of politics makes Western democracy look dysfunctional
relative to Chinese autocracy, 2022 may o er a di erent verdict on which
system delivers the most competent economic management. From tech
companies to post-pandemic reopening, China and America are taking
starkly divergent approaches to similar challenges. And, for the rst time in
years, China may make more mistakes.
Mr Xi has embarked on a no-holds-barred e ort to cut China’s capitalist

titans down to size, erasing as much as $1.5trn in shareholder value with his
clampdown on technology companies and imposing tough restrictions on
industries, from video-gaming to private tutoring, that are deemed inimical
to “common prosperity”. In America, bipartisan fulminations about the
corrosive impact of Facebook and other tech giants will lead to little more
than Congressional hearings. Market forces, however, will do a better job of
delivering change, as younger consumers seek out new platforms and the
big tech rms start to encroach on each other’s territory.
America and the rest of the West will move into a living-with-covid mindset.
The disease will not disappear, but become endemic. Booster jabs will
become the norm, remaining travel restrictions will be relaxed and
lockdowns will become a thing of the past. China, by contrast, will stick
with a zero-covid policy throughout 2022. Having terri ed its citizens about
the disease and touted its toughness as a mark of superiority, China’s
government cannot easily change course. The country will remain walled o
from the rest of the world with long quarantines and sharply restricted
travel.
In both of these cases, China’s draconian approach will eventually cause

economic damage. Regulatory unpredictability and censorious disapproval
of the country’s most successful capitalists will discourage
entrepreneurship and hinder innovation. And maintaining a zero-covid
policy in a world in which the disease is endemic will require disruptive
shutdowns.
All this will complicate China’s already challenging macroeconomic

environment. China-watchers have worried for years about the
consequences of unwinding the country’s enormous property boom and the
jaw-dropping levels of debt that accompanied it. The crisis at Evergrande, a
huge developer, suggests that this tricky transition is at last under way. It
will dominate 2022 as other property-related rms fail. Add to that
structural challenges, from a shrinking workforce to a rapidly growing
number of old-age dependents, and the economic pressures are
considerable. Annual gdp growth could fall to 5%.
“ The good news is that a military confrontation seems

unlikely
Slower growth in China would cast a shadow across the global economy.
But, paradoxically, by dampening commodity prices it would help ease
America’s main macroeconomic challenge: the risk of sustained high
in ation. That would leave room for the Federal Reserve to stay looser for
longer. With covid-19 behind it, its scal tightening mostly complete and
(assuming some version of Mr Biden’s bill is passed) with a long-overdue
e ort to improve infrastructure under way, America’s economy could grow
smartly, even as its politics frays. gdp growth of 4%, not far o China’s, is
plausible.
Divergent political and economic performance will dominate the headlines

in the coming year. But won’t that undermine the chances that America and
China will make the “tremendous e ort” needed to build a functioning
relationship? Not necessarily. With a faltering domestic economy, Mr Xi
might be keen to improve the trade relationship with America, while Mr
Biden, embattled at home, might want to notch up a foreign-policy success
before the mid-terms. And in theory the two sides could make progress in
plenty of areas, such as devising a sensible deal on trade and technology to
replace the tari s of the Trump era; agreeing on a common approach to
cyber-security, nuclear non-proliferation or the militarisation of space; or
nding ways to accelerate the clean-energy transition in the wake of the
COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow.
Unfortunately, this all seems highly unlikely. In a deeply polarised America,

one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement is to be tough on China. Mr
Biden will not risk Republican attacks that he is going soft by doing deals,
however sensible they might be. And a China that views Mr Biden as a
transitional gure in a dysfunctional democracy is more likely to dial up its
nationalist propaganda to distract from domestic economic weakness. The
good news is that a military confrontation seems unlikely in 2022. The
overriding need to preserve stability in the run-up to the party congress will
discourage China from adventurism or excessive sabre-rattling, whether
around Taiwan or in the South China Sea. The bad news is that the
Thucydides Trap will not have gone away.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Editor-in-chief, The Economist7
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Manichean and messy”
Keep updated
Energy investment needs to increase

—so bills and taxes must rise
Shortages and green ation will end the age of idealism on energy policy
Nov 8th 2021

BY PATRICK FOULIS: BUSINESS AFFAIRS
EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST
P oliticians, consumers and companies are on a journey of discovery
about climate change and the energy business. The rst stage, in the
early 2010s, was characterised by indi erence. The second phase, in the past
few years, has involved setting idealistic emissions-cutting targets far in the
future that cost little today. In 2022 the third stage of the journey will get
under way, amid dangerously volatile energy prices, fears of green ation
and rising geopolitical risks. It will require realism about the task ahead.
In 2021 the world was awash in easy promises. Some 70 countries,

accounting for two-thirds of global carbon emissions, had net-zero targets,
to be met by mid-century. A majority of people in the rich world, including
America, expressed concern about climate change. Companies were making
ambitious carbon-neutral pledges, too—especially those that didn’t emit
much in the rst place. A boom in green-tech venture capital suggested that
funds were being reallocated at scale. And sustainable investing became one
of the biggest trends in nance since subprime debt.
When it came, the reality check was brutal. A surging economy in mid-2021
pushed up energy demand. By October the price of a basket of fossil fuels
was up by 95% year on year. China and India faced blackouts and Europe a
lack of gas (often piped from autocratic Russia). A shortage of fossil fuels,
which account for 83% of primary energy use, threatened to push global
in ation above 5%, hurt growth and spook the public. In response,
politicians turned back the clock. China and India raised coal output, Britain
turned its dirtiest power plants back on, and as the oil price hit $80 a barrel,
the White House urged opec to boost exports.
“ Because energy investment needs to increase, bills and

taxes must rise
In 2022 attention will turn to making the energy system less fragile. The
easiest bit is fairly technical. Most grids struggle to handle the intermittent
nature of renewable sources such as solar and wind energy, so more reliable
base-load power is needed that is not coal- red. Natural gas will come back
in fashion and there will be a global rehabilitation of nuclear power, which
produces no greenhouse-gas emissions. In the years since the Fukushima
disaster of 2011 its share of primary energy use has faded to 4%, but more
countries will seek to emulate France, where the gure is 36%. New battery,
hydrogen and carbon-capture technologies may eventually help, but they
are not ready for prime time.
In response, governments will expand the use of carbon prices, which act as
an economy-wide ratchet on emissions. They will experiment with setting
prices far into the future to give investors more predictability over the 20- to
30-year life-cycle of energy projects. America will remain an outlier, with no
federal carbon price, but more Republicans will realise that pricing is the
capitalist way to reform the energy business.
It’s not easy being green

The hardest part of the coming year of realism will involve being honest
with the public. Because energy investment needs to increase from 2% of
world gdp to 5%, bills and taxes must rise. Politicians can try to pre-empt
the inevitable backlash by using the proceeds of carbon taxes to help the
poor. If energy prices continue to soar in 2022 there will be protests both on
the streets and at the ballot box. But if the squeeze eases, then the year could
end with energy policy on a more solid foundation. The chances of the
world hitting its net-zero targets will still be remote, but grid designs,
investment incentives and scal plans may be in better shape.
Huge problems will remain, though. Roughly a fth of emissions come from
industrial users, such as cement-makers. Often there is no immediate clean
substitute. The dying fossil-fuel economy will amplify geopolitical risks,
with opec and Russia’s combined share of oil output expected to reach 50%
by 2030. And some new electrostates may prove to be more volatile than the
old petrostates: about 70% of the cobalt used in electric cars comes from the
Democratic Republic of Congo, a country of 90m people, whose gdp is
roughly the same as the revenue of Tesla, the leading electric-car maker.
The emerging world accounts for two-thirds of energy-related carbon

emissions, yet lacks the cash and innovation base to invest or invent its way
to a cleaner energy system. The realisation that this is ultimately the rich
world’s problem, too, will be at the heart of the fourth stage of the climate
journey, beyond 2022.
Patrick Foulis: Business a airs editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Reality check”
Keep updated
Covid-19 is likely to fade away in

2022
But the taming of the coronavirus conceals failures in public health
Nov 8th 2021

BY EDWARD CARR: DEPUTY EDITOR, THE
ECONOMIST
P andemics do not die—they fade away. And that is what covid-19 is
likely to do in 2022. True, there will be local and seasonal are-ups,
especially in chronically undervaccinated countries. Epidemiologists will
also need to watch out for new variants that might be capable of out anking
the immunity provided by vaccines. Even so, over the coming years, as covid
settles into its fate as an endemic disease, like u or the common cold, life
in most of the world is likely to return to normal—at least, the post-
pandemic normal.
Behind this prospect lie both a stunning success and a depressing failure.
The success is that very large numbers of people have been vaccinated and
that, at each stage of infection from mild symptoms to intensive care, new
medicines can now greatly reduce the risk of death. It is easy to take for
granted, but the rapid creation and licensing of so many vaccines and
treatments for a new disease is a scienti c triumph.
The polio vaccine took 20 years to go from early trials to its rst American
licence. By the end of 2021, just two years after sars-cov-2 was rst
identi ed, the world was turning out roughly 1.5bn doses of covid vaccine
each month. Air nity, a life-sciences data rm, predicts that by the end of
June 2022 a total of 25bn doses could have been produced. At a summit in
September President Joe Biden called for 70% of the world to be fully
vaccinated within a year. Supply need not be a constraint.
“ Immunity has been acquired at a terrible cost
Vaccines do not o er complete protection, however, especially among the

elderly. Yet here, too, medical science has risen to the challenge. For
example, early symptoms can be treated with molnupiravir, a twice-daily
antiviral pill that in trials cut deaths and admissions to hospital by half. The
gravely ill can receive dexamethasone, a cheap corticosteroid, which
reduces the risk of death by 20-30%. In between are drugs like remdesivir
and an antibody cocktail made by Regeneron.
However, alongside this success is that failure. One further reason why
covid will do less harm in the future is that it has already done so much in
the past. Very large numbers of people are protected from current variants of
covid only because they have already been infected. And many more,
particularly in the developing world, will remain unprotected by vaccines or
medicines long into 2022.
This immunity has been acquired at terrible cost. The Economist has tracked
excess deaths during the pandemic—the mortality over and above what you
would have expected in a normal year. Our central estimate on October 22nd
was of a global total of 16.5m deaths (with a range from 10.2m to 19.2m),
which was 3.3 times larger than the o cial count. Working backwards using
assumptions about the share of fatal infections, a very rough estimate
suggests that these deaths are the result of 1.5bn-3.6bn infections—six to 15
times the recorded number.
The combination of infection and vaccination explains why in, say, Britain
in the autumn, you could detect antibodies to covid in 93% of adults. People
are liable to re-infection, as Britain shows, but with each exposure to the
virus the immune system becomes better trained to repel it. Along with new
treatments and the fact that more young people are being infected, that
explains why the fatality rate in Britain is now only a tenth of what it was at
the start of 2021. Other countries will also follow that trajectory on the road
to endemicity.
All this could yet be upended by a dangerous new variant. The virus is
constantly mutating and the more of it there is in circulation, the greater the
chance that an infectious new strain will emerge. However, even if Omicron
and Rho variants strike, they may be no more deadly than Delta is. In
addition, existing treatments are likely to remain e ective, and vaccines can
rapidly be tweaked to take account of the virus’s mutations.
Just another endemic disease

Increasingly, therefore, people will die from covid because they are elderly
or in rm, or they are unvaccinated or cannot a ord medicines. Sometimes
people will remain vulnerable because they refuse to have a jab when
o ered one—a failure of health education. But vaccine doses are also being
hoarded by rich countries, and getting needles into arms in poor and remote
places is hard. Livelihoods will be ruined and lives lost all for lack of a safe
injection that costs just a few dollars.
Covid is not done yet. But by 2023, it will no longer be a life-threatening

disease for most people in the developed world. It will still pose a deadly
danger to billions in the poor world. But the same is, sadly, true of many
other conditions. Covid will be well on the way to becoming just another
disease.
Edward Carr: Deputy editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Burning out”
Keep updated
Will the world economy return to

normal in 2022?
If it does not, a painful economic adjustment looms
Nov 8th 2021

BY HENRY CURR: ECONOMICS EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST
W ill the stag ationary forces acting on the world economy last?
Throughout 2021, central banks and most economists have said that
the factors causing in ation to rise and growth to slow would be temporary.
Supply-chain bottlenecks would subside, energy prices would return to
earth and the rich-world workers staying out of the labour force—for
reasons nobody fully understands—would return to work. And yet as 2021
draws to a close nancial markets, the public and even central bankers
themselves are beginning to lose faith.
The dilemma facing policymakers is acute. The textbook answer to in ation

caused by supply disruptions is to ignore it and let it go away on its own.
Why damage economies with higher interest rates, which will not unblock
ports, conjure up new supplies of natural gas or bring the pandemic to an
end? In 2011 in ation in Britain rose to 5.2% as a result of rising
commodities prices, but the Bank of England kept interest rates low. In the
euro area the European Central Bank raised rates, helping send its economy
back into recession, and before long found itself with in ation well below
its target. Like then, in ation in 2022 driven by high energy prices is likely
to subside. (In ation is the rate of change of prices, meaning that even if
prices do not return to previous levels, merely not rising as quickly is
enough.)
Yet the comparison with the early

2010s is inexact. The woes of global
trade in 2021 have not just been
caused by disrupted supply, such as
covid-19 outbreaks shutting
Vietnamese factories. There has also
been excess demand. Massive scal
and monetary stimulus, combined
with social distancing, led consumers
to binge on goods, from games
consoles to tennis shoes. In the
summer of 2021 Americans’ spending
on physical stu was 7% above the
pre-pandemic trend. In other countries, too, there is only a shortage of
goods relative to unusually high demand for them. For the world economy
to return to something like normal, consumers need to spend more of their
plentiful cash on services, such as restaurant meals and travel.
“ The rich world has not seen a wage-price spiral since the
1970s
Unfortunately economies are plagued by shortages of workers needed for

service industries to thrive. Wages in leisure and hospitality are soaring.
Many economists hoped that workers would return as emergency support
for labour markets, such as furlough schemes and emergency
unemployment insurance, ended. So far there is surprisingly little sign of
that happening. For in ation to be temporary, wage growth as well as price
growth probably needs to fall. The alternatives are an unlikely surge in
productivity, or lower pro t margins, which for businesses such as
restaurants are already thin.
Some monetary policymakers are beginning to fear the reverse: wage growth
that continues to rise as workers come to expect higher in ation. The rich
world has not seen a wage-price spiral since the 1970s, and doves argue that
in economies without widespread unionisation, workers are unlikely to
negotiate higher wages. But if rising in ation expectations do prove self-
ful lling, central banks’ job would suddenly get much harder. They would
not be able to keep in ation on target without sacri cing jobs. Emerging
markets are used to this painful trade-o between growth and in ation, but
it has not bitten hard in the rich world for decades. In big rich countries, the
Bank of England is the closest to tightening—purely to preserve the
credibility of its in ation target, rather than because it is warranted by
underlying economic conditions.
Central bankers in a tightening spot

Above all else, the pandemic is not over. The spread of the virus could yet
disrupt economies once again if immunity wanes and new variants can
evade vaccines. But with supply chains at their limits, the world cannot
repeat the trick of maintaining economic growth using stimulus that shifts
consumer spending towards goods. Instead central banks would have to
choke o spending with higher rates to avoid excessive in ation while the
supply-side of the economy adapts to patterns of spending and working that
are vastly di erent from what prevailed in the 2010s. If normality does not
return in 2022, the alternative is a painful economic adjustment.
Henry Curr: Economics editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Rebound or rebalance”
Keep updated
The aftermath of the pandemic will

make politics more turbulent
Political unrest tends to peak two years after an outbreak starts
Nov 8th 2021

BY ROBERT GUEST: FOREIGN EDITOR, THE
ECONOMIST
W hen the plague killed a third of Europeans in the 14th century, it left
landlords with too few hands to till their land, allowing labourers to
demand better treatment. When in uenza killed 20m Indians in 1918-19
(and another 30m people worldwide), it spread misery that helped kick-start
Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign to end British colonial rule. Pandemics can
upend politics. A study of 133 countries between 2001 and 2018 nds that
political unrest tends to peak two years after a typical epidemic starts. If so,
2022 will be a bumpy year.
Globally, civil unrest rose by 10% in 2020, the rst year of the pandemic,
despite nearly every country placing restrictions on public gatherings. Some
citizens fault their governments for failing to curb the virus. Others
complain of harshly enforced, economically ruinous lockdowns. Some
imagine that the vaccines governments are urging them to take are harmful.
The many protests that erupted in 2021 had many causes, but covid-19 was
usually an aggravating factor. Rioters in South Africa were angry not only
about the jailing of an ex-president but also at pandemic-induced
joblessness. Protesters in Belarus and Thailand demanded not only
democracy but also better health care.
In 2022 the risk of turbulence is greatest in middle-income countries. The

rich world is largely vaccinated. The very poor have so many troubles that
coronavirus is just one of a long, grim list. By contrast, citizens of middle-
income countries expect decent public services and are frustrated. They
know that the well-o were vaccinated rst, including the local elite who
ew abroad for their jabs. They are understandably impatient that the
vaccine is tantalisingly out of reach for millions.
Elections could prompt such frustrations to bubble over. In Brazil a populist

president, Jair Bolsonaro, has responded dismally to covid-19, dismissing its
severity, opposing masks, botching the vaccine roll-out and letting
thousands die. His unpopularity suggests he will lose an election in October.
But the country is polarised, he has told his supporters the vote will be
rigged and he insists that only God can remove him from o ce. A Trump-
style insurrection, or worse, cannot be ruled out.
“ The risk of turbulence is greatest in middle-income

countries
Kenya’s election in August will be fraught, too. The pandemic has wiped out
tourism jobs. Police have killed curfew-breakers. Many are angry, and one
candidate, William Ruto, is fanning the anger. Though wealthy, he presents
himself as a champion against dynasts such as the Kenyatta and Odinga
families. Mr Ruto was accused of crimes against humanity relating to
electoral violence in 2007-08 (the charges were dropped after witnesses
changed their testimony). More mayhem is likely.
A populist dynasty may be forming in the Philippines, led by President

Rodrigo Duterte, who intimidates the press and has encourged the
extrajudicial killing of tens of thousands of suspected drug criminals. He
cannot run for a second term in May, and has vowed to retire from politics.
But he has broken such promises before. He could run for vice-president,
and his daughter could run for the presidency.
In India, several regional ballots could become ashpoints. To distract from

millions of deaths from covid-19 and its own subversion of institutions, in
2022 the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party will stir up hatred of Muslims, whom
it has accused of conducting a “love jihad” to seduce and convert Hindu
women. Police will suppress rallies by the opposition, citing covid-19 rules,
but allow rallies and even violence by bjp supporters.
Some countries will struggle to hold elections at all. Lebanon has a poll
scheduled for May, but economic collapse and general chaos could lead to a
postponement. Guinea and Mali, which recently su ered coups, are being
urged to allow free and fair elections, but will not.
Nationalists resurgent
Elections in rich countries will be calmer, but tense. Hungary’s newly united
opposition could throw out the increasingly corrupt government of Viktor
Orban, who will resist eviction with a mix of dirty tricks and
scaremongering about immigrants and Jews. French voters will choose
whether to stick with a liberal centrist, Emmanuel Macron, or take a leap
into the dark with Marine Le Pen, a nationalist who wants to “de-Islamise”
France. Mr Macron annoys many voters, but with covid-19 receding he
seems like a safer choice, and will probably win. The same is unlikely to be
true of Australia’s ruling Liberal-National (conservative) coalition. E orts to
keep covid-19 infections to zero will be impossible to maintain, and the
leftish Labor Party will win power in 2022.
To pep up growth, keep people healthy and avert unrest, the smartest thing
any government can do in 2022 is to roll out vaccines. Anti-vaxxers will
resist, but France and others have shown that insisting on vaccine passports
to eat in restaurants can swiftly change minds. Magic bullets in politics are
not supposed to exist, but the coronavirus vaccines come awfully close.
Robert Guest: Foreign editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Ballots, brawls and magic bullets”
Keep updated
How to ensure that the future of

work is fair for all
The hybrid workplace will be unequal, unless bosses design it not to be
Nov 8th 2021

BY SACHA NAUTA: DEPUTY EXECUTIVE
G reater productivity, happier and healthier workers and lower
emissions are just some of the bene ts of the great work-from-home
experiment. Another hoped-for upside is increased workplace fairness.
With workers stuck at home, appearing in similar-sized, randomly arranged
rectangles on video calls and unable to suck up to bosses in the o ce,
diversity-and-inclusion types had hoped that the pandemic would be the
“great leveller”. It would nally destigmatise remote work and give all
employees a fair chance to ourish.
Whether that really will be covid-19’s legacy depends on what happens next.
Fairness—essentially, lack of favouritism—is easier to track when everyone
is working in similar circumstances. But the vast majority of knowledge
workers, and most employers, now prefer a hybrid approach. Before the
pandemic 5% of work in America was done remotely and 27% of employers
o ered exible hours; today the numbers are 40% and 88% respectively. The
hybrid workplace will be a messy concoction. Left to develop organically, it
is more likely to exacerbate existing inequalities than reduce them.
That is because workers have di erent preferences about o ce work, and

those di erences are not distributed randomly. Given the choice, women,
minorities and parents with young children will spend less time in the
o ce. If the past is anything to go by, they will pay a price for this, losing out
on pay rises and promotions because employers—often subconsciously—
value physical presence. Women and minorities are also more likely to quit
if an employer insists on full-time o ce-based work. A two-tier workforce
could emerge, with a highly rewarded “in” group and a less rewarded “out”
group.
“ A two-tier workforce could emerge, with a highly-

rewarded “in” group and a less-rewarded “out” group
To avoid that outcome, employers need to engineer the workplace. Fairness

will happen only by design. First, bosses will need to de ne whether they
want procedural fairness (same rules for everyone) or fairness in outcomes
(no group su ers as a result of a policy). Next, employers will need to be
honest with themselves about when physical presence adds genuine value.
Con ating physical proximity with productivity, and rewarding workers
accordingly, does not make sense.
Firms that promise not to penalise

remote workers must ensure that
such workers have access to the same
resources as everyone else. This also
means investing in fair processes.
Covid-19 has not wiped out biases
about people who work from home.
Workplace design that circumvents
such biases will be even more
important than before. Decisions
about pay and promotion must be
made in clear and measurable ways.
Companies that value presence

should consider setting xed “in”
days to ensure nobody gets left behind. Leaders can help reduce the
presenteeism bonus by working from home on non-mandatory days, or by
specifying that on some days, everyone works from home.
Employers who demand a full-time return to work will lose talent and
probably become less diverse. A survey by wfh Research found that 39% of
white men were a ight risk in such circumstances, but 47% of non-white
workers and 48% of women said they would resign or start looking for a new
job. Mothers were two and a half times as likely as fathers to say they would
quit.
Phoning it in
One rm’s ight risk is another’s opportunity. Now that many jobs can be
done exibly, or fully remotely, employers can recruit from a wider pool.
One study found that o ering exibility in a job advert increased
applications by as much as 30%. It should also help with retention. In
America black knowledge workers report much greater improvements in
workplace satisfaction when working remotely than do white employees.
Technology has certainly reduced the cost of working remotely, and with
that some of the stigma. But there is little evidence of the hoped-for
“Zoomocracy”, where all voices would be heard equally. One-third of
surveyed women working in tech said they were interrupted or ignored
more often in virtual meetings than in person.
In all the plans to reopen and bounce back, the need to address inequities
that widened during the pandemic is often overlooked. Men are nearly twice
as likely as women to say that working from home has positively a ected
their careers. Women are more likely to say they feel burnt out. Caregivers
have been less likely to ourish. And new starters have missed out on
crucial on-the-job training and networking. Any employer who wants to get
o to a fair start in the hybrid world would be wise to deal with recovery and
catch-up rst.
Sacha Nauta: Deputy executive editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Ensuring a fair future of work”
Keep updated
A three-way ght to shape the future

of digital nance has begun
Regulators must preserve its potential while guarding against risk
Nov 8th 2021

BY RACHANA SHANBHOGUE: FINANCE
F inance is becoming ever less the domain of sharp-suited bankers and
credit-card executives. Instead, a ragtag cast of characters is overseeing
an explosion of innovation that seeks to cut out the incumbents altogether.
From established tech rms and ntech startups on America’s west coast to
developers of various “decentralised- nance” (DeFi) applications, they are
jostling to reshape digital nance. In 2022 regulators must respond and start
setting out their stalls.
This digital revolution encompasses three broad trends. One is the e ort to
o er an ever-widening range of nancial products on a single platform.
Facebook’s new digital wallet could make inroads. Banks, payment providers
and bigger ntechs will continue to gobble up startups, with the aim of
o ering customers such a breadth of services that they will use a single
platform for everything.
The second trend is the nascent attempt to decentralise nance. Developers

are building all sorts of nancial applications on blockchains, which ensure
security and trust without the need for any intermediaries. Novel assets of
all kinds associated with the DeFi world, such as non-fungible tokens (nfts)
and other crypto-tokens, will continue to proliferate. Third, central banks,
usually bastions of conservatism, are also breaking new ground. As more
economic activity moves online and physical cash falls out of favour, many
are on the path to introducing digital currencies of their own.
There is plenty of action to come in 2022. The People’s Bank of China will
launch its e-yuan more widely; central banks from Jamaica and Japan to
Thailand and Turkey will conduct various tests and pilots. Big rich countries
will come a step closer to testing their own digital currencies. Innovation
will continue in the private sector, too. New ideas have been well funded:
venture capitalists poured nearly $60bn into nancial-technology startups
in the rst half of 2021. More than a hundred DeFi applications are in the
works.
“ Big rich countries will come a step closer to testing their

own digital currencies
Competition should also erode the fat margins of the incumbents (Visa and
Mastercard make gross margins of 65-80%). Transferring money across
borders, such as through remittances from rich countries to poor ones, is
still too expensive. And as people conduct more of their lives online, it
makes sense for nance to become not just more digital, but also better
embedded within other digital activities, such as entertainment and
shopping.
Realising this promise, however, requires warding o the threats that fast
change also brings. Take the risks to investors. A few new ntech ideas may
take o . Others will zzle out, leaving investors with losses. The hordes of
crypto-speculators could meet a similar fate. Paying $1.3m for an nft of a
picture of a rock, as someone did in August 2021, may turn out not to have
been a canny investment. For customers, the risk is that nancial platforms’
greater access to data might invite misuse of market power. Novel nancial
products could be more vulnerable to scams—and in a decentralised world it
will not be clear how and where to seek recourse.
It thus falls to regulators to preserve the potential, while guarding against

the risks. As the boundary between nancial rms and tech companies
blurs further, and the value of amassing customer data increases, protecting
privacy and security will be paramount. But that must be done without
compromising the necessary anti-money-laundering checks. This
calculation will apply as much to central banks’ digital currencies as to
private nancial services. (China’s trial of its e-currency, sadly, will o er
little guidance on the matter, given the government’s preference for control
over privacy.)
The man for the job

Trickier still will be working out how to bring DeFi into regulators’ purview.
It may be just as well that Gary Gensler, the head of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, America’s main nancial watchdog, once taught a
class on blockchain technology at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Just as their nancial promise could grow, $2.5trn-worth of crypto-assets

may start to carry risks for the wider nancial system. Yet the industry
retains an almost ideological resistance to regulation, and its lobbying clout
is growing. Advocates of digital nance have been laying out their plans for
the future of the industry. Now the time has come for regulators to explain
how they see it.
Rachana Shanbhogue: Finance editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Make or break ”
Keep updated
What deserves to be cancelled in

2022?
Cancelling things is a habit worth keeping from the pandemic era
Nov 8th 2021

BY LEO MIRANI: ASIA EDITOR, THE
ECONOMIST
H istorians searching for a catchy phrase with which to capture the
2020s thus far could do worse than “cancel culture”. Over the past two
years, pretty much everything that could be cancelled has been cancelled:
travel, weddings, conferences, sports events, elections, celebrities,
intellectuals, minor public gures, even people nobody had hitherto heard
of. The pandemic cancelled anything involving human contact in the real
world. Activists, journalists and the easily o ended cancelled everything
else.
As the worst of the pandemic recedes, at least in countries that have

vaccinated most of their eligible populations, the cancellation of events is
easing. Citizens are voting in person at polling booths. Sports stars are
competing in front of crowds. Ageing musicians are resuming their
comeback tours. The cancellation of individuals may ebb too, as people step
away from their screens and remember that esh-and-blood humans are
more complicated creatures than the caricatures of social media and
broadcast news.
All this is a shame. Like working from home, taking fewer unnecessary
ights or learning to cook, some of the habits acquired during the pandemic
are worth keeping. Cancelling things, if not people, is one of them.
The Olympic games are a case in point. The world passed up a golden
opportunity to be done with them when rising cases and slow vaccination in
Japan made the case for cancellation. But 2022 brings a fresh opportunity.
The Winter Olympics are scheduled to take place in and around Beijing in
February. Already some countries suggest boycotting the event because of
China’s treatment of Uyghurs and suppression in Hong Kong.
“ Some habits acquired during the pandemic are worth

keeping. Cancelling things is one of them
Cancellers have a wealth of other sporting options to choose from. Qatar’s

winning bid to host the men’s football World Cup in 2022 has been marred
by allegations of corruption and worker exploitation. The women’s Cricket
World Cup in 2022 is a showcase for the increasingly irrelevant one-day
format. And America’s Super Bowl has about ten minutes of ller for every
minute of play, which nobody would miss if it disappeared.
Yet fans of cancel culture need not restrict their e orts to big sporting
events. The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, where
business and political leaders y in to pat each other on the back for saving
the world, is crying out to be cancelled. And there are targets aplenty in
more quotidian environments. In the workplace, these include unpaid
internships, team-building exercises, o ce parties on Zoom, neckties
(though the pandemic may have killed them o already) and nearly all
meetings.
Other obvious examples include leaf-blowers, lift music, car alarms and in-
person parent-teacher meetings—which, having been cancelled during the
pandemic, should remain cancelled inde nitely. Online, “service fees” for
virtual bookings, requests to “tell us how we did” and cookie banners are all
long overdue for cancellation—as, ironically, are excessive cancellation fees.
In hotels, those annoying messages about towels that pretend to be about
saving the planet, but are really just about reducing cleaning costs, can go
too.
Health authorities should cancel quarantine requirements for fully

vaccinated and tested travellers. America’s libuster rule should be
cancelled, as should the irritating gap between the dates when Europe and
America adjust their clocks twice a year. Come to think of it, the whole idea
of changing clocks at all should be cancelled, in favour of permanent
daylight-savings time. On the roads, enormous suvs deserve to be cancelled,
along with those annoying motorbikes with really loud exhausts. No
irritation is too minor for a campaign of cancellation! Cancel everything!
Click here to cancel

Well, almost. Some things would be di cult to cancel. Social-media
platforms have been held responsible for, among other things, exacerbating
political polarisation, enabling the spread of damaging misinformation and
weakening the foundations of liberal democracy. Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter and YouTube should, by rights, therefore all be cancelled.
But there is a problem. These services provide the platforms upon which any
successful cancel campaign depends. To cancel them would be to cancel
cancellation itself. And that would, perhaps, be a step too far.
Leo Mirani: Asia editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “When everything is cancelled”
Keep updated
Will pre-pandemic behaviour ever

return?
Our global normalcy index suggests that some changes are here to stay
Nov 8th 2021

BY JAMES FRANSHAM: DATA
CORRESPONDENT, THE ECONOMIST
W hen the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020 no one knew for how
long life would be disrupted. At the peak of restrictions, about 3.6bn
people were subject to mandatory stay-at-home orders. Society was swift to
adapt: working and learning from home, and communicating in novel ways.
Talk shifted to when, and if at all, life would return to “normal”. The creation
of e ective vaccines has now made normalcy possible, but how much of
pre-pandemic behaviour has actually returned?
To measure what has changed The Economist has devised a “normalcy index”.
First, it measures how transport use has changed across three di erent
modes: ights, roads and public transport. Second, it measures the change
in leisure time using cinema box-o ce takings, attendances at professional
sports events and time spent outside home. Last, our index captures
commercial activity through footfall in shops and o ces.
For each of our eight measures, we compare activity with its pre-pandemic
level, averaging the changes in each of the three categories, then averaging
the grouped results for our overall index. Our global gure is the
population-weighted average of 50 countries—which together account for
75% of the world’s population and 90% of world gdp—where 100 is
equivalent to pre-pandemic behaviour.
Unsurprisingly, our index plummeted at the beginning of 2020, falling from

80 at the beginning of March 2020—restrictions in China meant that
normalcy had already declined—to just 35 by mid-April 2020. In 2021 the
index rose slowly but steadily from 60 in January to 79 by mid-October,
suggesting the world was about two-thirds back to pre-pandemic levels of
activity.
Leading the way is Denmark, one of ve countries where behaviour is within

ve points of pre-pandemic levels. America is ranked mid-table, alongside
many European countries.
For some measures, falling infections and rising injections appear to be a

necessary but not su cient condition for pre-pandemic behaviour to
return. Digging into the data explains why. Three of our measures of
behaviour— ights, cinemas and sporting attendance—have been curtailed
by government bans. Activity among our remaining ve indicators has been
a ected more by individual or organisational decisions and, since the most
severe restrictions have been lifted, they are no longer in uenced by
government actions. Globally, retail footfall is now above pre-pandemic
norms, and time spent outside the home is near normal too, as people
venture out again.
Yet working from home is now commonplace. Even if infections fall and
injections rise, our model suggests o ce occupancy will not rise much
further—and cinema attendance will reach only about 80% of its pre-
pandemic level. Some changes are here to stay.
James Fransham: Data correspondent, The Economist7
This article appeared in the Graphic detail section of the print edition of The
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Will pre-pandemic behaviour ever
return?”
Keep updated
Opposition leaders will struggle to

rein in Narendra Modi
Local elections will give a hint of whether a third term is likely
Nov 8th 2021

BY MAX RODENBECK: DELHI BUREAU
CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST, DELHI
T o be seventy-five may sound old, but in the family of nations it counts
as teenage years. India, which celebrates its 75th year of independence
on August 15th, is an indisputably ancient land, yet still a gangly youth of a
democracy. With more energy than discipline it oscillates between grace and
awkwardness, timidity and brashness. Its 1.4bn people are stumbling into
2022 with a sense of unease not unlike the mix of fear and impatience that
come with rushing headlong into adulthood.
There are good reasons for their anxiety. The past few years have been hard,
and not just because of covid-19, whose Delta variant ripped across the land
like a typhoon in spring 2021. More Indians—between 3m and 4m—died
from it than citizens of any other country. Patchy record-keeping, over-strict
criteria for attributing causes of death and politicians underplaying the
crisis mean the true toll may never be known.
Yet for Indians that emotional trauma was compounded by a pinch on their
pocketbooks far crueller than what richer countries endured. Lockdowns
closed big industries and put many smaller ones out of business. As a result
the economy remains the same size as it was in 2019, when voters returned
Narendra Modi for a second term as prime minister after he swore to double
gdp within ve years. Instead, the crisis pushed millions back into poverty,
shrank investment and depressed a rate of workforce participation that was
already the lowest in Asia and especially bad for women.
India’s economy is big, diversi ed and resilient. As the vaccination

programme at last succeeds, it is likely to return to healthy long-term
growth trends in 2022. But better-o , educated Indians worry less about gdp
and covid-19 than about the health of their democracy.
In the ceaseless cycle of local, state and national elections that keeps Indian
politicians in a perpetual dance, the bjp, the prime minister’s Hindu-
nationalist party, has learned that an easy way to win is by stirring Hindu
majority fears against the 14% Muslim minority. During his rst term Mr
Modi avoided pushing an overtly sectarian agenda. But with his majority
bolstered, what began as quiet moves to insert Hindu-nationalist ideologues
into key posts has turned into a broader, more overt e ort to transform a
multi-hued country into a more monochrome Hindu state. The
government’s brazen use of state power to intimidate critics using tax raids,
bogus lawsuits and eavesdropping has alienated not just minorities and
interest groups such as farmers, but also many of its own supporters.
But that is a very big if. Local opposition parties do hold power in many of
India’s states, but the only national opposition party, Congress, has not only
failed to forge a broad coalition to ght Mr Modi—it is itself prone to
in ghting and drift. If Congress cannot unify in the coming year, it could be
too late to stop Mr Modi gaining a third term. That would mean a
consolidation of his Hindu-state project, and a fuller subversion of
independent institutions such as the courts and the press.
As if to underline that the coming year may be fateful, Mr Modi has decreed
a deadline of August 15th for the completion of his biggest pet project: a
makeover of the British-designed administrative heart of Delhi, India’s
capital. The plans call for pushing ministries o the hill they now share with
the prime minister’s o ce, shifting the 545-seat parliament out of its iconic
circular building and into a new triangular bloc that can t an unwieldy (but
perhaps more malleable) 888 MPs, and turning the old legislature into a
Museum of Democracy. For symbolism, it is hard to beat.
Max Rodenbeck: Delhi bureau chief, The Economist, Delhi 7
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition of The World Ahead
2022 under the headline “A museum for democracy?”
Keep updated
The Taliban will discover that ruling

is harder than ghting
The people of Afghanistan are nding that out to their cost
Nov 8th 2021

BY BEN FARMER: FREELANCE
CORRESPONDENT, THE ECONOMIST,
ISLAMABAD
A fghanistan’s long-suffering population will begin 2022 entering a
new, but sadly familiar, phase of the country’s long turmoil. The
withdrawal of American and nato troops triggered the stunning collapse of
the internationally backed government, a return of the Taliban and the re-
establishment of their Islamic emirate.
The Taliban maintained ahead of their victory that they had learned the
lessons of their failed, repressive regime in the 1990s, and had changed.
Early signs suggest otherwise. The movement’s old guard has taken charge.
Women have again been kept from work, and female education is on hold. A
moral-crimes ministry has been restored. Order is again imposed by force.
The Taliban’s victory ended a war in which hundreds of people were killed
each month, but the country still faces a formidable set of problems.
Drought, the covid-19 pandemic and war had all combined to create a
humanitarian crisis long before the Taliban took over. That crisis is now
quickly worsening because the Taliban’s victory has precipitated an
economic meltdown. The new emirate has no money and no serious plans
for how to obtain any. The previous administration had three-quarters of its
budget funded by foreign aid, but that has now been frozen. The United
Nations has warned that 1m children are at risk of starvation.
“ The Taliban appear to have a total grip on Afghanistan,

but that may prove fleeting
For an international community facing both humanitarian disaster and an

unreconstructed Taliban, the choice will be to engage or isolate. Both carry
risks. Abandoning the country will cause great human su ering, large waves
of migration and the loss of any ability to steer the Taliban toward
moderation. Yet any engagement will be seized upon by the Taliban to
validate their rule and strengthen their grip on power.
At the outset of their new rule, the Taliban appear to have a total grip on the
country, but that may prove eeting. Their new administration is a
government of conquest and not suited to long-term peace. The previous
political class has been totally excluded, as have ethnic groups from outside
the Taliban’s Pushtun heartland.
Resistance to this imposition is likely to take root and grow. And while the
Taliban may not have changed, the country they are governing is very
di erent from the Afghanistan of the 1990s. Civic, social and perhaps
military resistance will make governing di cult. All this could in turn
expose rifts inside the movement itself. It took only weeks after the fall of
Kabul for reports to emerge of in ghting between moderates who wanted a
more inclusive government and hardliners who did not.
As the last American military transport plane took o from Kabul airport
and disappeared over the horizon in August, many in Washington declared
the war to be over. But for Afghans a new chapter of turbulence and hardship
may just be starting.
Ben Farmer: Freelance correspondent, The Economist, Islamabad7
2022 under the headline “A tragic, familiar tale”
Keep updated
The Philippine opposition tries to

push back against authoritarianism
They could be facing a Duterte or a Marcos in the May election
Nov 8th 2021

BY DOMINIC ZIEGLER: BANYAN
COLUMNIST, THE ECONOMIST
I n theory 2022 is the year in which the Philippines puts the Duterte era
behind it. The constitution limits the president to a single six-year term.
Though hailing from one of the country’s political dynasties, Rodrigo
Duterte ran for o ce in 2016 as the foul-mouthed defender of the common
man. He promised spending on infrastructure and prioritisation of growth;
constitutional change to devolve powers to regions from the overweening
capital, Manila; and a foreign policy that kow-towed to no great power.
Above all, he declared war on drugs, crime and corruption. “I am your last
card,” he promised voters. “I will get down and dirty just to get things done.”
Here, at least, “Duterte Harry” was true to his word. Yet in his war on drugs,
road-tested during his two decades as mayor of Davao, more than 20,000
Filipinos were gunned down by hitmen, often o -duty cops. Many victims
were just small-time drug dealers, or children and other innocents.
Elsewhere, constitutional change got nowhere. The president’s kow-towing

to Xi Jinping undermined the Philippines’ defence of maritime claims in the
South China Sea, yet little of the hoped-for Chinese investment appeared.
The administration bungled its handling of the pandemic, imposing heavy-
handed lockdowns and failing to secure enough vaccines.
“ Division opens the field to a candidate from the

authoritarian camp
Mr Duterte’s drug’s war, his hounding of his enemies and his stacking of the
courts have undermined institutions more than at any time since the
dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, whose reputation Mr Duterte has strived
to resurrect. He and his closest advisers are vulnerable to prosecution once
out of o ce—a powerful incentive to continue the Duterte dynasty. Mr
Duterte’s daughter, Sara, who took over as mayor of Davao, seemed to be the
ruling party’s perfect solution for the presidential election in May. She has
been far and away the most popular potential candidate.
Meanwhile, the self-appointed elites who represent the “yellow”, ie, liberal,
strain in Philippine politics, cannot decide who to throw their support
behind. An epitome of the establishment, the current vice-president, Leni
Robredo, has long been belittled by Mr Duterte (president and vice-
president are voted separately into o ce). Declaring for the presidency, Ms
Robredo, a lawyer championing the rights of women and the downtrodden,
adopted the colour pink in emulation of the robes of countless statues of the
Virgin Mary. Her pink wave seems intended to break Mr Duterte’s bond with
the country.
Yet Ms Robredo lacks killer political instincts. One candidate who does not
is the 46-year-old mayor of Manila, Isko Moreno. Unusually for a
presidential hopeful, he comes not from the establishment or from showbiz
but from the slums. Tough and edgy, as Karim Raslan, a commentator on
South-East Asia, describes him, he has landed blows on the president’s
pandemic competence and on the greed of his henchmen. Until Ms Robredo
declared, he thought he had her support and, feeling betrayed, he lashed
out. That allowed the yellow camp’s friends in the press to tar Mr Moreno
with Mr Duterte’s brush.
Other candidates vying for the pro-democratic mantle include Manny

Pacquiao, a former boxing champion and Duterte ally, and Pan lo “Ping”
Lacson, a bloodless senator. Division opens the eld to a candidate from the
authoritarian camp. Sara Duterte is more likely to throw her weight behind
“Bongbong” Marcos, son of the former kleptocrat, than she is to run herself.
He is a more courteous version of Mr Duterte, and pro ts from the fact that
many younger Filipinos know little of the repression of the Marcos era.
Unless the yellow camp coalesces around a strong candidate, especially Mr
Moreno, early in the year, Bongbong could bounce the Philippines back to
the past.
Dominic Ziegler: Banyan columnist, The Economist7
2022 under the headline “Come together”
Keep updated
Myanmar will tip further into

violence and misery
Ordinary people will bear the brunt
Nov 8th 2021

BY CHARLIE MCCANN: SOUTH-EAST ASIA
SINGAPORE
I n a parallel universe, Aung San Suu Kyi would now be well into her
second term in o ce as Myanmar’s state counsellor (the country’s de
facto leader), overseeing the inoculation of the public against covid-19 and
trying to end the many insurgencies racking the country. In reality she will
spend 2022 under house arrest, detained for alleged crimes trumped up by
the junta that seized power in February 2021.
Min Aung Hlaing, the senior general who is the probable architect of the
coup, will be on the campaign trail ahead of the election he has called for
2023. The trail will be short. He will not stray far from Naypyidaw, a giant
bunker masquerading as a capital city, for fear of being attacked. The
turmoil unleashed by the coup will engulf most of the country. Angry
protesters-turned-guerrillas will plant bombs and assassinate soldiers and
junta o cials. Emboldened ethnic-minority militias, who have long waged
wars of independence, will press their advantage against stretched armed
forces. Some will coordinate their attacks against the army with the
hundreds of militias that have sprung up since the coup. The country will
tip into civil war.
General Min Aung Hlaing has staked his legitimacy in part on his
stewardship of the economy. But his speechwriters will not nd much
material to work with in the economic data. The cabinet of the so-called
caretaker government is stu ed not with quali ed technocrats but with men
in boots. They will try to replenish the government’s depleted co ers by
selling o Myanmar’s timber, jade and rare metals, lining their own pockets
in the process. The regime will hand out contracts to companies owned by
the armed forces, and do little to stem investor ight. Real gdp will not
return to its pre-pandemic level until 2026. The kyat will continue its slide
against the dollar, and prices will rise. Many Burmese will nd themselves
poorer and hungrier.
“ Many Burmese will find themselves poorer and hungrier
They will nd some measure of hope in the National Unity Government.

Made up of deposed and exiled lawmakers, including those of Ms Suu Kyi’s
National League for Democracy, it promises to restore democratic rule and
bring the army to heel. It is wildly popular with the public and has been
recognised by the eu parliament and French Senate as Myanmar’s legitimate
government. With the help of hundreds of civil servants who have resigned
since the coup, the shadow government is building a parallel state, and
trying to distribute humanitarian aid to the 200,000 Burmese who have
been uprooted from their homes since the coup. No wonder, then, that it
will not appear on the ballot.
2022 under the headline “The struggle for Myanmar’s soul”
Keep updated
Creating “new” adults will not slow

Japan’s ageing
Nearly 30% of the population is 65 or older
Nov 8th 2021

BY NOAH SNEIDER: TOKYO BUREAU
CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST, TOKYO
A s japan’s population continues to get older, its youngest adults will be
younger in 2022. The legal age of majority will drop from 20 to 18 years
old, starting in April, in accordance with an amendment to the civil code
passed in 2018. This will, in e ect, create roughly 2m “new” adults
overnight. It is the rst such change since the “adult” threshold was set in
1876, and follows a reduction in the voting age from 20 to 18 in 2016.
These new adults will be able to engage in various grown-up activities

without their parents’ consent, from applying for credit cards and bank
loans to signing apartment leases and mobile-phone contracts. Perhaps
most importantly, 18-year-olds will be able to marry without mum and dad
signing o . (Currently, women can marry from 16 and men from 18, but only
with parental approval.) To the chagrin of many teenagers, however, they
will still not be allowed to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco legally. For that
the threshold will remain 20.
Japan’s government hopes the change

will encourage young people to
become more active in society—and
perhaps, with their new lawfully
wedded partners, in the bedroom too.
(Just 2% of Japanese children are
born out of wedlock.) But this cohort
of new adults will make little material
di erence to the country’s greying
demographics for now.
Japan is already the world’s oldest

country: more than 29% of the
population is 65 or older (in Italy, the
second-oldest nation, the gure
stands at 23%; in America it is 17%, in
Britain 19%). That is thanks in large
part to ageing baby-boomers—a
cohort of some 8m born between 1947
and 1949. Those boomers will start
turning 75 over the coming year.
“ More than 29% of Japan’s population is 65 or older
Many people in Japan remain active in later life. Nearly half of all 65- to 69-
year-olds and one- third of 70- to 74-year-olds are still employed. Japan’s
Gerontological Society has even called for a reclassi cation, suggesting that
those aged 65-74 should be called “pre-old”. But beyond 75, the picture
changes considerably. Just 10% of such “late-stage elderly” have jobs.
Medical and long-term care costs increase rapidly, an especially worrying
prospect for a country that already spends 11% of gdp on health care.
Japan’s government has been making gradual reforms in order to trim costs.
Starting in October 2022, those aged 75 years and older with an annual
income of at least ¥2m ($18,000) will have to pay 20% of their medical
expenses out of their own pocket—twice the current amount. More
thorough changes to recalibrate the social-security system for the new
“super-aged” society are likely to follow. The government is also trying to
boost the country’s agging birth rate: starting in April 2022, public health
insurance will cover fertility treatment.
For many young Japanese, the pandemic has only heightened the
uncertainties that dissuade them from having more children. Adulthood, as
the new cohort will soon nd out, is full of challenges.
Noah Sneider: Tokyo bureau chief, The Economist, Tokyo7
2022 under the headline “Getting on”
Keep updated
The tourist map of South-East Asia

will look very di erent in 2022
The number of “sandbox” destinations will grow
Nov 8th 2021

BY LEO MIRANI: ASIA EDITOR, THE
ECONOMIST
T he itinerary suggested before the pandemic by Lonely Planet, a
publisher of guide books, for travellers wishing to see the “best of
South-East Asia” was an eight-week adventure through the region’s
megacities, temple towns, jungle hideaways and island retreats. A putative
version for 2022, especially for those not lucky enough to be residents of
“low-risk countries”, might feature no more than a few islands and the odd
big city, for that is all many travellers will be able to visit.
In 2019, the most recent normal year for travel, tourism supported more
than 42m jobs in South-East Asia, or 13% of total employment, and
contributed 12% of gdp. The un reckons regional gdp may have declined by
as much as 8.4% in 2020 as a result of reduced tourism. Some countries
have been particularly hard-hit. Tourism makes up 20% of Thailand’s gdp,
mostly from international travellers. It received 83% less travellers in 2020
than in 2019.
In 2021, fearing that many businesses that scraped through the pandemic’s
rst year would collapse in the second, Thailand started to experiment with
the concept of a “sandbox”. The idea is simple: allow fully vaccinated
tourists to frolic quarantine-free on a paradise island where most of the
residents are also double-jabbed. After 14 disease-free days on the island,
visitors are then allowed to travel to other parts of the country if they want
to.
Phuket welcomed the rst foreign tourists under the scheme on July 1st. A
week later, the rst foreigner tested positive for covid-19. But the Thai
government persevered even as the rest of the country was hit by an
enormous wave caused by the Delta variant. By late 2021 it had opened up
several more places, including Bangkok, for travellers to visit without
quarantine.
“ Other countries will follow Thailand’s lead and allow

entry to “sandbox” destinations
Barring another new variant, expect these and other corners of the region to
welcome visitors again in 2022. It is not necessarily the best of South-East
Asia but, after the past two years, it is not a bad start.
Leo Mirani: Asia editor, The Economist7
2022 under the headline “The sandbox archipelago”
Keep updated
Railways will soon reach almost

every corner of India
But the country’s rail system remains a long way behind China’s
Nov 8th 2021

BY TOM EASTON: MUMBAI BUREAU CHIEF,
THE ECONOMIST
I n 1853 a British-built steam engine with 14 small carriages left a
temporary station near the tip of the Bombay peninsula on India’s west
coast and proceeded north to the intersection with the mainland at Thane, a
journey of 34km (21 miles) that could take several days by oxcart. Within just
a few years, the new railway would provide the cotton to feed the growth of a
dynamic textile industry. But despite bene ts that would soon seem
obvious, the challenges of erecting the initial line were so severe that it is a
wonder it was ever built. As many as 10,000 inexperienced workers
struggled with novel techniques in the midst of brutal heat and monsoon
oods to create a stable foundation in swamps full of poisonous snakes.
It was the start of what would, over the following decades, become a
national rail system. During 2022 that system will be connected to some of
India’s most remote areas, almost completing the connection of every state.
The nal touches will be put to stations at Imphal, the capital of Manipur,
and Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, both cities tucked away in north-east
India between Bangladesh and Myanmar. In December 2022 the world’s
highest railway bridge, rising 360 metres above the Chenab river, will open,
enabling rail transit into the Kashmir valley for the rst time.
“ Over the past decade China has laid track equivalent to

90% of India’s system
That will allow trains to run from Kanyakumari Station, located within
walking distance of the beach at India’s southern tip, to the country’s
extreme north. Once the current spate of projects is completed, only two of
India’s 28 states will remain unconnected to the train network: tiny Sikkim,
in part because of its particularly di cult terrain, and tiny Meghalaya, in
part because of lingering political resistance.
The Indian rail system’s growth has never been smooth. Momentum
accelerated in the rst half of the 20th century, with the length of track
quadrupling to some 59,000km. After independence, the pace slowed and
the total is now just shy of 100,000km. Connectivity was hindered by states’
autonomy, which resulted in tracks of incompatible gauges, whose only
shared characteristic was obsolete steam power. Once a standard gauge was
adopted, usage exploded. The number of tickets sold annually rose from
1.3bn in 1950 to 8.4bn in 2018 and freight tonnage hauled from 73m to 1.2bn.
Other improvements are proceeding slowly. (Over the past decade China has
laid track equivalent to 90% of India’s system, much of it high-speed lines.)
Several factors explain India’s slowness. Acquiring land is hard. The
country’s topography—with wide rivers, high mountains and harsh weather
—is unkind to surface transport. Some 200 rail tunnels are currently being
bored, and the Chenab bridge is designed to withstand winds of 266kph. All
this increases costs, in a poor country with urgent competing needs.
Philosophical opposition looms as well. In his book “Hind Swaraj” (“India

Home Rule”), Mahatma Gandhi saw the railways as perpetuating the British
Raj and providing services that corroded the atavistic, autarkic village
culture he championed. Railways enabled the spread of plague and
deepened famines by facilitating the export of grains, he claimed. “Good
travels at a snail’s pace,” Gandhi famously wrote. “It can, therefore, have
little to do with the railways.”
Some Gandhian sentiment remains. It may explain the lack of a connection

with Meghalaya. But other ideas are gaining force. The original Nehruvian
idea of India as an independent nation now requires strengthening the
logistical sinews of the state, says Devesh Kapur of Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore. That means an emphasis on connectivity through
roads, broadband, water pipelines and especially railways.
Wide support now exists for this approach. Attacks on railways, not
uncommon in the past, have ceased. Gandhi’s reasoning still carries some
weight, but the slow process of construction has given Indians time to move
beyond his conclusions and embrace the advantages of rail. Despite the
costs, many realise that a diverse nation, with many constituencies that are
often at odds, is healthier when better connected.
Tom Easton: Mumbai bureau chief, The Economist7
2022 under the headline “Slow train coming”
Keep updated
Ramachandra Guha on the growth of

the cult of Modi
The Indian writer says the BJP will continue to intimidate minorities
Nov 8th 2021

BY RAMACHANDRA GUHA: HISTORIAN
AND BIOGRAPHER
M ine is a land of myths and heroes. The worship of gods, goddesses,
saints and warriors has been a central feature of Indian culture down
the ages. That such hero-worship may be antithetical to democratic practice
was presciently recognised by B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), a scholar and
social reformer who oversaw the drafting of the Indian Constitution. In a
speech in November 1949, he observed that “in politics, Bhakti or hero-
worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.” Invoking
John Stuart Mill, Ambedkar warned his compatriots not to “lay their liberties
at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable
him to subvert their institutions”.
Indians have ignored Ambedkar’s warnings twice. First, in the 1970s when,
after a military victory over Pakistan, we allowed a cult to be constructed
around the prime minister, Indira Gandhi. We nodded in assent as the
president of her Congress party proclaimed “India is Indira, and Indira is
India.” When a popular movement against her misrule began to manifest
itself, she imposed a state of emergency, suppressed the press, jailed
opposition MPs, and had her portraits plastered across the land. Some
Indians took to calling the public broadcaster “All Indira Radio”.
Then and now

Her dictatorship lasted less than two years. In the seven years that Narendra
Modi has been prime minister of India, he has not formally proclaimed a
state of emergency—but then perhaps he has not needed to. For he has
ruthlessly used the instruments of state power to undermine the
functioning of democratic institutions. He has tamed the media (India is
currently ranked 142nd on the World Press Freedom Index), set the tax
authorities on his political opponents and jailed dozens of human-rights
activists. He has also sought, with some success, to bring under his control
previously independent institutions such as the army, the central bank, the
election commission and the higher judiciary.
Even as he hollows out Indian democracy, Mr Modi works assiduously to

construct a cult of personality around himself. In February a sports arena,
previously named after Sardar Patel, a great hero of our freedom struggle,
was renamed the Narendra Modi Stadium and inaugurated by the president
and the home minister. By government at, covid-19 vaccination certi cates
all carry Mr Modi’s picture, to the embarrassment of many Indians and the
mirth and horror of immigration o cials elsewhere.
“ Mr Modi has undone much of the economic and social

progress made under his predecessors
Personality cults have historically been the hallmarks of totalitarian

regimes. On the left, consider the cults of Stalin, Mao and Castro; on the
right, the cults of Hitler, Mussolini and Peron. In this case, however, a
personality cult is being created in the world’s largest democracy. Indeed,
given how populous India is, and the resources being expended in its
making, the cult of Narendra Modi may be the greatest ever known to
humankind.
History suggests that personality cults work out badly for countries that
enable them. China, Germany, Italy and Russia all su ered grievously after
letting one man presume to represent the nation’s collective past, present
and future. India is now doing the same. Mr Modi has undone much of the
economic and social progress that was made under his predecessors. Even
before the pandemic, growth rates had begun to fall. Poverty and inequality
have both risen alarmingly, with India ranking 101st out of 107 countries in
the annual Global Hunger Index, and 140th out of 156 in terms of the gender
gap. It has become an environmental basket case, ranking 120th out of 122
countries on water quality, and 177th out of 180 for overall environmental
performance.
More insidiously, the cult of Modi has been accompanied by a deepening

majoritarianism, as the ruling party attacks and intimidates religious
minorities in its bid to create a theocratic Hindu state. The prime minister
himself seeks to clothe himself in religious imagery, having himself
photographed meditating in a cave one moment and opening a temple the
next. Growing his hair and beard long, he wants his citizen-subjects to see
him as a unique combination of a seer, a guru and a king. Ambedkar would
have been appalled.
Ramachandra Guha: historian and biographer 7
2022 under the headline “Beware the cult of Modi”
Keep updated
China hopes to aunt the merits of

its political system over America’s
The Communist Party congress will contrast with America’s mid-term elections
Nov 8th 2021

BY DAVID RENNIE: BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF
AND CHAGUAN COLUMNIST, THE
ECONOMIST
I f all goes to plan for China’s Communist Party, 2022 will o er a study in
contrasts that humiliates America. China’s leaders abhor free elections
but they can read opinion polls. They see headlines predicting a drubbing
for the Democratic Party in America’s mid-term congressional elections in
November, condemning the country to the uncertainties of divided
government, if not outright gridlock. Should those polls prove accurate,
China’s propaganda machine will relish a fresh chance to declare that China
enjoys order and prosperity thanks to one-party rule, while American-style
democracy brings only chaos, dysfunction and decline.
In contrast, the year in Beijing will be dominated by the 20th party congress,
a tightly controlled display of power staged amid the marble columns, red
carpets and blazing chandeliers of the Great Hall of the People. That
gathering, likely to be held in the autumn, will mark Xi Jinping’s rst decade
as China’s supreme leader. It may also suggest how much longer Mr Xi
intends to stay in o ce: for ve more years, or another ten, or (a less likely
scenario) that he prefers to head into some form of semi-retirement, to rule
from behind the scenes. Remarkably, it is possible that Mr Xi’s future plans
will become visible only at the end of the congress, when he (or just possibly
an unexpected successor as party chief) leads the new Politburo Standing
Committee onto a carpeted dais in order of rank.
Should Mr Xi wish to signal that he will step down after another ve years,
he will need to be followed onstage by one or two plausible successors.
There are, for now, no obvious candidates with the right combination of
experience, age and close ties to Mr Xi. He may feel bound to remain in
charge until at least the congress of 2032, when he will be 79 years old. That
version of events will be signalled if Mr Xi is trailed onstage in November by
a line of unthreatening men in dark suits: long-standing loyalists or fast-
rising protégés who will be either too old or too young and inexperienced to
succeed their current boss at the party congress of 2027.
Party congresses are held every ve years. The meetings have been used in
modern times to stage orderly transfers of power between generations of
leaders. Because such high-level moves are, by custom, signalled ve years
ahead of time, Mr Xi has already broken with recent precedent by declining
to anoint a successor at the party congress of 2017. That refusal to present an
heir challenged a consensus established after the death of Mao Zedong that
no single leader should amass too much power or stay too long in o ce.
In a further assault on those norms, Mr Xi had China’s constitution

amended in 2018 to abolish term limits for the post of president—one of
three powerful o ces that he holds, alongside the far more important ones
of party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission,
and the only one, until then, bound by a two-term constraint. Mr Xi’s
supporters say he must stay in o ce as long as he sees t to push through
vital reforms. His critics, a muted and fearful bunch in today’s China, see a
dangerous weakening of institutions needed to prevent one-man rule.
At the same time, o cials in Beijing see threats at every turn. They are sure
that America and its allies are bent on containing China. They are impatient
with any criticism by foreigners, and quick to argue that Western
governments chide China only to distract from their own failures. The mood
in Beijing is a strange mix of con dence, hubris and paranoia. This
strengthens Mr Xi. Describing the current world order, he likes to talk about
“changes not seen in 100 years”. In such a moment, the Communist Party is
betting that continuity at the top is the safest course. The gulf between
America and China has been growing for some time. It will yawn shockingly
wider in November.
David Rennie: Beijing bureau chief and Chaguan columnist, The Economist7
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition of The World Ahead
2022 under the headline “The crowning of Emperor Xi”
Keep updated
China avoids Olympic protests by

banning foreign spectators
It is di cult to boycott something you are not allowed to attend
Nov 8th 2021

BY GADY EPSTEIN: CHINA AFFAIRS
F or a time it was not clear who would attend the Winter Olympics that
will be held in and around Beijing in February 2022. Reports of crimes
against humanity being committed against Uyghurs—including mass
internment, forced labour, separation of families and forced sterilisation—
had prompted calls to cancel or move the games. Activists lobbied corporate
sponsors to withdraw their support. Human-rights groups branded it the
“genocide Olympics”. Activists and elected o cials around the world talked
about boycotting the games.
But it is di cult to boycott something you are not allowed to attend. In

September 2021 organisers said they would not be permitting any spectators
from outside China, as the games would operate in a covid-19 “bubble”
stricter than the one imposed in Tokyo for the Summer Olympics. The ban
does not apply to world leaders, who are invited by the host country, nor to
accredited foreign media, of whom there will be plenty. But in e ect the
Beijing games will be a domestic—and domesticated—a air.
The “closed-loop management system” for the Olympics may help

authorities in Beijing avert the sort of propaganda nightmare that activists
had hoped to create. Under the contract the host country agrees with the
International Olympics Committee ioc, the environment of the games is
meant to be free and open. Journalists can operate freely with unfettered
access to the internet; there can be no discrimination; and there is a right to
assemble freely and protest. But those promises mean little.
“ It is difficult to boycott something you are not allowed to

attend
The ioc cannot stop China from preventing Uyghurs getting to the games
where they would magically experience o cial non-discrimination. Foreign
media will focus some attention on human rights, but China is unlikely to
give visas to Western reporters, other than those in the bubble covering the
sports.
Some world leaders, including President Joe Biden, are expected to send a
message by not attending. But China’s strict pandemic rules will remove
some of the sting. That leaves the most important participants, the athletes
themselves, with the best chance of making an impression. Do not be
surprised when some brave gold-medal winner risks the Communist Party’s
wrath by making a symbolic gesture of protest from the podium.
Gady Epstein: China a airs editor, The Economist7
2022 under the headline “Frozen”
Keep updated
China is unlikely to re-open its

borders in 2022
It is the last large country with a zero-covid policy
Nov 8th 2021

BY SUE-LIN WONG: CORRESPONDENT,
THE ECONOMIST
I n june 2021 one of China’s most respected scientists tentatively
suggested that the country might want to begin relaxing its zero-covid
policy in 2022. Zhang Wenhong, who has been likened to Anthony Fauci,
President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, for his sober, science-based
analysis, was pilloried online. O cial media published a story by a former
health minister (whose background is in nance) expressing
“astonishment” at the idea of easing controls. The Communist Party has
made the goal of eliminating covid-19 infections a top priority. China is the
last large country in the world with a zero-covid policy.
A single case can lead to city-wide testing and lockdown. Local o cials have
been red over a few cases in their districts. Most foreigners have been kept
out, and anyone who is able to get into the country must spend at least 14
days in strict hotel quarantine.
Many people in China like being covid-free. This makes it hard for the party
to reopen borders. The Delta variant’s rampage through other countries has
con rmed leaders’ belief that moving towards a “covid tolerant” society
would be disastrous. The domestic propaganda machinery has spent
months boasting of the superiority of China’s authoritarian system in
suppressing the virus.
“ China is the last large country in the world with a zero-

covid policy
Though a few of the country’s top scientists have cautiously questioned how
long China’s zero-covid policies may last, there are no signs the government
is moving away from its position.
Strict quarantine requirements may therefore persist for much, if not all, of
2022. Chinese airlines have said they expect tight restrictions on
international ights to extend for the rst half of the year. The party has
several important events it does not want disrupted by covid-19 outbreaks.
The Winter Olympics start in and around Beijing in February, followed by
the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament. The ve-yearly
party congress in late 2022 is expected to con rm Xi Jinping as the country’s
leader for at least another ve years. The party may even choose to wait until
after the annual parliamentary meeting in March 2023 to relax border
controls, suggests Huang Yanzhong of the Council for Foreign Relations, an
American think-tank.
Vaccine politics bring further complications. China wants 80% of its

population vaccinated by the end of 2021. But no foreign vaccines have been
approved and its home-grown ones, including Sinopharm and Sinovac, are
not very e ective against Delta. Even so, these vaccines still prevent severe
cases of covid-19 which, in theory, reduces pressure on the health-care
system. But in China, even people su ering from mild symptoms are
hospitalised. As a result, opening up could pose challenges to hospitals,
especially in rural areas. Chinese companies are developing new vaccines
based on mrna technology, but no evidence has yet been released about
their e cacy.
Hong Kong may prove to be a bellwether. The city’s government is desperate

to open its border with mainland China. It has had only a few new cases in
recent months. But the mainland authorities have refused. If they change
their mind, that will be a sign that the party is nally ready to abandon its
zero-covid policy.
Sue-Lin Wong: Correspondent, The Economist 7
2022 under the headline “Closed, inde nitely”
Keep updated
Xi Jinping’s crackdown on Chinese

tech rms will continue
By rewriting the rules, the president is resetting an entire industry
Nov 8th 2021

BY DON WEINLAND: CHINA BUSINESS
AND FINANCE EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST,
HONG KONG
A s the chinese government stepped up its erce attack against the
country’s technology companies in the spring and summer of 2021,
business leaders, analysts and investors found themselves repeatedly
asking: when will it stop? More than $1trn was wiped o the collective
market capitalisation of some of the world’s largest internet groups, such as
Tencent, a gaming and social-media giant, and Alibaba, China’s e-commerce
powerhouse. Entire business models—online tutoring, for example—were
laid waste. Investors needed to hear that an end was in sight. But on August
8th the Communist Party issued a ve-year blueprint aimed at reshaping
China’s tech industry—con rming to even the most optimistic industry
watchers that the abrasive changes would continue well into 2022.
As the new year dawns, vast swathes of China’s economy have been hit by
the regulatory crackdown. Xi Jinping, China’s president, is rewriting the
rules for how the economy works, and how the data that companies collect
is treated. That has meant striking down some of the country’s most
prominent tycoons, such as Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and forcing
other groups, such as DiDi Global, a ride-hailing giant, into submission. The
speed of the reforms means that companies in elds from ntech-lending
and e-commerce to self-driving cars, social media and video-gaming must
rethink how they make money and handle data.
“ China’s president is rewriting the rules for how the

economy works
All of this will lead to two big changes in 2022. The rst will be a decline in
the pro tability of China’s tech sector. The country’s internet and e-
commerce giants have been a goldmine for investors for years. That will
slow down as some of the reforms implemented in 2021 are re ected in
earnings in 2022. But not all sectors are being treated equally. At one
extreme, some providers of online after-school tutoring have been forced to
convert into non-pro t organisations. Video-gaming is also being
pummelled. In September regulators told gaming companies, including
Tencent, that they should stop focusing on pro ts and instead concentrate
on reducing adolescents’ addiction to playing. The short-video industry,
dominated by companies such as ByteDance, Kuaishou and Bilibili, may
receive similar treatment. Expect poor returns from rms in these areas in
2022.
Meanwhile, China’s biggest e-

commerce groups—Alibaba,
Pinduoduo and jd.com—are being
forced to confront many of the
monopolistic practices that bolstered
their earnings in the past. Meituan, a
super-app focused on food delivery,
has been ordered to provide better
support to its armies of drivers. Such
changes will erode companies’ pro ts
and clobber their share prices.
Tencent’s price-to-earnings ratio is
expected to fall from a multiple of about 32 in 2020 to 24 in 2022, according
to Bernstein, a brokerage.
The second shift will be in how Chinese tech groups raise capital. Neither
Chinese nor American regulators want Chinese companies to go public in
New York. Even initial public o erings in Hong Kong have taken on a new
level of risk. Chinese regulators have railed against the “disorderly
expansion of capital” by tech rms. A meeting of a key decision-making
body on August 30th noted that the initial crackdown had shown signs of
success. American investors’ appetite for Chinese tech companies with
heady valuations seems unlikely to recover in 2022. But expect several big
rms to go public in Hong Kong, although at lower valuations.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley, a bank, call this a “reset” of an entire industry.

As Chinese tech rms adjust to the reality of tighter government control,
their value to investors will inevitably be lower.
Don Weinland: China business and nance editor, The Economist, Hong Kong7
2022 under the headline “From boom to techlash”
Keep updated
Ma Jun on co-operation over climate

change
The environmentalist says China and the West can work together
Nov 8th 2021

BY MA JUN: FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE
INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC & ENVIRONMENTAL
AFFAIRS (IPE), BEIJING
I n august 2021 the un’s secretary-general called the sixth assessment
report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a “code red
for humanity”. To avoid catastrophic climate change globally, 120 countries
have joined the race to zero emissions, including China, which is now the
largest greenhouse-gas emitter in the world. It is drafting national carbon-
peak and carbon-neutrality guidelines, timetables and roadmaps for its
various regions and industries.
Hopes were high that 2022 would thus become the real starting point in
turning climate ambitions into action around the world. But an unexpected
power crunch has recently cast a shadow over the prospect for emission
reductions in the near term. Natural-gas and coal prices have increased
dramatically in the past few months, a clear sign that demand for fossil fuels
is roaring back. China—still the factory of the world—is experiencing its
worst power shortages in a decade, with widespread electricity rationing
and even unannounced outages in extreme cases.
Global climate ambitions are being put to a serious test. Britain has restarted
coal- red power stations and America is increasing oil output. For its part,
China is making arrangements to gear up coal production and increase coal
and natural-gas imports. Such moves are expected to continue into 2022. All
this has a profound negative impact on the global climate agenda, which
requires dramatic and immediate cuts in fossil-fuel use.
Fighting emissions using data

With all eyes on cop26 , the un climate change conference, to deliver real
progress on climate action, the time has come for co-ordinated action. At
ipe we believe the ght against climate change can draw on the experience
of dealing with local pollution. As the developer of the Blue Map pollution
database, we have seen how environmental-information transparency can
inform and empower stakeholders to take action to improve air and water
quality, reducing China’s air pollution by more than half in just eight years.
That is roughly the timeframe in which the world must cut carbon
emissions by half in order to limit warming to 1.5°C.
In 2022, we are expanding the same approach to climate change, by creating

the Blue Map for Zero Carbon, a greenhouse-gas database similar to our
pollution database, for di erent regions and industries. We are also making
emissions data easy to access and understand through visualisation and
mapping, and developing a regional climate-action index, with the Chinese
Academy of Environmental Science, to track and assess local climate
ambitions, performance and decarbonisation trends in China’s major
provinces and cities. All this will make it easier to identify hotspots of
energy use and carbon emissions, and thus identify the best opportunities
for energy conservation and emissions reduction around the country.
One of the clear gaps we have identi ed is the lack of industry capacity
when it comes to measuring, reporting and verifying emissions.
Accordingly, along with our partners, we have launched a digital-accounting
platform to help companies better track, measure and reduce them. Some
big brands have already embraced these tools to improve their suppliers’
accounting and reporting. One of the largest Chinese state-owned banks is
using the tool on a pilot basis to measure the carbon footprints of would-be
borrowers, in order to adhere to the government’s green- nance policy.
Despite the hardship the world faces from the global pandemic and power
shortages, in 2022 and beyond we hope to see more companies, banks and
investors tapping into our Blue Map system, which is already tracking
environmental performance of 10m companies, to make green choices in
their sourcing and investment practices. There is no time to lose. Rarely in
history has a decade been so critical to the future of humanity.
Ma Jun: founding director of the Institute of Public & Environmental A airs

(IPE), Beijing 7
2022 under the headline “Climate change demands global co-operation”
Keep updated
The Biden presidency is likely to be

heading towards gridlock
The president may resort to other ways to enable change
Nov 8th 2021

BY IDREES KAHLOON: WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON, DC
I t is a harsh reality that 2022 is likely to be the last serviceable year of the
Biden administration. Gridlock is endemic to the American system. It
originates in a constitutional design premised on consensus, which seems
increasingly unattainable in an era of hyperpolarisation, an e ective
supermajority requirement in the Senate and razor-thin majorities. Even
under perfect conditions, when the White House and both chambers of
Congress are under one party’s uni ed control, serious legislating is
endishly di cult. It is not a coincidence that both Barack Obama and
Donald Trump passed the most important laws of their administrations—a
health-care reform and a large tax cut, respectively—in the rst two years of
their terms. Both su ered serious losses in the mid-term elections, losing
control of one chamber, and with it the ability to legislate as they had hoped.
President Joe Biden seems set to follow this unsatisfactory path. Although
he managed to pass a successful stimulus bill at the start of his
administration, his signature proposal—enormous expenditure on climate-
change mitigation and European-style safety-net programmes, paid for by
signi cantly higher taxes on the wealthy, and collectively known as “Build
Back Better”—got stuck in legislative quicksand for much of 2021. As we
went to press, warring factions of his Democratic Party were struggling to
strike a deal. Something may yet pass, though the eventual compromise
seemed likely to be a fraction of the $4trn in spending Mr Biden had hoped
for. Yet even a partial accomplishment may look sizeable compared with
what will come next.
Election losses augur a lost nal two years of Mr Biden’s term, at least
legislatively speaking. Democrats have ve seats to spare in the House of
Representatives; they have zero seats to spare in the Senate. Only twice since
1938 has an incumbent president managed to see his party’s position in the
House expand—and on both occasions the fortunate president also
commanded an approval rating above 60%. Unfortunately for Mr Biden, his
rating is a comparatively measly 44%. Based on historical associations, that
is in line with a loss of 33 seats—spelling a loss of control in the House.
Things look rosier for Democrats in the Senate, where only one-third of
seats are contested every two years, and the is weaker. But the American
system requires the consent of both chambers, and Republican support
would not be forthcoming for any of the priorities that Democrats have
campaigned on.
Optimists argue that Democrats could still accomplish much before

November 2022—even in the face of poor electoral prospects. Perhaps. But if
Mr Biden’s agenda-setting legislation is still being argued over, that will sap
signi cant lawmaking energy. The prospect of looming elections will drain
the rest. The problem with feeble majorities is that almost any intramural
dissent is su cient to scupper any proposal. Even if near-unanimous
consent is achieved among sitting Democrats, the Senate’s byzantine rules,
allowing the libustering of legislation unless 60 senators are rounded up
to break it, dooms many kinds of legislation. While the libuster remains in
place, there can be no serious revision of voting-rights rules, no increase of
the minimum wage and no reform of the immigration system—to name just
a few. Any proposals that can swerve the libuster are unlikely to be very
signi cant.
One of the perks of the modern imperial presidency is that policymaking

need not depend on the co-operation of a hopelessly fractious Congress—
even though that method is preferable. Like his predecessors who were
stymied after their rst two years in o ce, Mr Biden may nd his attention
drawn to the issuance of expansive regulation through administrative
agencies (especially relating to the environment), or the largely unilateral
powers of pronouncing trade restrictions.
Idrees Kahloon: Washington correspondent, The Economist, Washington, DC7
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition of The
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “System failure”
Keep updated
Why Republicans are likely to win

back Congress
Polls show voters are ideologically much further apart than ever
Nov 8th 2021

BY G. ELLIOTT MORRIS: DATA JOURNALIST,
THE ECONOMIST, WASHINGTON, DC
T here are few stronger patterns in American politics than the tendency
for the ruling party to lose ground in the rst mid-term elections after
taking the White House. In 2018 such a pattern produced a “blue wave” of
backlash to Donald Trump’s presidency, and Democrats wrestled 40 seats
from the Republicans. In 2022 Joe Biden is likely to oversee a similarly
disappointing performance for his party. Such is the mid-term curse.
Several indicators point in this direction. The rst is history. Between 1934
and 2018, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of
California Santa Barbara, the party controlling the White House lost an
average of 28 seats in the House of Representatives. They lost seats in all but
three of the last 22 mid-term cycles, that is 86% of the time. The pattern is
weaker in the Senate, where the ruling party lost an average of four seats
since 1934. It lost seats in the Senate in 68% of mid-terms.
Next, there’s polling. The Economist’s

analysis of this cycle’s “generic ballot”
polls, which ask Americans who they
are going to vote for in their
congressional district every other
November, puts support for the
Democrats at 51.7% of all votes for the
two major parties—precisely the
share of the popular vote that they
won in 2020. This would portend
good fortune for the Democrats if it
were November 2022, but
unfortunately for America’s liberals,
there is a tendency for the ruling
party to lose ground in the year before the actual election. The ruling party’s
share of the two-party vote has shrunk by an average of 3.4 percentage
points since the 1942 mid-terms.
“ Polls show that voters are further apart ideologically

than they used to be
Based on this relationship alone, the Democrats would be expected to win

roughly 48% of the House popular vote in 2022, and would almost certainly
lose their current eight-seat majority with such a performance. However,
there is uncertainty in the historical relationship between the polls. Our
model suggests that the Democrats could win as much as 55% or as little as
41% of the vote on the day of the mid-terms in 2022. That works out to
roughly a one-in-three chance of their gaining enough votes to win.
Election-watchers should take one other indicator into account:

polarisation. Polls show that voters are further apart ideologically, and less
likely to swing between parties, than they used to be. As a result, large
swings in the electorate’s support for the ruling party may be less likely than
in the past. Add this factor into our model, and the Democrats’ predicted
vote share rises by roughly half a percentage point to 48.5%—although
uncertainty in the estimate also increases. Such a bonus would make little
di erence if the polls follow the historical pattern of a 3-4 point defeat for
the Democrats. But it could be decisive in a closer race. In America’s current
era of hyper-competitive elections, small changes like this can make big
di erences.
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “The road to gridlock”
Keep updated
The second coming of Donald Trump

Many on the right love him more than they love democracy
Nov 8th 2021

BY JAMES ASTILL: WASHINGTON BUREAU
CHIEF AND LEXINGTON COLUMNIST, THE
ECONOMIST, WASHINGTON DC
T he usual routine for former presidents is to sink into the background,
graciously refuse to criticise their successor and plan a library. But
Donald Trump does not do background or graciousness or books. In rallies,
interviews and impromptu speeches to wedding parties at Mar-a-Lago, his
Florida estate, Mr Trump has lambasted President Joe Biden, the media and
the handful of Republicans who have dared acknowledge that he su ered
electoral defeat in 2020. He has repeatedly teased the possibility of a
comeback. In 2022 that will look increasingly inevitable.
It already seems that only a health crisis could deny Mr Trump the second
tilt at the presidency he clearly craves. Most Republican voters want him to
run again. He has raised well over $100m just by hinting that he will. And if
the Republican establishment did not roll over for him that could only be
because it was too prone already to e ect the contortion. Trump
cheerleaders such as Lindsey Graham began exhorting him to retain
command of their party the day he left o ce. Mr Trump’s only serious rivals
for the nomination, such as Governor Ron deSantis of Florida and Mike
Pompeo, his former secretary of state, are his imitators. Every indication is
that Republicans would prefer the real thing.
Mr Trump also appears to have pre-arranged the politics of his return—

through his claim to have been robbed of electoral victory against Mr Biden
by a corrupt establishment. Around 80% of Republican voters say they
believe that lie. This explains why Republican lawmakers quashed an e ort
to hold a serious investigation into the January 6th insurrection on Capitol
Hill that it inspired; and also why the handful of Republicans who resisted
that, such as Representative Liz Cheney, have been pilloried. Republican
lawmakers and candidates at every level are meanwhile sounding the alarm
on “election integrity”. The implication in many Republican-controlled
states, where the delusion is most pronounced, is that the Democrats cannot
win legitimately—and that special measures are therefore required to stop
them winning at all.
“ Few of the 75m voters who chose Mr Trump in 2020

appear to have been repelled by the January 6th
insurrection
At least 18 Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed election laws

that will make it harder to vote, many of which appear to target African-
Americans and other traditionally Democratic groups. Probably worse, many
of those Trumpi ed legislatures have also seized control of their states’
handling of elections.
The Republican congressional primaries, mostly due in the rst half of 2022,
will indicate how far the party has succumbed to this extremism. Of the 212
Republican House members, ten voted to impeach Mr Trump over the
insurrection, of whom one, citing death threats, has already announced his
intention to quit politics. The other nine, including Ms Cheney, will face
Trump-backed primary challengers. If most lose, as appears likely, Mr
Trump’s grip on his party will be tighter and its adoption of election
scepticism as a strategy more advanced. (And if they win, the Trumpists will
cry foul, which could have much the same e ect.)
The mid-term elections in November 2022 will be a more important

weather-vane. They will represent the rst opportunity for Trump
Republicans to air their election conspiracies to the electorate at large. The
leading role that Mr Trump will take in their campaign will encourage them
to do so. The big question, then, is whether enough centre-right voters will
nd this su ciently o -putting to make it a losing strategy.
It would be a heavy blow to Mr Trump’s prospects of recapturing the

presidency if they did. But there appears to be little reason to hope for that.
Remarkably few of the nearly 75m voters who chose Mr Trump in 2020
appear to have been repelled by his election denialism or the violence on
Capitol Hill. If they do not share his authoritarian instincts, they appear not
to take them terribly seriously. America may come to rue that.
James Astill: Washington bureau chief and Lexington columnist, The Economist,
Washington DC7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “The second coming of Donald Trump”
Keep updated
America’s murder rate jumped in

2020
It is unlikely to decline as quickly
Nov 8th 2021

BY JON FASMAN: US DIGITAL EDITOR, THE
ECONOMIST, NEW YORK
“E scape from new york”, a futuristic lm released in 1981 but set in
1997, stars Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, a former special-forces
soldier tasked with rescuing a kidnapped president from Manhattan, which
has been turned into a giant maximum-security prison. As with much
science ction, the lm projected then-current anxieties into the future: in
1980 more people were killed in New York (1,814) than in any year since the
police department began keeping track of such data in 1931. A decade later
that number rose to 2,245.
By the early 1990s nearly 25,000 people were being murdered each year
across America. But then something unexpected happened: the country
began to get safer. Between 1993 and 2019, America’s violent-crime rate fell
by nearly half. The reasons for this remain hotly debated. Possible
explanations include punitive sentencing policies, which locked people up
who would otherwise have been committing crimes; improved police
tactics; decreased usage of cash, drugs and alcohol; and the end of leaded
gasoline (lead exposure is correlated with aggression). What is less
debatable is that homicides spiked in 2020—rising by almost 30%, an
unprecedented rate—leading many to fear that the long crime decline is
over, and is in the process of reversing.
Those who counsel calm point out that, even with the recent rise, America
remains far safer than it was. In 1980 more than ten in every 100,000
Americans were murdered each year; in 2020 it was just over six, up from a
mid-2010s nadir of less than ve. They note that the spike occurred during a
pandemic that closed schools, community centres and other social-service
providers that would otherwise have provided somewhere for young men to
go, and during a period of widespread protests, after a police o cer in
Minneapolis murdered George Floyd (some argue that under such
circumstances, police pull back). And they note that, overall, crime fell in
2020, though this is false comfort: the good news that, say, theft from cars
fell does not o set the much worse news that murders rose.
“ Republicans are certain to make crime a central

campaign issue in 2022
Yet the spike in 2020 was not an entirely isolated event. In some cities,
homicides began rising before covid-19 struck, while in other places,
particularly big cities, the murder rate remained elevated during 2021. This
reveals an ominous trait of homicides: they are what sociologists call
“sticky”. Murders often inspire retaliatory murders; the rising side of a
murder spike may be quite steep, but declines rarely are. America got safer
in the 1990s and 2000s not because everyone suddenly put down their guns,
but because of steady, successive gradual declines. And speaking of guns,
sales set a record in 2020, and guns, unlike butter, do not spoil. With more
people carrying more deadly weapons, the odds of arguments escalating
into killings shorten.
If crime—and, as important, the fear

of crime—remain high, it will make
its presence felt in politics. In some
places, it already has. When crime
rises, people get nervous, and they
vote for candidates who make them
feel safer. New York is a solidly liberal
city, but in the Democratic mayoral
primary in 2021 left-leaning voters,
concerned about crime, chose Eric
Adams, an ex-cop and former
Republican running on a public-
safety platform, over a eld of
progressive darlings.
Republicans, eager to take control of Congress in the mid-term elections in

2022, are certain to make crime a central campaign issue. Democrats will
argue that violent crime soared everywhere: in big cities and small towns,
and in places run by liberals and conservatives alike. That may be true, but
truth alone does not always produce a politically convincing argument.
Over the past couple of electoral cycles, voters in a number of cities,

including Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, have elected reformist district
attorneys who advocated sending fewer people to prison. Such candidates
may have a harder time winning when rates of violent crime are high.
Perhaps crime will begin falling as the e ects of the pandemic fade, and
police forces continue to invest time and money in improving community
relations. Or perhaps there is simply a natural limit to how low violent-
crime rates can fall in a country in which there are more guns than people.
Jon Fasman: US digital editor, The Economist, New York7
Keep updated
America’s economy will claw its way

back to the pre-covid trend
But a strengthening economy may not help Joe Biden
Nov 8th 2021

BY SIMON RABINOVITCH: US ECONOMICS
EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST, WASHINGTON
DC
A t first glance, America’s headline growth gures for 2021 seem to be
a stunning achievement. Its gdp is on track to expand by nearly 6%
after shrinking by 3.5% in 2020, its sharpest trough-to-peak rebound in
more than half a century. Yet the details are more troubling. In ation has
jumped, companies are struggling to nd willing workers and everything
from nappies to cars has been in short supply. The coming year will ip
things around: the headline gures will be less impressive, but under the
bonnet America’s economic engine will be healthier.
After 2021’s big rebound, growth in 2022 will almost certainly be slower.
Most analysts forecast an expansion of roughly 4%. And momentum will
steadily ebb as the months roll on, simply because the year-on-year
comparisons will be progressively less attering. That should not, however,
diminish the broader achievement. Growth of 4% would still be robust by
the standards of the past few decades. Amazingly, the overall size of the
American economy would then end the year almost exactly as large as was
predicted in 2019.
In the early months of 2022 much of the focus will be on the Federal
Reserve. Given the strong economic backdrop, the central bank will bring an
end to its ultra-loose monetary policies launched at the height of the
pandemic. Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, has indicated that tapering—
the gradual halt of its monthly purchase of bonds and other assets—will
begin in late 2021 and be complete by mid-2022. That will be a headwind for
nancial markets. But the Fed’s extensive telegraphing of its plans has given
investors plenty of time to price them in.
The focus will then shift to when the

Fed might start to raise interest rates.
A slight majority of its rate-setting
committee thinks that modest
tightening will be necessary before
the end of 2022. Any such moves will
of course depend on the state of the
economy, with in ation a particular
concern. The Fed has staked much on
the idea that the price pressures of
recent months are transitory, and are
mainly a re ection of the world’s
strained supply chains. Many analysts agree, expecting in ation to
decelerate towards 3% in 2022 as the global economy continues to open up.
As, with luck, covid-19 fades, into the background, more Americans will also
re-enter the job market, bringing the economy a step closer to normality. If,
however, in ation proves to be more persistent, the Fed will face calls to
raise rates more swiftly.
Will Mr Powell be at the helm of the Fed for all these decisions? His term
expires on February 5th and President Joe Biden is expected to reappoint
him for a second term well before that deadline. The progressive wing of the
Democratic Party wants someone who is tougher on banks, but Mr Powell
oversaw a forceful monetary response to the pandemic slowdown and
deserves a second crack at the job.
For scal policy, 2022 will be an important pivot for America. With the
expiration of the giant covid-relief packages of the past two years, the
federal de cit will shrink from 13% of gdp to 5%. Normally, that would
constitute a sudden scal tightening. But households have more than $2trn
in excess savings, thanks in part to the stimulus cheques they received. So
consumption should remain solid.
Crucially, 2022 will be the rst year in which Mr Biden’s “Build Back Better”
spending hits the economy. His programme has two legs: a renewal of
America’s neglected physical infrastructure and a recrafting of its social
safety-net, including more funding for families with children. The total
invested will be smaller than Mr Biden and most Democrats had rst hoped
for. But such are the realities of nessing legislation through Congress.
Even so, it will be refreshing to see that the American government is still
capable of pulling together funding for long-term priorities. The prospects
of any more ambitious initiatives in the coming years will vanish if the
Democrats lose control of the Senate and, possibly, the House of
Representatives in mid-term elections in November. Mr Biden will be left to
rue the irony of his sagging political fortunes even as he presides over a
strengthening economy.
Simon Rabinovitch: US economics editor, The Economist, Washington DC7
Keep updated
America’s southern border will

remain a political ashpoint
In 2021 the number of migrants arriving was the highest in two decades
Nov 8th 2021

BY ALEXANDRA SUICH BASS: SENIOR
CORRESPONDENT FOR POLITICS,
TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, THE
F ew matters in politics are predictable, but the biennial “fall brawl”—
otherwise known as the November elections—is sure to focus on
America’s southern border. Republicans, having observed Donald Trump’s
ECONOMIST, DALLAS
electoral success after politicising illegal immigration in 2016, are planning
an encore. Expect to hear from them about President Joe Biden’s “open-
border policies”. Red states, including Arizona and Texas, are also likely to
wage new legal battles with the federal government over border programmes
and enforcement.
Political rhetoric aside, one of the most surprising features of Mr Biden’s

administration has been the endurance of some of Mr Trump’s hardline
immigration policies, either by choice or not. For example, the Biden
administration tried to do away permanently with Mr Trump’s “Migrant
Protection Protocols” (mpp) programme, which requires immigrants to stay
in Mexico, often in squalid conditions, while they await their immigration-
court hearings. However, legal wrangling has meant that Mr Biden has been
unable to scrap mpp, despite his pledges on the campaign trail to do so. A
court ght over ending mpp is likely to continue into 2022.
So is a legal tussle over “Title 42”, a controversial Trump-era public-health

order that is still being used by the Biden administration to expel many
immigrants who reach the border without a hearing.
“ In 2021 the number of migrants arriving was the highest

in two decades
The Biden administration has been under pressure from immigration

advocates to halt the use of Title 42, including a lawsuit by the American
Civil Liberties Union (aclu), but it has been loth to end it, in part because
the number of border-crossers has been so high since Mr Biden assumed
o ce. That legal battle—with the Biden administration arguing that it
should be allowed to keep in place what Lee Gelernt of the aclu calls Mr
Trump’s “most extreme” border policy—will continue in the coming year.
There will also be new ows of people from countries that had not
previously been a large source of migrants to America’s southern border,
such as Brazil and Venezuela. All of this will make the border an even more
di cult and more complex problem to solve, predicts Andrew Selee,
president of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank.
The question of how Mr Biden can make immigration enforcement faster

and fairer, while not prompting more people to try to make the perilous
journey to cross into America illegally, is the central challenge at the core of
ending the disorder at the border. One area of focus and work has been a
revamped asylum system. By empowering asylum o cers, as opposed to
backlogged courts, to make determinations on asylum claims, cases can be
resolved more quickly, and people are less likely to be left in legal limbo.
Mr Biden’s tweaked asylum system will be rolled out in 2022 and is worth
watching closely, because it represents a necessary change to a stretched
system. America—and those seeking refuge—need an asylum process that is
predictable, fast and fair.
Alexandra Suich Bass: Senior correspondent for politics, technology and society,
The Economist, Dallas7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Disorder at the border”
Keep updated
Public-school enrolment in America

is unlikely to return to normal
Learning loss will continue to be a concern, especially among the youngest
Nov 8th 2021

BY TAMARA GILKES BORR: US POLICY
WASHINGTON, DC
C ovid-19 sparked the largest decline in public-school enrolment since
the second world war. In the early 1940s, many high-school students
departed for the battle eld or for employment. But this time around, it is
unclear where some of the missing students have gone—and many of them
will not return.
The pandemic forced schools around the world to close overnight in early
2020. In America more than 50m pupils were sent home in March. At the
time, few imagined that the closures would drag on so long. As educators
tried to get students back into the classroom in the autumn, enrolment
dropped by 3% for the 2020-21 academic year. Teachers and administrators
called families and even went to pupils’ homes in an attempt to get them
back to school or at least to log in online.
Much of the decline took place among the youngest pupils: kindergarten
enrolment (for ve-year-olds) fell by 9%, and pre-kindergarten (for four-
year-olds) by 22%. Switching to online learning was hardest for the youngest
children. In the early years, lessons focus on life skills, such as learning how
to use the toilet and getting along with peers—tasks that are di cult to learn
over Zoom. Many families decided to keep their children at home.
Preliminary enrolment gures for the current school year (2021-22) suggest
that these overall declines will persist into 2022. Few districts have released
their gures. Hawaii, one of the few to do so, has reported a loss. Pre-
pandemic (2019-20), Hawaii’s school district enrolled 179,331 pupils. It
reported 4,627 fewer students in the pandemic school year (2020-21). And in
autumn 2021 it reported 3,104 fewer students than in the previous year—a
4% decline from pre-pandemic enrolment.
Some children have simply dropped out. Some have enrolled in private
schools, though probably not as many as suggested by media accounts.
Home-schooling has become more popular. In Michigan, areas with remote-
only instruction saw larger increases in private-school enrolment, whereas
home-schooling increased more in areas with in-person teaching. Di ering
concerns about the virus have prompted families to make di erent choices.
“ Learning loss will continue to be a concern in 2022,

especially among the youngest children
Many pupils left for non-traditional public schools. The numbers attending
virtual (online-only), charter (independently run) and vocational schools
(focused on speci c trades) all increased in Massachusetts last year. In
Martha’s Vineyard and other vacation spots, enrolment in conventional
public schools also went up, presumably as a uent families chose to
weather the pandemic in their holiday homes.
Some pupils may return to their former schools once the pandemic ends
and teaching returns to normal. But some families will not want to move
their children from the new schools into which they have happily settled.
Expect to see private and non-traditional public school enrolments remain
steady. But some children are now “missing”. Of those who left Hawaii’s
school system in the 2020-21 academic year, for example, some left the state
or started home-schooling, and a small proportion went to private schools.
But 2,665 pupils are unaccounted for, says Mark Murphy, professor of
education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Learning loss will continue to be a concern in 2022, especially among the

youngest children. Preliminary enrolment numbers suggest that many of
last year’s would-be kindergarteners skipped it completely and started rst
grade in 2021 (kindergarten is not compulsory in most states). This will
probably have a long-lasting impact: high-quality early learning is
associated with increases in high-school performance, college attendance
and adult wages. Those children could nd themselves lagging behind their
peers for years.
Funding will also be a concern. In America, it is set on a per-pupil basis—so

each missing child means less money for the school. Some states, such as
Florida, let pupils take their state-allocated funding to any school, public or
private. Expect such “voucher” schemes to be discussed more widely in
2022.
Shortages of funding could lead to teacher-hiring freezes and a scaling back

of other resources, such as educational materials, extracurricular activities
and social programmes. Pandemic-relief funds are stemming the bleeding
for now, but that will not last forever. Just as budget cuts reduced test scores
and graduation rates in America after the global nancial crisis of 2007-09,
the impact of covid-19 on education will reach far beyond the pandemic’s
end.
Tamara Gilkes Borr: US policy correspondent, The Economist, Washington, DC7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Bottom of the class”
Keep updated
Francis Fukuyama on the end of

American hegemony
In uence abroad depends on xing problems at home
Nov 8th 2021

BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: SENIOR FELLOW
AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY
T he horrifying images of desperate Afghans trying to get out of Kabul
after the Western-backed government collapsed in August seemed to
signify a major juncture in world history, as America turned away from the
world. Yet in truth, the end of the American era had come much earlier. The
long-term sources of American weakness and decline are more domestic
than international. The country will remain a great power for many years,
but just how in uential it will be depends on its ability to x its internal
problems, rather than its foreign policy.
The peak period of American hegemony lasted less than 20 years, from the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the nancial crisis of 2007-09. The country
was dominant in many domains of power—military, economic, political and
cultural. The height of American hubris was the invasion of Iraq in 2003,
when it hoped to remake not just Iraq and Afghanistan (invaded two years
before), but the whole Middle East. America overestimated the e ectiveness
of military power to bring about deep political change, even as it
underestimated the impact of its free-market economic model on global
nance. The decade ended with its troops bogged down in two
counterinsurgency wars, and a nancial crisis that accentuated the
inequalities American-led globalisation had brought about.
Termites in the oorboards

The degree of unipolarity in this period has been rare in history, and the
world has been reverting to a more normal state of multipolarity ever since,
with China, Russia, India, Europe and other centres gaining power relative
to America. Afghanistan’s ultimate e ect on geopolitics is likely to be small:
America survived an earlier, humiliating defeat when it withdrew from
Vietnam in 1975, but regained its dominance within little more than a
decade. The much bigger challenge to America’s global standing is domestic.
American society is deeply polarised, and has found it di cult to nd

consensus on virtually anything. This polarisation started over conventional
policy issues like taxes and abortion, but has since metastasised into a bitter
ght over cultural identity. Normally a big external threat such as a global
pandemic should be the occasion for citizens to rally around a common
response. But the covid-19 crisis served rather to deepen America’s
divisions, with social distancing, mask-wearing and vaccinations being seen
not as public-health measures but as political markers.These con icts have
spread to all aspects of life, from sport to the brands of consumer products
that red and blue Americans buy.
“ America’s influence abroad depends on its ability to fix

its internal problems
There is more apparent consensus regarding China: both Republicans and

Democrats agree it is a threat to democratic values. But this only carries
America so far. A far greater test for American foreign policy than
Afghanistan will be Taiwan, if it comes under direct Chinese attack. Will the
United States be willing to sacri ce its sons and daughters on behalf of that
island’s independence? Or indeed, would it risk military con ict with Russia
should the latter invade Ukraine? These are serious questions with no easy
answers, but a reasoned debate about American national interest will
probably be conducted primarily through the lens of how it a ects the
partisan struggle.
The biggest policy debacle of President Joe Biden’s administration in its rst
year has been its failure to plan adequately for the rapid collapse of
Afghanistan. Mr Biden has suggested that withdrawal was necessary in order
to focus on meeting the bigger challenges from Russia and China. I hope he
is serious about this. Mr Obama was never successful in making a “pivot” to
Asia because America remained focused on counterinsurgency in the
Middle East. In 2022, the administration needs to redeploy both resources
and the attention of policymakers to deter geopolitical rivals and engage
with allies.
The United States is not likely to regain its earlier hegemonic status, nor
should it aspire to. What it can hope for is to sustain, with like-minded
countries, a world order friendly to democratic values. Whether it can do
this will depend on recovering a sense of national identity and purpose at
home.
Francis Fukuyama: senior fellow at Stanford University 7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “The end of American hegemony”
Keep updated
A presidential election will test

Brazil’s institutions
Jair Bolsonaro is unlikely to go quietly if he loses
Nov 8th 2021

BY SARAH MASLIN: BRAZIL BUREAU
CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST, SÃO PAULO
I n 2022 brazil will enter full-swing election mode. That means rent-
seeking and horse-trading by 30-plus political parties in more than 1,000
legislative and executive races, and months of closely watched opinion polls
leading up to the election in October. The government will try to further
boost social spending in an attempt to bring in votes for the beleaguered
right-wing populist president, Jair Bolsonaro. It may not be enough.
By late 2021, Mr Bolsonaro’s approval ratings had fallen below 30% as Brazil’s
economic outlook became increasingly grim. gdp, which grew by 1.2% in
the rst quarter, decreased by 0.1% in the second. The worst wave of covid-
19 led to new lockdowns, oxygen shortages and, at one point, more than
3,000 deaths per day.
Reforms and privatisations will take a back seat to the election. Investors
who rallied around Paulo Guedes, the economy minister, may lose faith that
he can ful l his pro-business agenda. In late 2021 Congress was close to
passing a watered-down tax reform, but his more important public-sector
reforms looked doomed. In the midst of a drought, and with public debt at
nearly 100% of gdp, markets will be less forgiving than they were in 2021.
Year-on-year in ation and the benchmark interest rate, at 10.25% and 6.25%
respectively in October, may keep rising. Around 14% of Brazilians are
unemployed. Most of the jobless will remain so in 2022, when gdp is
projected to grow by just 1%.
Many will blame Mr Bolsonaro for their misfortune, as they started to in

early 2021 when stimulus payments were slashed. Discontent deepened
after a Senate investigation revealed that the president had ignored six
o ers of covid-19 vaccines from P zer and may have turned a blind eye to
corruption once contracts were negotiated (he denies wrongdoing). Anti-
government protesters came onto the streets for the rst time since the start
of the pandemic and will do so again in 2022. The stack of impeachment
petitions against Mr Bolsonaro, of which there are 139 so far, will continue to
grow.
But e orts to impeach him are unlikely to prosper. The speaker of the lower
house of Congress, who is responsible for opening proceedings, is an ally.
Polls in late 2021 suggested that if the election had been held then, Mr
Bolsonaro’s main challenger, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
would have won. But Lula, whose left-wing Workers’ Party oversaw a big
corruption scandal and crippling recession, is also unpopular.
The campaign will be tense. Mr Bolsonaro has started laying the ground to
dispute the result. “Only God will remove me,” he said at a rally in
September. His supporters have called for paper receipts to be added to
Brazil’s electronic voting system, which Mr Bolsonaro claims, without
evidence, is rife with fraud, and for “military intervention” to shut down the
supreme court, which has authorised probes into Mr Bolsonaro and his
politician sons. Pro-government protests will also continue in 2022. They
are one of the only weapons the president has left, along with e orts to win
back voters by expanding Bolsa Família, a cash-transfer programme for the
very poor. If he loses the election, he may try to cling to power. The
aftermath of the run-o election will test the strength of Brazil’s
institutions.
On September 7th 2022, Brazil will celebrate the 200th anniversary of its
independence from Portugal. Congress will vote on whether to extend racial
quotas for universities, and the supreme court may issue a ruling that will
a ect indigenous lands throughout Brazil. But the country’s future rests
most heavily on the result of the election. Most Brazilians will vote based on
their pocketbooks, but democracy’s fate in their country now depends on
voting out Mr Bolsonaro.
Sarah Maslin: Brazil bureau chief, The Economist, São Paulo7
This article appeared in the Americas section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Crunch time”
Keep updated
Brazil’s election o ers hope for the

rainforest
The Amazon has gone from being a carbon sink to a carbon source
Nov 8th 2021

BY SARAH MASLIN: BRAZIL BUREAU
CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST SÃO PAULO
A presidential election in 2022 will o er a chance for Brazil’s
government to reverse policies that have contributed to global climate
change. The country is home to 60% of the Amazon rainforest, which has
historically been an important carbon sink. But a worrying study published
in 2021 in Nature found that over the past decade it has instead become a
carbon source. The culprits: forest res and deforestation, which has soared
by more than 40% since populist president Jair Bolsonaro took o ce in
2019.
On his watch, environmental enforcement and nes dropped to record lows.

Activists say this has encouraged illegal logging, mining, cattle-ranching
and land-grabbing. In June the environment minister, Ricardo Salles,
resigned after federal police began investigating him for alleged
involvement in timber tra cking (he denies wrongdoing).
A greener president would try to crack down on such crimes. Polls suggest
that Mr Bolsonaro is likely to lose the election. His successor could convince
Germany and Norway to unfreeze the Amazon Fund, a pot of money for
enforcement and sustainable development that was withdrawn in 2019 amid
concerns about Mr Bolsonaro’s policies. A new president could also revive
talks with President Joe Biden, who has o ered to create a $20bn fund for
the rainforest once Brazil starts showing results.
“ In the past decade, the Amazon has gone from being a

carbon sink to a carbon source
Brazil is one of only a few countries that did not improve its target for
cutting emissions by 2030. In the run-up to UN climate talks in Glasgow it
was unclear whether the government would abandon its insistence on
“double-counting”—its historic demand that carbon credits it sells to other
countries also be included in its own emission-cuts tally. If it backs down
from this stance and a global market emerges from the talks, Brazil could
receive billions of dollars to preserve patches of rainforest it sells as credits.
Its voluntary market has boomed in recent years.
Other Amazonian countries, such as Colombia, have shown more

willingness to combat deforestation, though they also face pressure from
business interests. Better leadership in Brazil could jump-start regional
e orts to boost enforcement and nd sustainable alternatives to
deforestation for the rainforest’s inhabitants. But if Mr Bolsonaro wins
again, his determination to ll the forest with roads, dams and mines could
cause destruction far beyond the borders of Brazil.
Sarah Maslin: Brazil bureau chief, The Economist São Paulo7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Amazon in the balance”
Keep updated
Mexico’s president will continue to

damage the country’s democracy
Can its institutions retain their independence?
Nov 8th 2021

BY SARAH BIRKE: MEXICO CITY BUREAU
CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST, MEXICO CITY
O ver the past two decades Mexico has provided an important example
of democratic transition. Its democracy is a awed one, marred by
corruption, violence and poor governance. But it is recognisably a
democracy all the same, with a history of successful elections and peaceful
transfers of power between parties, a fairly good separation of powers and a
set of independent, though imperfect, institutions. The question in 2022
will be how much President Andrés Manuel López Obrador continues to
undermine that system.
Mr López Obrador swept to power in 2018 at the head of his populist Morena
party, voted in by people attracted by his promise to make Mexico more
democratic and to work for the majority long neglected by the elite. That
was, and is, a laudable aim. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri)
governed Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years until 2000, and again from 2012
to 2018, with two terms for the conservative National Action Party (pan) in
between. The pri in particular ran things to suit itself, empowering the army
and in some cases trying to pack autonomous institutions with loyalists.
But Mr López Obrador’s rule is undermining Mexico’s democracy rather than

bolstering it. In his rst three years he has favoured a highly personalistic
and centralised style of governing. He has prioritised pet projects over
institutionalised schemes, for example by scrapping a hugely successful
cash-transfer programme in favour of badly targeted handouts that are
billed as personal gifts from the president.
“ The key is whether the country’s institutions can retain

their independence
He speaks directly to his supporters in daily conferences, denouncing those

who do not support him, including journalists and ngos. He likes to decide
issues using public (and often legally questionable) “consultations” and
referendums, such as whether to cancel a half-built airport in Mexico City (it
was) and whether to prosecute his ve predecessors (turnout was too low to
be binding). He has threatened to get rid of some institutions or degrade
them by reducing their funding, or by packing them with loyalists, as with
the courts.
Another area of concern is how much more power Mr López Obrador gives to
the armed forces. In the past three years he has drastically expanded their
role, despite a lack of transparency and accountability, and previous pledges
that he would rein them in. They are now even more involved in the ght
against crime, in addition to controlling the border with the United States
and building infrastructure projects, such as an airport in Mexico City to
replace the scrapped one.
The problem is that few voters are enamoured with the opposition parties,
which have no new ideas for ruling di erently from the past. So, in spite of
all his faults, the president is likely to remain popular and win the recall
referendum. The key is whether the country’s institutions can retain their
independence. Many Mexicans support the ine, which polls show to be the
most trusted civilian institution in Mexico (the army is still the most trusted
of all, but most people do not want troops on the streets). Mexico may be an
imperfect democracy but support for its institutions is strong.
Sarah Birke: Mexico City bureau chief, The Economist, Mexico City7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Mexico’s imperilled democracy”
Keep updated
Latin America is in danger of going

back to the old normal
Economic stagnation, social discontent and threats to democracy loom
Nov 8th 2021

BY MICHAEL REID: BELLO COLUMNIST,
THE ECONOMIST
T he big worry for Latin Americans in 2022 will be going back to the “old
normal” as the pandemic recedes. That involved economic stagnation,
social discontent and the discrediting of democratic politics. Turbocharged
by the pandemic, these ills produced popular rage in several countries in
2021. This was mitigated in part by emergency aid and scal and monetary
stimulus. As a result, in 2021 the region recovered much of the economic
output it lost in 2020. In 2022 the recovery will slow: an uptick in in ation
is prompting central banks to raise interest rates while many governments
have exhausted their limited scal repower. The result is that Latin
America’s economy, taken as a whole, will be lucky to grow by more than 3%
in 2022.
Anti-incumbency has been the de ning feature of recent elections in Latin

America. That is likely to remain the case in Brazil. The big question is
whether or not rage will start to give way to a more pragmatic focus on the
basics of economic growth and social protection. Chile and Colombia will
provide the main tests of this in 2022.
Chile faces a complicated year. A presidential election due in late 2021 is

wide open. The most likely outcome is a run-o between Gabriel Boric of
the hard left and José Antonio Kast of the hard right. The new president and
Congress will at rst cohabit with a convention to write a new constitution,
agreed on by the politicians after a social explosion in late 2019 called into
question what had been a successful free-market economy. The hard left did
unexpectedly well in the election of the convention’s 155 members. The
convention has until July to agree on a new constitutional draft which will
then be put to a referendum. This will certainly mandate more state
provision in health care and pensions, which could o er a blueprint for the
new social contract many Latin Americans crave. The new charter might also
involve a much more decisive swing to the left, with curbs on mining and an
expensive list of social rights. But it is possible that a broad dealmaking
group manages to craft a text that combines rights with scal responsibility.
“ Latin Americans want more spending on health care and

public services
The political centre in Latin America has been eroded in recent elections by
polarisation. Colombia’s election in May could spark its revival, provided it
can unite behind a single candidate. There are two strong contenders: Sergio
Fajardo, a former mayor of Medellín who began the city’s renewal, narrowly
missed making the run-o in the previous presidential election in 2018, and
Alejandro Gaviria, an economist, successful writer, former health minister
and cancer survivor who has a compelling story to tell. Whoever wins a
primary election due in March will face Gustavo Petro, a populist leftist.
Remarkably, he would be Colombia’s rst left-wing president. The right may
fade, after the disappointing presidency of Ivan Duque.
That applies to the region as a whole. Latin Americans want more spending
on health care and public services in general. But bigger de cits over the
past two years have pushed the region’s public debt to over 70% of its GDP.
As interest rates start rising this becomes more expensive to service. Yet
raising taxes is politically fraught, especially as the region desperately needs
to provide incentives for lagging private investment.
Fail in this infernal balancing act, and democracy risks falling prey to
creeping authoritarianism, long ensconced in Cuba, Nicaragua and
Venezuela. In 2021 Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s popular young president,
became the latest elected leader to erect an autocracy, taking control of the
judiciary, harassing independent journalists and authorising his own re-
election for a second term. So far these four countries are exceptions. But
that could change, especially if Jair Bolsonaro manages to subvert Brazil’s
election in 2022 and if Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico uses his
likely victory in a recall referendum to intensify his siege of the
independent electoral authority and the courts. Opinion polls continue to
show a steady and worrying erosion of support for democracy in Latin
America. Democrats have been warned.
Michael Reid: Bello columnist, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Latin America’s democracy test”
Keep updated
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo on lessons

from Mexico City
The city’s mayor pushes for equality and sustainability
Nov 8th 2021

BY CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM PARDO: MAYOR
OF MEXICO CITY
I n december 2021 it will be three years since I assumed o ce as the rst
woman to be elected mayor of Mexico City and part of a political
movement led by President López Obrador. After 30 years of failed national
neo-liberal policies and six years of rampant corruption and increasing
insecurity, citizens overwhelmingly voted for a radical transformation to
rebuild the welfare state from below. I vowed to improve universal access to
quality public education and health care, decent housing, improved public
transportation and security. I promised to ensure environmental
sustainability, help deal with climate change and, most importantly, to end
corruption.
Three years later, despite an unprecedented medical and economic crisis

created by covid-19, we have made remarkable progress towards the vision
of an equitable and sustainable city. During the pandemic we guaranteed
access to universal health care. Through e ective co-ordination of health
providers, the number of designated hospital beds was increased from 2,000
to 8,246. We provided 3.5m free covid-19 tests and delivered free oxygen to
patients who did not require hospitalisation. Mexico City has one of the
highest vaccination rates in the world. By the end of September 2021, 98.7%
of adults had received at least one dose, and 74% were fully vaccinated.
“ The pandemic was an opportunity to fulfil the promise

that nobody would be left behind
The pandemic emergency derailed the city’s economic dynamism. A city

that depends heavily on professional services, tourism and commerce was
hard-hit by months of con nement. We expanded the coverage of social
programmes and created new systems to support the incomes of the most
vulnerable families, ensuring they were able to cover basic needs. Around
$300m in income support was delivered during the rst 18 months of the
crisis.
Support was also provided through our universal scholarship programme,

reaching 1.2m children enrolled in public schools; expansion of
unemployment insurance for 260,000 workers, including those in the
informal sector; 105,000 interest-free loans to small companies; and a
federal universal pension for those aged 65 and over.
At the same time we maintained our commitment to keep our campaign

promises. In three years we created two public universities; increased the
capacity of the middle-school system for an estimated 41,000 more students
in 2024; provided maintenance to all 2,190 public schools; and inaugurated
227 community centres (against a goal of 300) to o er free on-line education
and access to skills development, sports and cultural activities for members
of marginalised communities. The right to digital inclusion is provided
through an expansion of high-speed bre-optic networks. Mexico City today
has the most extensive coverage of free Wi-Fi in the world.
In a city of 9.2m people within a metropolitan area of 22m, the ability to

move around quickly and safely is crucial. Our expansion of public
transport includes two new lines of Cablebus, an innovative transport
system that provides safe, fast mobility to millions of people in the city’s
poorest neighbourhoods; the addition of 200 electric trolleybuses and 300
low-emission buses; and the creation of 180km (112 miles) of new cycle
lanes. All of these measures improve public transport while also reducing
greenhouse-gas emissions and improving air quality.
Access to water and public spaces are two other areas where environmental
sustainability intersects with public health. We doubled investment in the
modernisation of the water-distribution system, parts of which are 70-100
years old. We also took steps to clean up rivers and wetlands across the city,
and launched a scheme to restore public parks, rural areas and natural
reserves, which collectively cover half of the city’s territory.
A city for everyone

These achievements, even under the most di cult circumstances, show
how much can be done in Mexico to build inclusive and sustainable
societies when there is political will to eradicate corruption and to serve
people. I am part of a political movement that has fought against electoral
fraud and corruption. In 2022 and beyond, we are committed to
strengthening democracy and building a city—and a country—for all people,
and for our children and grandchildren.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo: mayor of Mexico City 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Crisis and opportunity”
Keep updated
The West’s stand-o with Iran could

escalate
Plenty of Westerners don’t think the nuclear deal is worth the e ort
Nov 8th 2021

BY NICK PELHAM: MIDDLE EAST
D espite talking in 2021, Iran and America seem no closer to reviving
the multinational nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (jcpoa), out of which Donald Trump pulled America in 2018.
Both sides have said that they are willing to return to the terms of the
original deal if the other does rst. But the world has changed since then,
and the prospect of continued deadlock in 2022 means there is a growing
chance of escalation.
One big change is that although Democrats have regained power in America,
hardliners now control all the levers of power in Iran. The Islamic Republic’s
new president, Ebrahim Raisi, has side-stepped Western e orts to restore
the jcpoa. After months of his evasion, global powers may conclude that he
and his sponsor, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are no
longer interested in a fully edged nuclear deal.
Iran’s hardliners worry that the West would use the jcpoa as a rst step to
curb Iran’s regional reach and its missile programme, and press it on human
rights. Better ties with the West would also revive Iran’s reformers in their
struggle with the regime’s inner core and raise their hopes of diluting Iran’s
clerical zeal. So the hardliners may decide a deal is best avoided. Mr
Khamenei will also not want Western powers to upset his own succession,
most likely to his son, Mojtaba.
As a result, Western diplomats will spend early 2022 trying to devise creative
alternatives. “More-for-more” would release Iran from more sanctions than
the original deal in exchange for a longer-term suspension of its nuclear
programme. “Less-for-less” would drip-feed some $100bn of assets frozen
abroad in return for a rollback of uranium enrichment. Iran will demand
that America reverse all sanctions imposed by Mr Trump and promise never
again to renege on the deal. America will insist that Iran rst scale back its
nuclear operations.
The likely deadlock will cheer hardliners in Tehran. They will argue that
America’s sanctions on banking and oil strengthen Iran’s resilience and
accelerate its diversi cation away from fossil fuels. Mr Raisi will seek to get
closer to China and improve trade ties with the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation, a club Iran joined in 2021 that includes China, India and
Russia. Iran’s oil sales to China doubled in 2021 and will continue to grow.
Iranian public opinion towards America may cool further.
Hence the likelihood of escalation. The rst theatre for confrontation would
be Iran’s nuclear development. By September 2021, Iran had ve tonnes of
uranium enriched to 3.67% ssile purity, up from 200kg agreed under the
jcpoa. It also had 85kg enriched to 20% and another 10kg enriched to 60%,
far in excess of anything needed for civilian purposes. Parliament has
mandated a new generation of centrifuges that will extend enrichment
targets to weapons-grade purity of 90% or more.
The second theatre will be regional. Iran could stage military exercises on its
border with Azerbaijan, which has close military ties with Israel. For its part,
Israel might increase sabotage operations against Iran’s nuclear installations
and drone attacks on its many proxies, raising the threat of a regional war.
Iran could o er China’s navy the use of its islands in the Gulf. Some
observers reckon that the rst military showdown between China and the
West could be in the Gulf of Oman, rather than the South China Sea.
Fear of such scenarios might pull the enemies back from the brink. Nobody
wants a war. The West might o er better terms, allowing hardliners to save
face (for all their bravado, they want a stronger economy). Mr Raisi lacks the
$600bn in reserves that cushioned Iran from sanctions a decade ago, and
the partial release of frozen assets that the West gave his predecessor. The
rial has lost 90% of its value against the dollar since 2015. Salaries and
savings have been hit. Basics such as rice are priced out of reach, and cuts to
power and water cause anger just when Mr Khamenei is preparing his
succession. But the old man may calculate that his regime is safer without
the meddling West.
Nick Pelham: Middle East correspondent, The Economist7
This article appeared in the Middle East section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Still want a deal?”
Keep updated
Tunisia is setting itself up for an

autocratic future
After the current president, there could be problems
Nov 8th 2021

BY ROGER MCSHANE: MIDDLE EAST
D ays after sacking the prime minister, suspending parliament and
assuming executive authority in July 2021, President Kais Saied of
Tunisia summoned reporters from the New York Times to his o ce. The
president’s opponents were calling his actions a coup. Mr Saied wanted to
dispel any notion that he was acting in an authoritarian manner. “Why do
you think that, at 67, I would start a career as a dictator?” he asked, quoting
the words of the French statesman Charles de Gaulle from 1958.
Mr Saied, who is 63, must see a bit of de Gaulle in himself. In 1958, with
France racked by political instability and on the brink of civil war, de Gaulle
was asked to reform the country’s political institutions. That led to the
creation of the Fifth Republic, featuring a powerful president. The rst
person elected to the post was de Gaulle.
Tunisians turned to Mr Saied in 2019, when nearly three-quarters of them

voted for him to be president. Many saw the former constitutional-law
professor as an honest reformer who would upend the system. Tunisia, the
birthplace of the Arab spring, is often hailed as the lone success story to
emerge from the revolutionary protests that swept across the region in 2011.
But a decade of democracy did not bring prosperity, and Tunisians grew
disillusioned with politics.
“ The monk-like Mr Saied is largely seen as honourable
Enter Mr Saied, who hailed his victory as a “new revolution”. Only in 2021
did it become clear what that revolution would look like. Two months after
he seized power, Mr Saied said he would rule by decree, bypassing the
constitution. He says he will eventually propose an amended charter—
undoubtedly featuring a stronger president. A growing number of critics
have warned him against concentrating too much power in his hands. But
the public cares less about democracy and more about jobs.
Moreover, the president may be setting Tunisia up for something worse.

Although he is largely seen as honourable and incorruptible, those who
want to succeed him are not. Take Abir Moussi, a populist demagogue who
spouts conspiracy theories. Tunisia’s democracy might not survive if
someone like her were to become president. Whether or not Mr Saied wants
to be a dictator, plenty of other Tunisian politicians seem to relish the role.
Roger McShane: Middle East editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Democracy on the brink”
Keep updated
Saudi Arabia reins in its disastrous

foreign policy
Economic problems at home are more pressing
Nov 8th 2021

BY GREGG CARLSTROM: MIDDLE EAST
DUBAI
F or muhammad bin salman, no news is good news. Since 2015, when
he began a meteoric ascent from little-known Saudi prince to de facto
ruler, he has overseen a long list of actions that left him with a reputation
for viciousness and impetuousness. There was the disastrous (and
continuing) war in Yemen; the blockade of Qatar; the bizarre abduction of
Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s then-prime minister; and the murder of Jamal
Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist. At home he jailed activists on dubious
charges and shook down princes and businessmen for cash, holding the
latter in gilded detention at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh.
None of this was helpful for attracting foreign investment, which Prince
Muhammad needs to move the Saudi economy away from an over-reliance
on oil. Mr Khashoggi’s murder came weeks before an investment conference
hosted by the kingdom’s main sovereign-wealth fund; some executives
backed out. Locking up businessmen in a luxury hotel was not a reassuring
message about the business climate. Foreign direct investment shrivelled
from $8.1bn in 2015 to $1.4bn in 2017.
There have been far fewer calamitous headlines in 2021. In part this is
because Saudi Arabia has backed away from a foreign policy that was
pugnacious but pro tless. The blockade of Qatar led to no major
concessions, while Mr Hariri’s abduction did not rearrange Lebanese politics
to Saudi liking. In 2022 Saudi Arabia will continue to pursue a nascent
dialogue with Iran. It will not bring warm ties between the old foes, but may
reduce the risk of open con ict (such as the Iranian-sponsored attack on
Saudi oil facilities in 2019).
“ Saudi Arabia has backed away from a foreign policy that

was pugnacious but profitless
The Saudis will continue to edge away from America, which has long been
their security guarantor, because three successive American presidents have
seemed unhappy about playing that role. In August the Saudi defence
minister signed a military-co-operation deal with his Russian counterpart.
Expect more of that—but relations with Russia are complex, useful mostly
as a way to goad America. Ties with China, both military and economic, will
become more important.
The crown prince’s approach to economic reform so far has been to let a
thousand owers bloom (literally: in May he announced a scheme to plant
10bn trees in the desert). Expect more grandiose plans in 2022, but also
tangible e orts to emulate and compete with successful neighbours.
One obvious approach is to poach business from the United Arab Emirates,
the Gulf’s most diversi ed economy. New tari s imposed on Emirati goods
in July cut Saudi imports by 33%. In September the kingdom ordered two
state-owned Saudi broadcasters, with headquarters in Dubai, to move
employees to Riyadh. Saudi multinationals will face pressure to do the
same. Competition will intensify in 2022. But it should at least be bloodless.
Gregg Carlstrom: Middle East correspondent, The Economist, Dubai7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “On best behaviour”
Keep updated
The Bennett v Bibi rivalry will

continue to overshadow Israeli
politics
Opposition to Mr Netanyahu is one of the few things uniting the opposition
Nov 8th 2021

BY ROGER MCSHANE: MIDDLE EAST
“D o not let your spirits fall,” Binyamin Netanyahu told his supporters
in the summer of 2021. Israel’s longest-serving prime minister was
about to cede power to a government led by Naftali Bennett. Mr Netanyahu
(known as Bibi) was furious that Mr Bennett, his former aide and fellow
nationalist, had made common cause with leftists and Arab conservatives to
push him out. He vowed to bring the new government down. “And with the
help of God, this will happen faster than you think,” said Mr Netanyahu.
Perhaps God is busy or travelling or sleeping, because Mr Bennett’s

government has proved surprisingly resilient. It has built on some of Mr
Netanyahu’s successes, deepening ties with Arab states that established
relations with Israel in 2020, and swiftly rolling out covid-19 booster shots
(see chart). Because the government is ideologically diverse, it has set aside
divisive issues, such as how to deal with the Palestinians, and focused on
mundane challenges. The passage of a budget (Israel has not had one in two
years) would make it likely that Mr Bennett will stay in power through 2022.
The bigger question may be whether

Mr Netanyahu remains in the Knesset
(Israel’s parliament) for that long. He
is leader of the opposition, chairman
of the biggest party (Likud) and eager
to make a comeback. He talks to
world leaders and prominent Israelis
as if he were still prime minister. A
big portion of the public backs him.
But most Israelis are not clamouring
for his return. With the new
leadership settling in nicely, Mr
Netanyahu no longer seems
indispensable. How long will he be happy in this diminished role?
“ Opposition to Mr Netanyahu is one of the few things

that unites the parties of the coalition
There is also something pulling Mr Netanyahu away from politics: money.

As a member of the Knesset he is barred from accepting outside payments.
Yet while he was prime minister, he and his family had lavish tastes. There
were scandals over spending on hairdressers, ice cream, meals from
celebrity chefs and rst-class travel, among many other things. After Mr
Netanyahu left o ce, the government asked him to return dozens of gifts
from world leaders (he denied keeping them). Mr Netanyahu is also on trial
for allegedly accepting gifts from wealthy associates.
Were he to leave the Knesset, Mr Netanyahu would not face such scrutiny.
He could, for example, take a holiday on a private island in Hawaii that is
almost wholly owned by Larry Ellison, a technology billionaire, without
facing questions over who paid for what (as happened in September). He
could make millions of dollars giving speeches, consulting or sitting on
corporate boards (Mr Ellison is rumoured to have o ered him a lucrative
spot on the board of his company, Oracle). And he could raise funds for his
legal defence, the cost of which is mounting: he faces three cases, on
charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes while prime minister.
He denies all the charges.
The government might try to block any comeback by nally closing the
loophole that lets a person under indictment serve as prime minister. That
could back re, though. Opposition to Mr Netanyahu is one of the few things
that unites the parties of the coalition. If there were no longer a danger that
he might retake power, the chances of its breaking up would increase.
Roger McShane: Middle East editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Bennett v Bibi”
Keep updated
Middle East activists say that climate

can trump politics
They propose a “green-blue deal” for the region
Nov 8th 2021

BY GIDON BROMBERG, NADA MAJDALANI
AND YANA ABU TALEB: ISRAELI,
PALESTINIAN AND JORDANIAN CO-
A lthough the Middle East peace process might be blocked, the path
remains open to building trust by achieving progress on the
environment in 2022. Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians can unite to ght
DIRECTORS OF ECOPEACE MIDDLE EAST
our common climate-change Armageddon.
Call it a “green-blue deal”. Climate change is hitting the Middle East hard.
Temperatures are soaring—since the 1950s, they have increased along the
eastern Mediterranean coast by more than 2°C and an additional 4°C of
warming is predicted by the end of the century. The “green” part of our
green-blue deal targets cleaning up Middle Eastern energy supplies to
reduce climate-changing emissions.
Meanwhile, water in the region is scarce and becoming scarcer. Climate

models warn of a 40% decrease in rainfall by the end of the century. And
when it does rain, it will pour, leading to potentially deadly and damaging
oods. The “blue” part of our green-blue deal aims to bring water security to
our parched region.
First, some background. For many Middle Easterners, life outside is already
unbearable during the long summer months. Turning again to those climate
models, the number of days with high summer temperatures is predicted to
increase by 50% by the end of the century. Our governments are already
struggling to cope. They fail to provide the most basic services of water,
electricity and food for too many in our region. Given the Middle East’s
political instability, it is easy to see why the region’s climate crisis is often
described as a threat multiplier, fuelling con ict and state failure.
“ Through co-operation on climate change, we can build

trust from the bottom up, and keep the two-state
solution alive
Inspired by the participation of young people in e orts to clean up the

Jordan river, Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian local leaders have come
together. One of our proudest moments was a meeting at which mayors
from all communities held hands and stood in their swimming trunks in a
cleaned-up portion of the river. The mayors are not best friends. But despite
the animosity between them, these local leaders realised that they would all
be losers if they allowed the despoiling of the river to continue.
The time is now right for bigger, bolder action. That is why we are calling for
a region-wide green-blue deal in 2022. Recent technological advances in
solar energy and water desalination o er bright prospects, and provide the
scope for an agreement that bene ts all parties.
Jordan, with vast desert areas, enjoys a comparative advantage over the
Israelis and the Palestinians in the production of solar energy. For their part,
with access to the Mediterranean coast, they both enjoy a comparative
advantage over Jordan in the production of fresh water via desalination. As
well as meeting domestic needs, Jordanian solar energy could be sold to the
Israeli and Palestinian grids. At the same time, solar-powered Israeli and
Palestinian desalination plants could boost local supplies while also helping
to ease Jordan’s water shortages. For the rst time, each party to the deal will
have something to buy and something to sell.
Instead of ghting over scarce supplies, desalinated water can help

Palestinians draw their fair share of natural water, improving their
livelihoods. New Palestinian and Jordanian waste-water-treatment plants,
solar-energy farms and climate-smart agricultural techniques could lead to
a dramatic increase in food production.
Water good idea

This win-win deal will require investment and co-operation. The progress
we have made in the Jordan Valley shows that Middle Easterners can work
together on practical solutions. By co-operating against climate change, we
can build trust from the bottom up, and keep the two-state solution alive.
From our o ces in Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Amman, we call on the public,
and especially young people across the Middle East, from Rabat to Tehran
and from Beirut to Abu Dhabi, to join our activists in 2022 and hold Middle
Eastern governments to account. We need a region-wide green-blue deal.
Our common survival depends on it.
Gidon Bromberg, Nada Majdalani and Yana Abu Taleb: Israeli, Palestinian and
Jordanian co-directors of EcoPeace Middle East 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “A “green-blue deal” for the Middle East”
Keep updated
Africa’s biggest economies will

struggle in 2022
Smaller neighbours will race ahead
Nov 8th 2021

BY KINLEY SALMON: AFRICA
DAKAR
A t first glance it appears that 2022 will nally herald some good news
for sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast to most of the world, growth is
expected to accelerate. This partly re ects the region’s torrid 2021. While
much of the world enjoyed a vaccine-fuelled recovery from covid-19, less
than 5% of Africans were fully jabbed by October. So, while in 2022 most
other regions will naturally slow, Africa has lots of room to improve.
Still, for the sub-Saharan region overall, the imf forecasts just a 0.1
percentage point increase in growth to 3.8% for 2022. This hides deep
divergences. South Africa, Nigeria and Angola, which together make up
about half of sub-Saharan Africa’s gdp, were in deep trouble before covid-19.
Their sluggishness will continue in 2022. Those bouncing back will be
relative minnows such as Rwanda and the Seychelles, which will see well
above the 3.8% growth projected for the region, and medium-sized
economies such as Ivory Coast and Ghana.
What has gone so wrong in sub-Saharan Africa’s big economies? In Nigeria

the answer, angry locals lament, is almost everything. The region’s biggest
economy is beset by a profound security crisis. Boko Haram and other
jihadist groups are terrorising the north-east. In the north-west gangs of
armed bandits kidnap people and extort farmers by blocking access to their
elds. The government has shut schools and markets and even blocked
telecoms networks in much of the north-west as it tries to bomb bandit
hideouts. Meanwhile, separatists in the south-east are frequently
demanding that people stay at home in protest against the federal
government. All this causes disruption for farmers, traders and anyone else
trying to do business.
Nigeria’s economy is also deeply reliant on oil. gdp per person may again
fall in 2022, as it has every year since 2015, when crude prices fell sharply.
Terrible roads, power cuts and erratic policymaking all exacerbate the
problems. Rising oil prices could bail Nigeria out in 2022, if its creaking
wells can pump enough. But the return of easy oil money will reduce
pressure on politicians to get serious on diversifying the economy.
Angola is also heavily dependent on oil. President João Lourenço, who took
over in 2017, wants to diversify but that will take time. For now a rising oil
price might help consolidate a recovery after ve years of recession. But the
country is struggling to pump enough barrels to take advantage. Angola is
deeply in debt, especially to China, and there is rising anger among the
struggling population who saw elites qua ng champagne in the earlier oil-
boom years, but got little themselves.
Yet there is good news, too. The imf says Rwanda will hit 7% growth in 2022.
Benin should muster 6.5%. The Seychelles, welcoming back tourists, could
reach 8%. Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal should all get near their brisk pre-
pandemic growth rates. These economies have one big thing in common:
none is reliant on oil or mining. Many also have a recent track record of
investment in infrastructure such as roads and broadband cables, a
commitment to further diversi cation, and a willingness to unshackle the
private sector.
They still face troubles, from political strife to rising debt levels. And they,
too, were battered by the pandemic. Without help lling the nancing gap,
the long-term damage to health and education could be “huge and
frightening”, worried Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s nance minister, in 2021. Yet
these places will at least grow robustly in 2022, making a di erence in all
areas, from debt management to poverty reduction.
South Africa, an upper-middle-income country, sometimes likes to see itself

as standing apart from the continent. Yet the last time its gdp grew by 6%
was more than 40 years ago. Nigerians like to point out that the economy of
just one state, Lagos, is larger than that of Ghana. Yet the imf predicts that
Ghana will grow by 4.7% in 2021, as Nigeria manages only 2.6%. Size is not
everything. In 2022 and beyond, the big boys would do well to learn from the
vigour and diversi cation of some of their smaller neighbours.
Kinley Salmon: Africa correspondent, The Economist, Dakar7
This article appeared in the Africa section of the print edition of The World Ahead
2022 under the headline “Small, nimble and not reliant on oil”
Keep updated
Africa will continue to su er coups

and civil wars in 2022
Of the world’s 15 most fragile states, 11 are in sub-Saharan Africa
Nov 8th 2021

BY JONATHAN ROSENTHAL: AFRICA
I n the mid-1980s a young aid worker cut his teeth trying to negotiate
between warring parties in Ethiopia to allow food trucks to cross the front
lines in a bid to ease the su ering in the world’s rst televised famine. The
disaster was largely caused by the government, a Marxist dictatorship that
forced peasants onto collective farms, where they starved, and halted food
supplies to areas under rebel control. It killed 400,00-700,000 people.
More than 35 years later that aid worker is a veteran Western diplomat who
is again trying to negotiate with Ethiopia’s government to allow food to
cross the front lines of a civil war to avert a new famine, a ecting more than
1m people. “It has bookended my career,” he says, with evident pain in his
voice. Ethiopia’s rapid descent, from one of Africa’s fastest-developing
countries to one torn by civil war, will dominate the West’s interactions with
the region.
“ Of the world’s 15 most fragile states, 11 are in sub-

Saharan Africa
Amid famine, mounting atrocities and ethnic cleansing of minority groups,

America and the eu will pile pressure on the government and the rebel
Tigray People’s Liberation Front to end a war that neither side wants to end
but that neither is strong enough to win. Diplomats publicly talk of using
sanctions and an arms embargo to encourage talks. Privately they are bereft
of hope and worry that the longer the ghting continues, the greater the risk
of Ethiopia disintegrating, Yugoslavia-like, into the ethnic states that make
up its federation. Many are concerned that the con ict may also spill across
borders, dragging Somalia and coup-prone Sudan into a war that has already
sucked in troops from Eritrea.
Ethiopia is not the only African trouble-spot that the world will be watching
in 2022. All but four of the 15 most vulnerable countries on the Fragile States
Index compiled by the Fund for Peace, an American think-tank, are in sub-
Saharan Africa. They include long-troubled countries such as South Sudan,
which has been at war for most of the decade since it was formed; the
Central African Republic, which is held together largely by a un
peacekeeping force; and Somalia, where the jihadists of al-Shabab control
most rural areas, and where 15 years of statebuilding are at risk of collapsing
back into civil war because of a power-grab by the president, Mohamed
Abdullahi Mohamed.
Jonathan Rosenthal: Africa editor, The Economist7
2022 under the headline “Trouble brewing”
Keep updated
Elections in Africa will be seen as

bellwethers for democracy
Africans are frustrated at the gap between promise and reality
Nov 8th 2021

BY JOHN MCDERMOTT: CHIEF AFRICA
JOHANNESBURG
T he 1990s were a good decade for African democracy. One after another,
countries threw o one-party rule and embraced multi-party elections.
By 2000 nearly every state had gone to the polls. Since then progress has
been uneven. Peaceful transfers of power are more common, but these
frequently re ect stitch-ups by ruling elites, not the will of the people.
Incumbents often rig elections. Though large majorities in most countries
say they want more democracy, around half of sub-Saharan Africans are
dissatis ed with the democracy they have, up from about a quarter two
decades ago.
African elections will be relatively scarce in 2022. But the few presidential
elections that are due to take place will illustrate why Africans are frustrated
by the gap between democracy’s promise and its reality.
In Mali elections are meant to mark a return to civilian rule after coups in
August 2020 and May 2021. After the rst coup the putschists said they
would hold elections by the end of February 2022. After the second the new
junta, led by Colonel Assimi Goita, a rmed that timeline. But Malians are
wary of trusting someone who helped stage one palace coup and was so
dissatis ed with the results that he led another one. The military men who
run Mali seem mostly interested in exploiting the war economy which
exploded as a result of the Western-backed battle against jihadists in the
north of the country. If they delay the vote it will lead to yet more
uncertainty and fragility.
In Angola elections will be the rst real test of President João Lourenço’s
popularity. He was appointed leader of the Popular Movement for the
Liberation of Angola (mpla) in 2017, replacing José Eduardo dos Santos,
whose 38 years in power enriched his family but did little for most
Angolans. Mr Lourenço has selectively pursued those accused of graft under
the old regime and proposed ways to diversify the economy of Africa’s
second-largest oil producer. But low oil prices and the pandemic kept the
country in recession, and ending electricity, water and transport subsidies
as part of a deal with the imf has further upset many Angolans.
“ Africans are frustrated by the gap between democracy’s

promise and its reality
Politics will be more competitive in Kenya. Uhuru Kenyatta is nearing the

end of his second and nal term as president. But it is unclear who will
replace him. In 2018 Mr Kenyatta agreed on a rapprochement with Raila
Odinga, his former opponent and fellow scion of a political family. The deal
led to a set of constitutional changes under a banner known as the Building
Bridges Initiative (bbi). Mr Kenyatta argued these would take the edge o the
country’s winner-takes-all ethnicity-based politics. Critics said it was an
elite pact that would ultimately see Mr Odinga become president, with Mr
Kenyatta pulling strings in the background.
Whatever the truth, the bbi su ered a serious blow in May 2021 when the
High Court said the changes were unlawful, a verdict later upheld on appeal.
The ruling delighted Kenyan civil society, which sees the constitution
agreed on in 2010 as a bulwark against abuses of power. It also pleased
William Ruto, the deputy president, who said he thanked God (not the
doughty judges) for deliverance from the bbi.
Mr Ruto, who was not known to have had a principled opposition to the
constitutional changes, nevertheless bene ted from the damage it has done
to his rivals, Messrs Kenyatta and Odinga. It will help him make his
argument for the top job—a pitch that self-made “hustlers” like him are
better than members of political “dynasties”. Whether he would do much to
end the corruption and patronage that plagues Kenyan politics is far less
clear.
Africa’s most inspiring presidential election of 2022 may take place in a

country that is not o cially a state. The sovereignty of Somaliland, which
claims independence from Somalia, is not recognised by any other country.
Its politics are far from perfect: clan loyalty determines most people’s votes,
and women nd it hard to get elected. But its presidential race, which will
see Musa Bihi Abdi run for re-election, should be a reminder that, despite its
lack of statehood, Somaliland is more democratic than many other parts of
Africa.
John McDermott: Chief Africa correspondent, The Economist, Johannesburg7
2022 under the headline “The ballot boxes to watch”
Keep updated
African fashion designers will be in

the spotlight
Many African cities have a ourishing fashion industry
Nov 8th 2021

BY GEORGIA BANJO: FOREIGN AFFAIRS
I n june 2022 the Victoria and Albert (v&a) museum in London will stage
an exhibition on the history of African fashion, from independence
through to the present day. It is an ambitious task: no exhibition could ever
do justice to the fashions of an entire continent. But with 250 pieces,
curators hope to show that there is far more than tassels, beading and wax
prints.
The v&a show will shine a spotlight on African designers, such as Lagos
Space Programme, who are increasingly being recognised in the world’s
fashion capitals. African talents are vying for some of the industry’s biggest
awards, such as the lvmh prize for young artists—Thebe Magugu of South
Africa is a recent winner.
For his west African weaving techniques, Emmanuel Okoro won the
inaugural edition of “Africa Fashion Up”, a showcase for African designers
held in Paris in September. Balenciaga, a Spanish luxury fashion house, was
a sponsor. And if fellow Nigerian designer Kenneth Ize’s capsule for Karl
Lagerfeld is anything to go by, 2022 promises more collaborations
showcasing African designers.
Many African cities have diverse, thriving fashion scenes of their own.
Fashion weeks held in Dakar, Johannesburg and Lagos every autumn are
hotly anticipated. Rich subcultures, from the dandy sapeurs of Kinshasa to
the Afropunk scene in Johannesburg, will continue to ourish. But in
America, designers will nd followings by dressing African stars—styling an
Afrobeats singer at the Grammy awards, say, or designing the dress that
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wears to her latest book launch. When the
sequel to “Black Panther”, a Hollywood blockbuster set in a ctional African
kingdom, is released in the summer, expect a urry of African-inspired
fashion shows, as well as some grumbling about cultural appropriation.
“ Many African cities have diverse, thriving fashion scenes

of their own
Increasingly designers are backed by African entrepreneurs. In October 2021

Roberta Annan, a Ghanaian businesswoman, launched a €100m ($116m)
fund to be based in Luxembourg that will award grants to small- and
medium-sized African creative and fashion enterprises. The internet, too,
gives them a global shopfront. Industrie Africa, an online catalogue of
emerging designers, based in Tanzania, recently added an e-commerce
platform to its site. Never has it been easier for designers to reach
globetrotting millennials with money to spend and social consciences to
engage.
Obstacles remain. Most designers still struggle to transcend the logistical

and nancial bottlenecks that hamstring African trade. Despite attempts to
broaden fashion education to a wider audience, the latest styles will remain
largely the domain of an educated, well-travelled elite. But there will be
more feathers in the caps of this small cohort. African fashion is taking o ,
and some of the world’s leading fashion houses will be hanging on to its
coattails.
Georgia Banjo: Foreign a airs correspondent, The Economist7
2022 under the headline “Sustainably chic”
Keep updated
Cyril Ramaphosa says the world

must end vaccine apartheid
The South African president urges a more balanced distribution
Nov 8th 2021

BY CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: PRESIDENT OF
SOUTH AFRICA
T he story of the Trojan war contains a perfect allegory about the
powerlessness of humankind against the forces of nature. It was
unfavourable winds, not a lack of manpower or equipment, that stranded
the Greek armada in a tiny coastal port, throwing its attack on Troy into
disarray.
The worst global-health crisis of this century, the covid-19 pandemic, has
similarly caught us all unprepared. Just as the winds trapped the ancient
Greeks at Aulis, the pandemic has thrown o course our plans to end
poverty, drive inclusive economic growth and reduce inequality.
The pandemic has exposed the fragility of the global economy and society. It
has challenged the notion that richer nations can successfully insulate
themselves from the plight of the developing world. Although the advent of
coronavirus vaccines has broadened the frontiers of hope for a sustainable
global recovery, the inequitable distribution of these vaccines means that
the recovery will be uneven and, potentially, short-lived. If the world is to
overcome the pandemic in 2022, it needs to end vaccine apartheid.
“ Inequitable distribution of vaccines means the recovery

will be uneven and, potentially, short-lived
That will require a more progressive approach to intellectual property

around vaccines. Ensuring the availability of medical supplies for everyone
will require, among other measures, enabling and expanding vaccine
production in developing economies. Covid-19 has exacerbated poverty,
unemployment and underdevelopment across vast swathes of the globe. To
respond e ectively, we will need to increase social spending on health care
and welfare, strengthen health systems, undertake mass job-creation
programmes and build resilience in communities.
The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area will gain
momentum, bringing the world’s biggest free-trade zone into full operation.
Developing economies will continue to make the case that o cial
development assistance is no substitute for increased foreign direct
investment, which is more sustainable, creates more opportunities and
bene ts both investors and recipient countries.
There will be renewed attention on the Sustainable Development Goals and

on mobilising resources to help poorer countries meet them. We will
intensify e orts to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Much more support must be given to low- and middle-income countries,
which are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change while bearing
the least responsibility for it.
In an interdependent world, there is an urgent need for enhanced North-

South collaboration around future pandemic preparedness and early-
warning systems. Covid-19 has highlighted the dire material conditions of
the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed. To emerge successfully from
this crisis, the social compact between citizen and state must be upheld and
deepened. In their management of both the pandemic and the economic
recovery, governments will need to prove themselves worthy of the trust
and con dence of their people.
At a global level, the altruism that brought communities and societies

together in the early days of the pandemic will deepen as we work to
overcome domestic and global challenges, including gender-based violence,
racism and xenophobia. To achieve our goals, social solidarity must
overcome narrow self-interest. This solidarity must be indivisible and
unconditional. It must be based on mutual respect and mutual
responsibility.
The power of solidarity

We can no longer avert our eyes from the inequalities that prevent all
human beings from leading lives of dignity and prosperity. 2022 must be a
turning-point, in which we not only overcome a devastating pandemic, but
also achieve a sustainable, just and inclusive global recovery. Let it be a year
in which we harness the power of solidarity to realise a more equal and
more resilient future—one that leaves no country, community or person
behind.
Cyril Ramaphosa: president of South Africa 7
2022 under the headline “The world must end vaccine apartheid”
Keep updated
The ght against climate change

requires action not just words
“Implementation” will be the buzzword for the new year
Nov 8th 2021

BY CATHERINE BRAHIC: ENVIRONMENT
I t is traditional, after a major un climate summit, for the momentum
behind climate policy to enter a lull. It happens most noticeably in years
after annual summits that had created a lot of pre-conference fanfare and
expectations that were almost impossible to ful l. This was the case in 2010,
after the disastrous cop15 summit in Copenhagen the previous December
had promised a new global climate treaty and delivered a devastating
postponement.
Regardless of the aftertaste left by cop26, which took place in November

2021 in Glasgow, 2022 will not have that luxury. In the rst three months of
the year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its
next two major reviews of climate science, detailing the latest ndings on
the ways in which societies and ecosystems are vulnerable to the e ects of
climate change and the measures needed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.
Together, the two reports will only serve to underline the urgency of
cementing the national climate goals that were presented in Glasgow with
national policies. Expect the rst report to give details of how much climate
change is already a ecting lives in both rich and poor countries. This will
underline how important it is to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C
above pre-industrial average, in line with the most ambitious goal of the
2015 Paris agreement. The second report is likely to show just how
challenging that will be.
Cutting emissions quickly and deeply enough to limit global warming to

1.5°c means total future human emissions cannot exceed 400bn-450bn
tonnes—roughly a decade of emissions at current annual rates. It is
unfortunate but predictable that the promises made in Glasgow will not be
su cient to meet that goal.
As a result, in 2022 there will be considerable pressure on governments and

the private sector to keep their foot on the (decarbonised) accelerator pedal.
“Implementation” is the buzzword, referring to the real, measurable e orts
that countries and companies are, or are not, making in order to meet their
promises to reduce emissions or reach net-zero within a certain timeframe.
One concern is that the energy spike which began in the second half of 2021,
and the resulting fears of the elderly freezing during the winter, will put a
chill on the resolve of weary politicians. “The milestone [for 2022] is this,”
says Li Suo, a policy analyst for Greenpeace East Asia. “By June 2022 can we
see three new policies or actions that make the new targets achievable?”
Lurking in the background is the next stick, though a soft one, that the Paris
agreement o ers, in order to encourage emissions reduction. Parties to the
agreement signed up to a global stock-taking exercise, under which they
must demonstrate the progress they have made towards meeting their
national goals. Data-gathering for the rst stock-take begins in 2022. Time to
start implementing.
Catherine Brahic: Environment editor, The Economist7
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition of The
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “The hard part”
Keep updated
Obese children will outnumber the

underweight for the rst time
Many of the overweight kids live in Asia and Africa
Nov 8th 2021

BY SLAVEA CHANKOVA: HEALTH-CARE
I n spain they could not go outdoors for six weeks. In Wuhan they were
cooped up for 76 days. The worst was in the Philippines, where children
were forbidden from leaving their homes for more than a year. These were
some of the most draconian pandemic lockdowns youngsters had to bear.
But even shorter and less restrictive ones have left scars on children’s lives—
with consequences that will become increasingly apparent in 2022.
One of the most depressing trends is the rise in childhood obesity, which
accelerated in many countries during the pandemic as children sat still at
home for longer, often in front of a screen. A global study published in 2017
in the Lancet projected that if the trends seen at the time continued, by 2022
obesity in children and adolescents aged 5-19 years would surpass the share
who were underweight for the rst time. That prediction now seems certain
to come true.
Many people think that children carrying extra weight are found only in
wealthy countries, and that poor countries’ nutrition crisis takes the form
only of an abundance of emaciated children. In fact, 27% of the world’s
overweight children under the age of ve live in Africa and 48% are in Asia.
Indeed, in some parts of Africa and Asia the number of overweight children
is two to four times higher than the number of children who are too thin for
their height (a measure of acute malnutrition known as “wasting”).
“ 27% of overweight children under five live in Africa and

48% are in Asia
Over the past ten years the share of overweight children has been creeping
up, while the share of malnourished children has been falling. In 2020, 5.7%
of children under ve were overweight and 6.7% had wasting.
Not so with obesity. Poor eating and habits of physical activity formed in
early childhood tend to persist through adolescence and into adulthood. For
millions of young children stuck at home during the pandemic lockdowns
of 2020-21, these crucial habits have changed for the worse. In Germany, for
example, 28% of three- to ve- year-olds engaged in less physical activity
and 20% consumed more sugary snacks during the pandemic.
In rich countries, childhood obesity is concentrated in poor families. In

poor countries, however, it is a middle-class problem—so as average
incomes rise, more children are moving into the overweight zone. Things
are made worse by the fact that starvation in early life increases a child’s risk
of rapid weight gain later on, which scientists think is partly due to
metabolic change. Many poor countries are now facing a “double epidemic”
of malnutrition and obesity, which often coexist in the same community
and even in the same household.
In 2022 and beyond, expect to see more countries trying harder to change
the “obesogenic” environments in which children live. Policymakers will
introduce more taxes on sugary drinks and snacks, revamp school-based
exercise and nutrition programmes, and start treating obesity as a disease
(which it is, according to the World Health Organisation) rather than a
personal failure.
For the youngest su erers, the earlier things can be turned around, the
greater are the chances that they will grow up to enjoy a longer, healthier
and happier life.
Slavea Chankova: Health-care correspondent, The Economist7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Growing up—and out”
Keep updated
The number of people in extreme

poverty is falling again
But some of the damage of the past two years will be impossible to undo
Nov 8th 2021

BY AVANTIKA CHILKOTI: INTERNATIONAL
I n nairobi, a motorbike taxi driver who spent months hiding from his
landlord during the covid-19 lockdown will be back on the road in 2022
and beginning to repay his debt. A farmer in rural Zambia will be relieved
that the local college has reopened and is buying up her crop for hungry
students. In Delhi urban migrants who ed to their home villages when the
city was shuttered will be back and looking for work.
Covid-19 plunged millions into poverty as countries went into lockdown,

jobs dried up and people living in cramped, unsanitary housing struggled to
keep the virus at bay. In the coming year, as lockdowns are lifted and
economic activity restarts, many will be rebuilding their lives. At the end of
2020, the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day had increased to
almost 750m, according to the World Data Lab’s World Poverty Clock, a
predictive tool which includes World Bank and imf data. By the end of 2022
they expect that number to edge back down towards where it was before the
pandemic, around 685m.
Progress will be slow. The imf reckons economic growth in 2022 will pick up
faster in some rich countries than in poor ones. And some of the damage
done in the past two years will be impossible to undo. Skipping meals has
developmental consequences for children. Missed health checks can lead to
long-term illness. Those who sold a goat or a refrigerator in a panic will have
to save for years to buy another.
Globally, the pandemic has pushed

lots of people in middle-income
countries, many of whom lived just
above the poverty line, back into
penury. In 2020 and 2021, economists
warned of a “re-Asianisation” of
poverty as millions of Indians, in
particular, faced fresh hardship. But,
as the recovery takes hold, poverty
will once again become concentrated
in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan
Africa and fragile states. By 2030, over
60% of those living on less than $1.90
per day will be in fragile states. Stable
countries, meanwhile, are inching
towards ending extreme poverty.
Within nations, there is growing concern about poverty in cities. One in ten
people who are poor in 2022 will be in urban areas. Many will be looking for
work, doing things like cleaning homes and hawking street food. But jobs
will be hard to nd while consumer con dence remains weak and the threat
of disease lingers. By late October 2021, some countries like Spain and
Singapore had managed to vaccinate three-quarters of their population. But
in others, like Ethiopia and Uganda, less than 1% of the population was fully
jabbed. That discrepancy will persist into 2022 and beyond.
“ Some of the damage done in the past two years will be

impossible to undo
At the individual level, the gender gap continues to widen. Women, who are
more likely to have precarious jobs, were hit hard by covid-19 lockdowns.
The pandemic cost women around the world at least $800bn in lost income
in 2020, according to Oxfam, a charity. Many who dropped out of school or
lost their jobs won’t go back. Some have become wives and mothers sooner
than they planned. There will be 121 women in poverty for every 100 men by
2030, according to un Women, up from 118 in 2021.
Avantika Chilkoti: International correspondent, The Economist7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “xxx”
Keep updated
Autocrats will continue to target

dissidents abroad
They know that Western countries have done so, too
Nov 8th 2021

BY GEORGIA BANJO: FOREIGN AFFAIRS
B efore 2021, few people imagined that a national leader would order the
hijacking of a foreign plane in order to capture a dissident. But that is
exactly what Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, did last May to
silence Roman Protasevich. An outspoken exile can be a special kind of
headache for an autocrat, causing all manner of image problems at home
and abroad. Silencing them using smear tactics, intimidation and violence,
even if it means reaching across borders and breaking laws, also serves to
spread fear and disillusionment through the diaspora.
In 2022 there will be more such outrages, and a greater variety of

perpetrators. Smaller states will copy larger ones. Mr Lukashenko learned
much from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Asia will continue to be at the centre. Iran, which has killed its citizens
abroad and kidnapped others, will be in good company when it joins the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (sco). The Asian security alliance
maintains a shared blacklist of dissidents.
“ States will continue to use spyware to snoop on their

citizens abroad
Another sco member, India, is the only “free” state to engage in

“transnational repression”, according to Freedom House, a think-tank. The
world’s largest democracy will probably detain more activists abroad in the
run-up to elections in 2022. Nepal, which has long harassed Tibetans and
deported them to neighbouring China, may do so more, ahead of its own
election.
The urge to repress is strongest at moments of heightened political

sensitivity. International sporting events in 2022—the Winter Olympics in
Beijing in February, the World Cup in Qatar in November—are occasions
when hosts will be aware of outside criticism, and anxious to stop it. Hong
Kong dissidents abroad will be at most risk of harassment before a new chief
executive is selected in March.
Governments will continue to use such methods as long as they think they
can get away with it. America’s intelligence community believes that
Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, directly approved the
killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, in Turkey in 2018.
But he will not be deterred by America’s “Khashoggi ban”, which supposedly
slaps sanctions on people implicated in such acts but is unlikely to touch
the prince himself.
After September 11th 2001, America and its allies used the global “war on
terror” to out international law prohibiting rendition and torture, and to
deny suspected “terrorists” their rights. Regimes around the world believe
that gives them the right to do similar things, and worse. A quarter of all the
“red notices” issued for fugitives by Interpol, the international policing
body, contain the word “terrorist”.
As long as Western democracies condone such bending of the rules, it will

be hard to push others to stop. In 2022 they can lead by example, by showing
greater respect for international law and better protecting the exiles of
repressive regimes.
Georgia Banjo: Foreign a airs correspondent, The Economist7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Dictators without borders”
Keep updated
How The Economist’s predictions for

2021 stacked up
Not too badly—even if we didn’t mention the word “variant”
Nov 8th 2021

BY TOM STANDAGE: EDITOR, THE WORLD
AHEAD 2022
A fter the chastening experience of 2020—like everyone else, we were
blindsided by the pandemic—we acquitted ourselves better in 2021. But
while we got the broad strokes right, in retrospect some of our predictions
did not go far enough.
The combination of vaccines and cheap, rapid tests began to turn the tide of
the pandemic. As expected, there were ghts between and within countries
about access to vaccines. And scepticism and conspiracy theories led some
people to refuse to have the jab. But we failed to foresee just how widespread
vaccine refusal would become, and the extent to which it would become a
badge of political identity. Nor did we anticipate the signi cance of
coronavirus “variants”—a word that did not appear in The World in 2021.
In politics, we were right that Donald Trump kept the Republicans in his
thrall, and continued to undermine faith in America’s electoral processes.
We pointed to the risk of post-election violence. But the insurrection of
January 6th showed how far Mr Trump was willing to go in an e ort to retain
power—much further than most people expected.
We thought Japan might get a new prime minister, but did not tip Kishida
Fumio as a contender. We were wrong to suggest demand for oil would stay
depressed. Though we thought the Taliban had “a good chance of returning
to power” in Afghanistan, we expected it to be the result of a political deal,
not a military clean-sweep. And we were shocked by Xi Jinping’s brutal
clampdown on tech companies. But for future-watchers, being surprised is
what keeps things interesting.
Tom Standage: Editor, The World Ahead 20227
Keep updated
The world is waking up to the

scourge of illegal shing
Illegal, unreported and unregulated shing boats are the new pirates
Nov 8th 2021

BY DOMINIC ZIEGLER: BANYAN
I t is time to stop thinking of old-fashioned piracy as the worst scourge
among all human activities taking place upon the ocean. In the Indian
and Paci c Oceans and beyond, that dubious honour easily falls to those
taking part in illicit shing. What is known as illegal, unreported and
unregulated (iuu) shing accounts for 20-50% of the global catch (with the
proportion probably highest in the once-rich waters of the Indo-Paci c).
iuu shing, where operators lack licences, go after protected species or use
too ne a net, is the chief driver behind plummeting sh stocks—just a fth
of commercial species are sustainably shed. That marks a precipitous
decline that robs coastal states of over $20bn a year and threatens the
livelihoods of millions of small-scale shermen.
Worse, iuu operators are likely to be involved in other crimes, from nning
sharks to running drugs. Tens of thousands of South-East Asian and African
crews toil under conditions of debt bondage to Taiwanese, Chinese and
other unscrupulous operators of big eets. In the Paci c, onboard sheries
observers monitoring the catch are routinely murdered. Organised crime’s
tentacles run deep into the shing industry. iuu operators are the new
pirates.
Thankfully, 2022 will mark a turning-point of sorts. Just before the start of
the year a deal to force countries to end most of the harmful subsidies to
their sheries will be reached at the World Trade Organisation (wto). That
goal has eluded the global body until now, despite 20 years of negotiations.
But as Santiago Wills, Colombia’s representative at the wto, points out, in
another 20 years there won’t be any sh left to argue over.
“ Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing boats are the

new pirates
Mark Zimring of The Nature Conservancy (tnc) highlights the convergence

of advanced technology enabling better monitoring of shing eets, as
retailers strive to keep iuu-caught sh out of their supply chains. The
technology—from satellite imagery revealing “dark eets” to onboard e-
monitoring of catches using big data—will become commercially viable at
scale in 2022, Mr Zimring predicts.
More light will be shone on murky global supply chains, too. Already, TNC
has joined up with the tiny but sh-rich Marshall Islands to create a brand of
tinned tuna with impeccably sustainable provenance. In late 2021 Walmart,
an American supermarket chain, signed up to the initiative, introducing it
as its house-brand tuna. In 2022 more retailers will adopt such a model.
Sally Yozell of the Stimson Centre, an American think-tank, says that an
approach emphasising traceability and transparency in seafood supply
chains from when a sh is caught to when it arrives in America will force
the whole global seafood market to clean up its act.
A nal point of brightness is the growing international e ort to go after the

perpetrators on land responsible for organised crime at sea. The ultimate
bene ciaries of ocean crime easily evade overstretched sheries inspectors
in ports, since they hide behind brass plates in opaque tax jurisdictions.
Hence the importance of international e orts such as the UN-backed Blue

Justice Initiative, which encourages co-operation in the ght against
transnational crime. Emma Witbooi, an expert in maritime law, says a third
of all coastal nations could sign up to the Copenhagen declaration that
underpins the initiative by the end of 2022. It is a long haul back to healthy
seas, but the coming year could mark a promising start.
Dominic Ziegler: Banyan columnist, The Economist7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Taking stock”
Keep updated
The digital pandemic of ransomware

attacks will continue
Firms need to get the basics right in order to ght them
Nov 8th 2021

BY SHASHANK JOSHI: DEFENCE EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST
A digital pandemic swept the world in 2021. Prominent ransomware
attacks struck Colonial Pipeline, the operator of the largest fuel pipeline
on America’s east coast, as well as the largest meat-processing company in
North America and Ireland’s health-care system. Attackers scramble an
organisation’s les and demand a payment to unlock them. American rms
lost hundreds of millions of dollars to the problem in 2021 according to the
Department of Homeland Security. The topic even dominated the rst
summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in June. In 2022
governments and rms will ght back, but the pandemic will rage on.
Tired of the economic disruption caused by ransomware, governments will

strike back. Many countries have developed o ensive cyber-forces run by
military and intelligence agencies. These have been designed with state
adversaries in mind, but they are perfectly capable of being turned on
smaller fry.
In March 2021 eight Western countries, co-ordinated by the European

Union’s police agency, attacked and disrupted the Emotet botnet, a network
of hijacked servers used by cyber-criminals. The fbi has conducted similar
operations. Such aggressive tactics will become more common. Indeed,
some states may nd that muscle- exing against criminals is a low-risk way
to demonstrate their cyber-capabilities to their rivals.
“ The line between cyber-crime and cyber-war is blurry
If governments cannot hunt down the attackers, then recovering the

ransoms is the next best thing. In most cases, ransoms are paid in
cryptocurrency, held in anonymous accounts that are hard to unmask. Even
so, America’s government was able to recover the majority of the ransom
paid by Colonial Pipeline by somehow acquiring the password to the
attacker’s stash of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency in which the ransom was
paid. This success will encourage other law-enforcement agencies to
monitor cryptocurrencies more closely.
But the line between cyber-crime and cyber-war is a blurry one—some

attackers are free agents, some are backed by states and others hover in
between. So victims risk losing payouts if an attack is deemed an act of war,
traditionally exempt from coverage. Many governments are concerned that
insurance payouts are enriching cyber-criminals and fueling more
ransomware.
Some attackers are even exploiting the market by determining precisely how
much a rm is insured for, and then tailoring their ransomware demand to
that amount, notes James Sullivan of the Royal United Services Institute, a
think-tank. He says that insurers need to agree to minimum security
standards, so that companies cannot simply choose laxer providers. This
should also prod policyholders into bee ng up their defences.
Governments may even consider a more drastic option: banning digital

ransoms entirely, in the same way that many countries criminalise the
payment of terrorist ransoms for kidnapping. At present, businesses can
largely do as they like; some cyber-ransoms are even tax deductible. Several
American states have pending legislation that would ban such payments.
More will follow.
Yet ransom bans are unlikely to work. They will penalise smaller rms, who
lack the resources and expertise to fortify their networks, and will drive
ransom payments underground. A more useful approach would be
demanding that companies report both breaches and ransom payments,
forcing the issue into the open. Over time, more companies will also realise
that paying ransoms is no guarantee of recovering their data.
Ransomware is part of a larger problem. Cyber-criminals are versatile and

their methods are fungible. Illicit access to a system can be used to hold data
hostage as in ransomware, or to mount a digital heist. Ransomware gangs
are realising that crippling an American pipeline is not the best way to stay
unnoticed. Should ransomware grow too risky, or less pro table, hackers
may turn their attention to, say, stealing cryptocurrency.
Curbing cyber-crime ultimately requires getting the basics right: educating

employees to be wary of suspicious emails; keeping software up to date; and
backing up data. That sort of prosaic cultural change is not as sexy as cyber-
retaliation or as satisfying as a ransom ban, but it is the only solution in the
long term.
Shashank Joshi: Defence editor, The Economist7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Hitting back at cyber-criminals”
Keep updated
Audrey Tang on how technology

strengthens democracy
Taiwan’s digital minister says citizens, rms and government must co-operate
Nov 8th 2021

BY AUDREY TANG: DIGITAL MINISTER OF
TAIWAN
T he covid-19 pandemic continues to have a profound impact on the
world. In many countries we have seen the spread of misinformation,
rising public anxiety and increasing political polarisation—often in amed
by social media. The challenge of tackling the virus, and the social problems
it has caused, is straining the capabilities of governments around the world.
In Taiwan, however, we see a silver lining in the dark clouds. The pandemic
has strengthened our model of collaboration between people, government
and the private sector, deepening what I call “people-public-private”
partnerships. This is because we have built digital infrastructure that lets
people freely express opinions on policy reforms.
Our contact-tracing system, 1922 sms, is a case in point. It was a solution

jointly proposed by civic-tech communities in Taiwan to ensure both
privacy protection and e cient contact-tracing. When Taiwan encountered
its rst wave of covid-19 infections in May 2021, the g0v community (spelt
with a zero in place of the “o”, and pronounced “gov-zero”), a decentralised
group of “civic hackers” in Taiwan, swung into action. Civic technologists
enthusiastically discussed how to improve existing registration systems,
which mostly relied on paper and pencil, or primitive web forms, and were
often confusing or counter-productive to virus-suppression measures.
People power
Inspired by these discussions, we worked with Taiwan’s ve main telecoms
rms to develop 1922 sms. By scanning a qr code using a smartphone
camera and sending a text message to the toll-free number 1922, check-in
records are created and stored—with no need for an app. When necessary,
contact-tracers can retrieve data from the system for quick and e ective
tracing. From discussion to deployment, the 1922 sms system was built in a
week. This would not have been possible without a robust partnership
between the public and private sectors and the people.
This is just one recent example of Taiwan’s alliance between public servants
and civic-techies. Since its establishment in 2012, the g0v community has
gradually grown into one of the largest open-source civic-tech communities
in the world. In 2017, g0v established a system of grants to reward
community proposals that can potentially bene t the public interest. This
in turn inspired us to initiate an annual “presidential hackathon” event in
2018, in which civic technologists and public servants form teams and
compete to develop innovative ways to upgrade government services.
“ The pandemic has strengthened our model of

collaboration between people, government and the
private sector
Another scheme, the Rescue Action by Youth (ray) project, o ers

opportunities to students. Since 2017 my o ce has gathered ray students
every summer to review government digital services. The students are
divided into groups to focus on upgrading particular departmental websites.
Through design and usability studies, they create prototypes that showcase
suggested improvements. This approach has been used to upgrade the
websites of the Hike Smart Taiwan service, which is used by mountaineers
and hikers, and the Youth Development Administration, among others.
There are many other examples. An open platform called vTaiwan, created
by volunteers, brings together representatives from the public, private and
social sectors to devise and debate policy solutions to problems related to
the digital economy, from online alcohol sales to ride-hailing. A related
government-maintained platform, called Join, hosts debates and helps
create consensus in other policy areas. Since its launch in 2015, Join has
been accessed by almost half of Taiwan’s population.
Democracy—the combination of demos (people) and kratos (rule)—means

“rule by the people”. The “Taiwan model” demonstrates how the use of
digital platforms can strengthen democracy, by giving everyone a voice and
enabling a government that works not just for the people but with the
people.
Audrey Tang: digital minister of Taiwan 7
World Ahead 2022 under the headline “How technology can strengthen
democracy”
Keep updated
A turbulent political year is in store

for France
Presidential and parliamentary elections will be tight
Nov 8th 2021

BY SOPHIE PEDDER: PARIS BUREAU CHIEF,
THE ECONOMIST, PARIS
I f emmanuel macron wins a second term in the two-round vote on April
10th and 24th 2022, he will become the rst French president to be re-
elected for 20 years. But he has his work cut out to achieve it.
France weathered the pandemic in 2021 fairly well: schools were hardly
shut, businesses and salaries well protected and vaccines widely
distributed. In the coming year the economic rebound will continue to
boost job creation. The country is less taxed, more tech-savvy and more
business-friendly than ve years ago. In theory, that bodes well for Mr
Macron. But he needs to show that he is not just competent, but can listen,
too.
The race will be tight, nasty and divisive. The French dislike nothing more
than a pre-written script. Polls will uctuate, as voters play with rival
candidates’ nerves. They do not want a repeat of 2017, pitting Mr Macron
against Marine Le Pen. The leader of the National Rally (formerly National
Front) will make her pitch to the anti-Macron gilets jaunes (yellow vests).
The hard-right leader will borrow Brexit slogans, such as “take back control”,
though she will no longer call for a Frexit referendum, nor withdrawal from
the euro. But, on her third attempt at the presidency, she will lack novelty
value.
Parties will matter less than people and polls. Don’t rule out an upset from a
disruptive populist, as seen in America and Brazil. France’s version is Eric
Zemmour, a 63-year-old anti-immigrant and anti-Islam polemicist, who will
portray Ms Le Pen as too soft and drag the debate onto even more toxic
ground. He could split the right-wing vote and keep her from the run-o .
The centre-right Republicans will supply the strongest mainstream

alternative to Mr Macron, if rivals rally around one nominee. They are due to
make their pick on December 4th 2021. Watch three candidates closely.
Xavier Bertrand, head of the northern Hauts-de-France region, will cast
himself as the moderate anti-Parisian antidote to Mr Macron, but is
distrusted within the party. Valérie Pécresse, head of the Ile-de-France
region around Paris, is more of a policy-driven team player, but is mocked
for appearing posh. Michel Barnier, the eu’s former Brexit negotiator, is
better known in Britain than France, but liked by party members. If Mr
Bertrand loses, don’t rule out a rebellious solo run for the presidency. Each
will promise to “respect” the French more—a dig at Mr Macron’s reputation
for arrogance.
In January, France will take over the six-month presidency of the eu

Council. This will put Europe at the centre of Mr Macron’s campaign. Expect
him to push “European sovereignty”, as a response to a rising China and a
disengaging America. Bruised by Anglophones in the Indo-Paci c, Mr
Macron will be keener than ever to reinforce his country’s strategic links—
and act as a dominant voice within Europe in the post-Merkel era.
The odds are still, just, on a Macron victory. But he would nd a centre-right
opponent particularly tough. Even if he wins, he may struggle for a majority
at parliamentary elections in June. He will need help from Edouard Philippe,
his ex-prime minister, who will use his new party, Horizons, to win seats
and clout. A new government will try to curb public spending after the
runaway budgets of the pandemic, and to raise the retirement age. This will
prompt angry protests and strikes. Even if re-elected, Mr Macron will
struggle to repair divisions after a febrile and turbulent year.
Sophie Pedder: Paris bureau chief, The Economist, Paris7
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Macron, and on?”
Keep updated
Will Mario Draghi run to be Italy’s

president?
Or will he remain as prime minister?
Nov 8th 2021

BY JOHN HOOPER: ITALY AND VATICAN
ROME
I taly will hold at least one important election in 2022—and perhaps two.
The unavoidable one is for a president to succeed Sergio Mattarella,
whose term expires on February 2nd. An Italian president spends much of
his time cutting ribbons, presenting awards and making platitudinous
speeches. But he (Italy has never had a female president) also wields
formidable powers. It is the president who dissolves parliament and
appoints the prime minister. And Mario Draghi, the current prime minister
(pictured), is said by associates to want the job.
A lot of Italians would like him to remain in the one he already has. Italy
faces the daunting task of spending, not only wisely but speedily, more than
€200bn ($232bn) from the eu’s post-pandemic recovery funds. Who better
to oversee the process than Mr Draghi, a former president of the European
Central Bank?
Since coming into o ce in February 2021 as the leader of an improbably

heterogeneous coalition, stretching from the radical left to the populist
right, the supremely undemonstrative yet plain-speaking Mr Draghi has
made himself Italy’s most popular politician.
“ A lot of Italians would like Mr Draghi to stay in his

current job
At the forefront of those arguing for him to stay has been Enrico Letta. A
former prime minister, Mr Letta returned from voluntary exile to assume
the leadership of the centre-left Democratic Party (pd) shortly after the
current government took o ce. If Mr Draghi were to stay until the next
general election, which has to be held by March 2023, it would not only keep
a steady hand at the helm for longer, it would also give Mr Letta more time to
revive his party’s fortunes. The pd was at just 17% in the polls when he took
on the leadership. But in local elections in October 2021, the centre-left’s
candidates for mayor won in most of Italy’s biggest cities.
Polling a combined 40%, the right was con dent of victory and, with a
contribution from Silvio Berlusconi’s once-mighty Forza Italia party, an
overall parliamentary majority. Even if Mr Draghi does stay on as prime
minister, it is quite possible, given Italian politicians’ aversion to winter
campaigning, that a general election will be engineered anyway for the
autumn.
John Hooper: Italy and Vatican correspondent, The Economist, Rome7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Draghi’s choice”
Keep updated
A new coalition government will try

to nd its feet in Germany
The new chancellor will try to retain Angela Merkel’s instinct for consensus
Nov 8th 2021

BY TOM NUTTALL: BERLIN BUREAU CHIEF,
THE ECONOMIST, BERLIN
I n 2022 germany will embark on an innovation in governance, and not
only because it will be the rst time in 16 years that someone other than
Angela Merkel is in charge. For more than six decades Germany has been run
by a series of two-way coalitions. For three of her four terms, Mrs Merkel’s
conservative Christian Democratic alliance (cdu/csu) led centrist “grand
coalitions” with the Social Democrats (spd). But Germany’s electorate has
fragmented, and the government that emerges from the election of
September 2021 will in all likelihood comprise three parties. This is set to be
an spd-led “tra c-light” coalition, with the Greens and pro-business Free
Democrats (fdp) as junior partners (the name is taken from the parties’
respective colours, the spd’s being red and the fdp’s yellow ).
Will the three-party experiment work? Optimists hope the tra c-light
coalition could be greater than the sum of its parts. The Greens could
provide the impetus for action on climate change; the fdp on red tape and
digitisation. Together, the two smaller parties could nd common ground
on civil-liberties projects such as legalising marijuana and revising
Germany’s doddery citizenship laws. Meanwhile Olaf Scholz, the would-be
spd chancellor, would use his clout to help steer the next phase of
Germany’s industrial transition, and to reassure European partners that he
will retain his predecessor’s instinct for consensus. After years of Mrs
Merkel’s managerialism, the parties will try to present themselves as a
collective force for modernisation.
Yet their mutual mistrust also risks incoherence and paralysis. If the debt-
averse fdp manages to secure the nance ministry, for instance, the Greens
would need reassurance that their spending ambitions will not be thwarted
at every turn. The parties have di ering views on the eu’s scal rules, and its
debt-funded recovery spending. Such concerns will result in an overly
detailed coalition agreement that will limit the government’s exibility. On
scal matters the coalition could face hurdles in the Bundesrat, Germany’s
upper house, where its constituent parties do not enjoy a majority.
“ The SPD and Green leaderships will have to manage an

ambitious new crop of largely left-leaning MPs
A government beset by disagreements may not be well positioned to face

Germany’s many challenges. These include adjusting to what will soon be a
shrinking workforce; planning for tight carbon-emission reduction targets;
and tackling a looming decision on whether, and how, to replace the ageing
eet of Tornado aircraft that America relies on to carry its nuclear weapons
stationed in Germany. Biggest of all will be tackling climate and digital
investment needs worth hundreds of billions of euros. Germany’s
constitutional debt brake limits borrowing, which means the new
government will have to construct clever o -budget wheezes.
German politics will be a livelier a air. The new parliament is younger and
more colourful than its predecessor, and includes an ambitious new crop of
left-leaning spd and Green mps. Voters in four states will issue their verdicts
on Germany’s new political landscape during 2022. These include North
Rhine-Westphalia, the largest. Its election, in May, will be the rst big test
for all the main parties.
That includes the cdu, in national opposition for the rst time since 2005.
The party faces in ghting over its post-Merkel future. Several of its big
hitters—probably including Jens Spahn, the outgoing health minister;
Norbert Röttgen, a foreign-a airs specialist; and Ralph Brinkhaus, the head
of the party’s mps—will vie for the chance to reinvent a party licking its
wounds following its electoral drubbing in September. After Mrs Merkel’s
long reign, her party’s experience in opposition will amount to its own
political experiment.
Tom Nuttall: Berlin bureau chief, The Economist, Berlin7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Olaf, come on down”
Keep updated
The EU will try to work out what

“strategic autonomy” means
And France will attempt to take over Germany’s leading role
Nov 8th 2021

BY DUNCAN ROBINSON: BRUSSELS
BUREAU CHIEF AND CHARLEMAGNE
I nterviewing an eu o cial can sometimes feel like quizzing Humpty
Dumpty. In “Alice In Wonderland”, the notoriously clumsy egg explained:
“When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more
nor less.” Eurocrats would approve. In trying to navigate between an
unreliable America and a rising China, the eu has alighted on a phrase to
sum up its new guiding mantra: strategic autonomy. Unfortunately, there is
no agreement on what it means. Working out its true de nition will be the
task of 2022.
Partly it is an economic endeavour, and in that area there will be relative

harmony among eu governments. Boosting eu self-su ciency on things
like microchips has the grudging support of free-trading countries, such as
Denmark and the Netherlands. The pandemic revealed that supply chains
can be fragile.
European businesses have been burned operating in China, as intellectual

property has been stolen. As long as the policy is not revealed to be a ploy to
shovel cash at stodgy European enterprises, the liberal countries will play
along. The result will be a European economy less reliant on imports.
“ Unfortunately there is no agreement on what strategic

autonomy means
The other aspect of strategic autonomy—defence and security—will prove

more controversial. The eu is divided when it comes to defence. Hard power
is a hard topic and one that is usually ignored at the eu level as a result. A
French-led summit on defence in the rst half of 2022, with the European
Commission as a cheerleader, will put the topic front and centre.
A likelier option is a more limited coalition of the willing, with some

countries agreeing to meld their armed forces further, but without going
anywhere near forming the oft-forecast, never-delivered eu army.
France will cement its role as the eu’s most in uential government. Angela
Merkel’s departure leaves a power vacuum at the top, which the French will
happily try to ll. France has the rotating presidency of the eu for the rst
six months of the year, allowing it to shape the legislative agenda of the
bloc. (Indeed, it has pledged to do as much eu business in French as
possible.)
Emmanuel Macron, the staunchest advocate of European strategic

autonomy, has the chance to become a second-term French president and
cement himself as the continent’s most prominent leader. Under Mr
Macron, France has increased its in uence on the European stage, but “peak
France” still seems some way away.
A test of French in uence will be in the coming reforms to the Stability and
Growth Pact. Resetting the rules, which dictate how much governments can
spend, will be the main scal battle of 2022. France, Italy and Spain have
long called for a loosening. Germany and the Netherlands insist things work
perfectly well as they are.
Sorting out the spending rules will be the most consequential decision
taken by eu leaders in 2022. In a Humpty Dumptyesque twist, the pact has
provided neither stability nor growth: wide gaps in growth rates have
emerged between northern and southern Europe in the past two decades,
along with a subsequent political backlash. The eu gains its power from its
economic clout. For all its attempts to boost its in uence abroad, strategic
autonomy will depend on getting things right at home.
Duncan Robinson: Brussels bureau chief and Charlemagne columnist, The

Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Strategic what?”
Keep updated
EU leaders will struggle to update

scal rules
The unanimity needed for such moves has often proved elusive
Nov 8th 2021

BY TOM NUTTALL: BERLIN BUREAU CHIEF,
THE ECONOMIST, BERLIN
E urope responded to its nancial crisis of 2010-12 with endless
missteps. The euro zone agreed on punishing austerity as the price for
rescue packages, and the European Central Bank raised rates at the worst
possible moment. The result was a double-dip recession, drastic cuts in
investment and, in some countries, sky-high unemployment, especially
among the young. This time the reaction has been smarter. When covid-19
struck, the ecb ramped up its bond-buying and the eu suspended its scal
rules, allowing governments to spend freely on furlough and other schemes.
The coming year will test just how much has changed. The rst part of 2022
will see a bruising battle between eu governments over the Stability and
Growth Pact (sgp), the eu’s scal rulebook. Even before covid-19 the
constraints of the sgp, drawn up in the 1990s, looked a poor t for a world of
low interest rates and pressing investment needs. Endless amendments had
left a legal tangle only experts could understand. Now countries like Italy
are shouldering debt burdens close to 160% of gdp. The existing rules, due
to snap back in 2023, would theoretically oblige Italy to run primary budget
surpluses worth ve percentage points a year—a punishing form of
austerity that de es common sense.
But governments must nd common ground, and sgp reform is divisive.

Opening the eu treaties to amend the pact’s benchmark gures, which aim
to limit government’s scal de cits and debt stocks to 3% and 60% of gdp
respectively, is unlikely. Countries like Italy and France will urge tweaks that
could, for instance, ease the adjustment path for indebted countries—
perhaps by giving governments a say in de ning it themselves. To help meet
the eu’s “Fit for 55” climate goals, some governments will push for a “golden
rule” to exclude green spending from the de cit calculation.
“ The unanimity needed to change the EU’s tax rules has

often proved elusive
The eu’s sluggish legislative procedures will not kick into gear in time to
change the rules for 2023. In the meantime governments will need a steer
from Brussels on whether their proposed budgets for that year will pass
muster. The commission in turn will need to know that northern
governments will not cry foul if it agrees to wink at rule- outers. But several
have already signalled they will play hardball. Nor will Germany’s new
coalition be minded to align with Europe’s south.
The debate will run amid risks to the

recovery, including continuing
supply-chain disruptions, to which
countries with large manufacturing
sectors like Germany are vulnerable.
Pandemic-related travel and contact
restrictions could curb growth
further. Meanwhile the ecb will wind
down parts of its stimulus in 2022.
Next Generation eu (ngeu), the eu’s

€800bn ($930bn) debt-funded
investment plan, will pick up part of
the strain. In 2022 the commission
will disburse around €55bn in grants,
with especially large sums channelled to Italy and Spain. More will come in
2023 and 2024. To repay the debt, governments will consider increasing the
eu’s “own resources” (common taxes), perhaps via levies on imports from
countries without carbon pricing, or amendments to the eu’s own
emissions-trading scheme. But the unanimity needed to make such changes
has generally proved elusive. That debate will kick o in earnest in 2022.
So will another. Brussels has long struggled to respond to member

governments it thinks subvert the eu’s legal order, such as Hungary and
Poland. In 2022 it will raise the stakes by delaying payments from the ngeu
or even the eu’s regular budget. That will irritate governments who see
Brussels Eurocrats as bullies and worry leaders who fret about eu unity—but
reassure taxpayers elsewhere that they are not paying to undermine the club
from within.
Tom Nuttall: Berlin bureau chief, The Economist, Berlin7
Keep updated
The EU’s new anti-corruption cop

will start prosecuting scammers
The union has long needed someone to go after those stealing its money
Nov 8th 2021

BY MATT STEINGLASS: EUROPE
AMSTERDAM
I n 2021 the eu acquired something it had been sorely missing: an agency
to go after people who steal its money. The new European Public
Prosecutor’s O ce (eppo) can try anyone involved in abuses of €100,000
($116,000) or more of eu funds. The bloc has long had an o ce to
investigate fraud (olaf), but to prosecute cases it had to turn them over to
member states, which usually dropped them. In its rst few months the
eppo has launched more than 300 investigations involving total damages of
€4.5bn. In 2022 it expects to start indicting and convicting people.
Many of the eppo’s investigations target embezzlement or kickbacks in eu

subsidies and contracts. Its rst one involved a Croatian mayor who
allegedly took bribes when awarding a €562,000 contract for a recycling
centre. Others involve customs duties and vat, which are administered by
the eu. In September the eppo reported a scheme to evade vat on imported
covid-19 protective gear to the Italian authorities, who seized €11m from the
accused companies’ owners. Anomalies in trade gures suggest that vat
fraud in the eu could amount to tens of billions of euros per year.
Bogus contractors and tax fraudsters are the eppo’s bread and butter. But its
most complex job is taking on corrupt politicians who pocket eu funds or
use them to reward cronies. Such systemic corruption is especially common
in countries such as Hungary and Bulgaria where the government has
gained control over the justice system. The eppo’s prosecutors are
independent, but they must try cases in member states’ courts. Four of the
eu’s 27 states have no plans to join the eppo (Sweden will sign on in 2022).
They include Hungary, which has the highest rate of fraud involving eu
funds.
One case to watch will be that of Andrej Babis, a billionaire who is the
outgoing Czech prime minister. For years a con ict-of-interest case against
him by Czech magistrates has been stalled. It concerns tens of millions of
euros in eu subsidies received by companies he formerly owned. They have
now turned it over to the eppo. In a separate matter, the “Pandora papers”
investigation alleged Mr Babis moved $22m through shell companies
secretly to buy a villa near Cannes. He denies any impropriety.
The eppo is especially important because the eu’s budget is rising

dramatically. The bloc’s covid-recovery fund will distribute €800bn before
2027, creating big economic opportunities—but also new chances for
scammers. One aim of the eppo is to give the eu’s donor countries
con dence that the money they contribute will be spent properly.
Ahead 2022 under the headline “One cop to nab ’em all”
Keep updated
Vladimir Putin will renew his attacks

on elections and the internet
But can he tame YouTube?
Nov 8th 2021

BY ARKADY OSTROVSKY: RUSSIA EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST
T he poisoning in 2020 and imprisonment in 2021 of Alexei Navalny, a
Russian opposition leader, marked the transformation of Vladimir
Putin’s regime from a consensual autocracy into tyranny, where a small
group of people exercise power without legal or constitutional constraints.
As the Kremlin consolidates this transformation, two remnants of
democracy inherited from the 1990s stand in its way. One is elections, the
other is the freedom of the internet. Both are being steamrolled.
Start with the elections. In 2021 Mr Putin threw out constitutional

restrictions that demanded he step down in 2024. He can now rule until at
least 2036 and probably beyond, but he still needs to dress his power grab in
electoral nery. Yet as the parliamentary elections held in September 2021
showed, the decline in support for Mr Putin’s regime is no obstacle to
victory.
Had the result not been xed, Mr Putin’s United Russia party would have
received just over 30% of the vote, according to Sergey Shpilkin, a data
analyst. Instead it has claimed nearly 50% of the vote and a supermajority in
the Duma. By jailing Mr Navalny, chasing his associates out of Russia and
cracking down on anyone who supports him, the Kremlin has in e ect
banned participatory politics. The aim is to retain elections, but get rid of
any alternative to Mr Putin.
“ The biggest challenge to the Kremlin comes from the

internet
Yet the physical suppression of his opponents is no longer su cient. The

biggest challenge to the Kremlin comes from the internet, which enables
civil society to organise and has elevated Mr Navalny to be the leading
opposition politician, recognised by the majority of the country.
But over the past decade the spread of the internet has rendered the
Kremlin’s monopoly over television useless. The share of the internet and
social media among all sources of information has grown from 18% in 2013-
15 to 45% in 2021. Mr Navalny was banned from state-controlled television
channels, but his YouTube audience is comparable in size to that of any
state-television news programme.
The Kremlin has banned all websites linked to Mr Navalny by deeming them
“extremist”. It has installed equipment and compelled providers to hamper
access to Twitter so that pictures and videos do not upload. It has threatened
the Russian sta of Apple and Google with criminal proceedings in order to
remove Mr Navalny’s app from their stores. Media organisations and
journalists have been declared “foreign agents”, making it almost impossible
to operate in Russia.
But the biggest problem it has is with YouTube, Google’s video-hosting

platform. Though Google is increasingly compliant with Russia’s demands
to remove content, it continues to host Mr Navalny’s lms, which attract
tens of millions of views. Blocking YouTube is problematic. The service is
used by millions of Russians who have little interest in politics but would be
outraged if it were unavailable.
The Kremlin will increase pressure on Google to fall into line: it may slow
down its search engine and impose nes. And it will continue to develop its
own video-hosting platform, RuTube, to which it can move popular content,
then switch o YouTube if necessary. Restoring a monopoly over
information is central to Mr Putin’s power. The war over the internet will
de ne Russia’s near future.
Arkady Ostrovsky: Russia editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Russia’s battlegrounds”
Keep updated
Could Viktor Orban be voted out of

o ce?
To widespread surprise, the opposition have united around one candidate
Nov 8th 2021

BY VENDELINE VON BREDOW: EUROPEAN
BUSINESS AND FINANCE
T he run-up to Hungary’s parliamentary elections in April 2022 is
looking unexpectedly exciting. Although it seemed almost impossible
at the start of 2021 that Viktor Orban, the prime minister, would not keep his
BERLIN
two-thirds supermajority in parliament, the situation changed over the
course of the year. Six diverse opposition parties managed to unite to choose
a single candidate to ght Mr Orban. They also selected joint candidates for
the half of the seats in the Hungarian parliament that are directly elected.
For the rst time since Mr Orban returned to power in 2010, he is facing the
very real prospect of defeat.
The thought of ousting Mr Orban proved to be a powerful uni er of parties

ranging from leftist and liberal parties such as Momentum to Jobbik, a
formerly hard-right party that has become more moderate. The run-o for
the primary in mid-October to choose the coalition candidate was between
Klara Dobrev, a vice-president of the European Parliament; Gergely
Karacsony, the mayor of Budapest; and Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of
Hodmezovasarhely, a south-eastern city. Mr Karacsony withdrew in favour
of Mr Marki-Zay to prevent Ms Dobrev, who won the rst round, from
winning the second.
He and many others believed that Ms Dobrev cannot beat Mr Orban because
she is married to Ferenc Gyurcsany, a wildly unpopular former prime
minister, who remains tainted by riots in 2006 after he confessed to lying
repeatedly about the state of the economy.
Mr Karacsony’s sel ess calculation worked: Mr Marki-Zay, an independent

small-town conservative, beat Ms Dobrev in the run-o . But can the 49-year-
old Catholic father of seven beat Mr Orban? In 2018 Mr Marki-Zay surprised
pundits and pollsters when he won the mayor’s o ce in Hodmezovasarhely,
a efdom of Fidesz, Mr Orban’s party. And he again surprised observers by
beating Peter Jakab, the Jobbik candidate, in the rst round of the primaries,
thus coming third and qualifying for the run-o .
Even so, Mr Orban will deploy all his substantial weaponry to beat his rival.
In the autumn of 2021 he announced that families would be refunded $2bn
in income tax in early 2022. He promised a hike of the minimum wage, a
special payment for pensioners in November and two weeks of extra state-
pension payments in January. And he will try to attack Mr Marki-Zay
personally, as he started to do with Ms Dobrev when she seemed most likely
to be his opponent.
Vendeline von Bredow: European business and nance correspondent, The

Economist, Berlin7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Viktor, loser?”
Keep updated
Celebrations in 2022 cannot hide an

uncertain future for Britain
Not least the question of whether the kingdom can remain united
Nov 8th 2021

BY MATTHEW HOLEHOUSE: BRITAIN
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE
ECONOMIST
A fter the political turbulence of Brexit and the long misery of covid-19,
many Britons will be looking for cheer in 2022. The royal household
will oblige. On February 6th, Queen Elizabeth II will become the rst British
monarch to reign for 70 years. The Platinum Jubilee celebrations will feature
a year of travel around the country by members of the royal family (the
pandemic has interrupted much of the usual ribbon-cutting). There will be
an additional bank holiday for the centrepiece of the celebrations: a four-day
jubilee weekend in June. The itinerary features military parades, pageants
and a pop concert at Buckingham Palace.
Red tunics and bearskins, jets roaring overhead, the wave from the balcony,
celebrity guests and miles of bunting beneath drizzly English skies—it will
all be familiar fare for television viewers fed a regular diet of royal weddings
and jubilees since the Silver Jubilee of 1977. To stand on the Mall during such
events is to watch a clockwork, made-for-television production to rival
anything the music industry can produce. The result is a monarchy that is
simultaneously intimate, untouchable and universal.
Yet 2022’s festivities will be tinged with melancholy. The queen will be 96
years old in April. Though she seems to be generally in good health, she has
had a few minor wobbles, and those watching at home may wonder if this
will be the last great spectacle of her reign. Few tv commentators will dwell
on that.
As the guards march by, the public may contemplate the state of the
monarchy she will one day leave behind. It may not command as much
a ection and authority. Prince Charles, her heir, is much less popular than
his mother, though his accession could change that overnight. She is
politically inscrutable and morally scrupulous. He has made his views
known on all manner of topics, and had his marriages publicly dissected.
The fth season of the Net ix serial “The Crown”, depicting his divorce from
Princess Diana, will air in 2022. Its portrayal of him so far has been
unforgiving.
Britons may contemplate, too, the approaching sunset of their own era: what
Clement Attlee, prime minister from 1945 to 1951, called the “new
Elizabethan age”, of the jet engine, the television and the contraceptive pill.
It will be a year stu ed with parallels, not least in “Unboxed”, a government-
organised cultural festival. As with the Festival of Britain of 1951, this will
attempt to distil the essence of the country in science, maths and
engineering. It will face a wall of cynicism. The politics of that era will recur
too: a period of stability through two-party dominance; a struggle to meet
intense demand for better schools, hospitals and housing; and anxieties
about Britain’s seat at the international table.
The Democratic Unionist Party, the largest unionist party, wants to undo the
British government’s Brexit deal, which has introduced a new trade border
in the Irish Sea. That may lead it to refuse to occupy the deputy rst
minister’s post and to collapse the power-sharing agreement that underpins
Northern Ireland’s devolved government. That would result in civil servants
running things again—as was the case from 2017 to 2020.
There will be another anniversary, less well marked in Northern Ireland, in

2022: the centenary of the establishment of the Irish Free State, the
forerunner to the modern republic. In 1922 Egypt also gained its
independence from Britain. That year proved to be the peak of the British
Empire, and the start of decades of unravelling. What seems solid can
quickly prove fragile.
Matthew Holehouse: Britain political correspondent, The Economist7
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “State of the nation”
Keep updated
The British government’s main

opposition will be its back-benchers
Ideological di erences within Tory ranks will start to show
Nov 8th 2021

BY ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE: BAGEHOT
B y rights, boris johnson should have an easy ride in 2022. The
government enjoys a majority of 80, its biggest since Margaret
Thatcher’s time. The cabinet is packed with simpering poodles. Sir Keir
Starmer is still trying to drag the Labour Party, kicking and screaming, out of
the far-left wilderness. And Mr Johnson has de ned an exciting and
challenging agenda—“levelling up” one of Europe’s most regionally and
socially divided countries. Yet the prime minister is nevertheless in for a
di cult year, with trouble coming not from Sir Keir’s opposition party, but
from his own backbenches.
The Conservative Party has all it needs to cause its nominal master trouble: a
clique of hardened rebels; internal divisions over everything from spending
to foreign policy; a weak Downing Street operation; and a habit of rebellion.
Party bosses calculate that, thanks to growing disloyalty, the government’s
working majority is not 80 but more like 20—about the same number that
John Major had during a premiership that was characterised by perpetual
rebellion and plotting and by a succession of knife-edge votes.
Why is a party that is famous for its appetite for power becoming so unruly?
One reason is that it has been in o ce either on its own or as part of a
coalition since 2010. Every year in power adds to the number of mps who
can’t be disciplined either because they’ve had their time in o ce and been
discarded (such as Theresa May and David Davis) or because they have given
up on ever being promoted. Another reason is that mps are increasingly
acting as political entrepreneurs rather than cogs in the party machine: their
road to success lies in building their individual brands through media
appearances (as Mr Johnson himself did).
“ The chairman of the 1922 Committee will be a central

figure in 2022
But the biggest reason is ideological: the Conservative Party is divided down
the middle between its traditional supporters in the prosperous shires and
its new-found supporters in the industrial north. Shire Tories claim nobody
joins the Conservative Party because they want to raise taxes and expand the
state. But the Brexit earthquake gave the Tories a cohort of working-class
voters who are more dependent on the state than its traditional voters. It
also gave the party a new agenda—levelling up by providing better
opportunities for the left behind, even if that means higher taxes and looser
planning laws.
Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, the backbenchers’
trade union, will be a central gure in politics: far more important, for the
time being, than most cabinet ministers, and perhaps more important than
the o cial leader of the opposition.
Adrian Wooldridge: Bagehot columnist, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “They’re not behind you!”
Keep updated
After covid-19, Brexit’s impact on the

British economy will be clearer
Starting with a shortage of goods and workers
Nov 8th 2021

BY DUNCAN WELDON: BRITAIN
ECONOMICS CORRESPONDENT, THE
ECONOMIST
D isentangling the economic impact of Brexit from that of the covid-19
pandemic is not straightforward. Britain’s nal exit from its
transitional membership of the European Single Market and Customs Union
nally occurred in January 2021. Exports to and imports from the European
Union duly collapsed. But with the country then in the midst of its third
national lockdown it was hard to say which factor was more important. Over
the course of 2022 the impact of the pandemic will, with luck, begin to fade.
But the consequences of Brexit will still be felt.
Britain’s macroeconomic story in the latter half of 2021 was unusually

straightforward: economic demand recovered faster than supply and the
results were shortages, bottlenecks and in ation. Stock levels at both
retailers and manufacturers fell to multi-decade lows and rms across a
wide range of industries complained of a shortage of workers. Some of this
re ected the global fallout from the pandemic. A worldwide shift in
consumer demand—away from services and towards goods—coupled with
the hit to production from a lack of sta , delayed transport, lockdowns and
rising energy prices has led to goods shortages in many rich countries. But
even as such constraints ease elsewhere, the impact will linger for longer in
Britain.
The trade deal struck in late 2020 with the eu lets rms and consumers
avoid tari s and quotas on goods, but has still introduced new frictions at a
previously very smooth border. Food products heading to Europe in
particular are subject to sanitary and phytosanitary checks, but all goods are
subject to potential delays from customs checks. Britain chose to delay
implementing the full checks on imports from the eu for most of 2021, but
they will begin to bite in 2022. Some European small and medium-sized
businesses have already decided that exporting to Britain is not worth the
hassle. British retailers reckon that supply shortages could last well into the
second half of 2022.
The lack of workers may take even longer to deal with. Like the goods
shortages, a di culty in hiring was not a uniquely British phenomenon in
late 2021. But, once again, Brexit will make the e ects felt for longer. Firms
in industries that disproportionately relied on eu workers—such as road
haulage, hospitality and food-processing—have been especially hard-hit.
Although in theory eu workers who were previously resident in Britain, and
acquired settled status, are welcome to return, it is unclear how many will.
New eu workers will struggle to get work visas in lower-waged elds. Higher
pay will eventually begin to draw more Britons into roles such as lorry-
driving, but as the shortages linger into 2022 the government will end up
adding more jobs to the “shortage occupation list” to allow some more
migration to ll the gap.
In ation will stay above the Bank of England’s 2% target in 2022, but interest
rates will rise only slowly. As the post-pandemic recovery slows and scal
policy tightens, price pressures will start to ease by the latter half of the year.
Duncan Weldon: Britain economics correspondent, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Double whammy”
Keep updated
In its centenary year, the BBC looks

vulnerable
The British government and American streamers are the main causes
Nov 8th 2021

BY TOM WAINWRIGHT: MEDIA EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST
T he first radio transmission by what was then known as the British
Broadcasting Company came on November 14th 1922: “2lo, Marconi
House, London, calling.” The call-sign, 2lo (lo was short for London), was
the number of the broadcasting licence awarded to it by the Post O ce.
Arthur Burrows, director of programmes at the bbc, read the news and
weather twice— rst quickly, and then slowly, for those taking notes.
In the hundred years since, the corporation, as the bbc was later renamed,
has become a £5.1bn ($7bn) per year operation that runs eight national tv
channels, more than 50 radio stations, a sprawling website and suite of
apps, as well as a World Service that broadcasts in 43 languages. Yet in the
year of its centenary it will nd itself vulnerable, both at home and abroad.
Start at home. Two Tube stops south of the bbc’s headquarters, the current
occupant of 10 Downing Street, Boris Johnson, is intent on taming what he
calls the Brexit-Bashing Corporation (though some Remainers say it is not
critical enough). The government has indicated that it would like to trim the
licence fee, the levy on all homes that provides most of the bbc’s income.
And it has installed bosses it likes: Richard Sharp, the bbc’s chairman, is a
Conservative Party donor and Brexit supporter; Sir Robbie Gibb, the latest
government appointee to the bbc’s board, was head of communications in
Downing Street under Theresa May. Nadine Dorries, the new culture
secretary, once described the licence fee as “more in keeping in a Soviet-
style country”.
“ In the year of its centenary, the BBC will find itself

vulnerable
The year ahead will o er more opportunities to shape the corporation’s

values. Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, needs a chairman. Mr Johnson is
keen on Paul Dacre, a former editor of the daily mail who has accused the
bbc of exercising “cultural Marxism”. After an independent panel rejected
him in 2021, the government is re-running the process. The bbc’s head of
news, Fran Unsworth, will step down in January. Editorial appointments are
notionally an internal matter, but that did not stop the government from
lobbying against a recent candidate for another bbc news job.
For all the challenges from Downing Street, the bigger ones come from
abroad. Video-streaming means the bbc is competing directly with
Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Net ix has overtaken the bbc’s iPlayer as
Britain’s most-used streaming service—no mean feat given that iPlayer is
free to licence-fee payers. Among under-18s, Net ix is twice as popular as
iPlayer, which also lags behind Amazon Prime Video and YouTube. The
global streaming platforms have economies of scale the bbc cannot match.
Whereas iPlayer has about 11,000 hours of content, Net ix and Amazon
have 40,000 each. And the streaming landscape is becoming steadily more
crowded.
Amid this onslaught, the bbc is emphasising its public-service role. During
the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 it quickly produced online-learning
resources, while Net ix and YouTube were serving up giggles and
misinformation, respectively. The bbc hopes to press that advantage with its
centenary celebrations, which will involve a push into schools.
Like Channel 4, its other main card to play is its fostering of a tv-production
industry in Britain. The expansion of Hollywood’s streamers is leaving local
production houses less reliant on British broadcasters (Net ix is now the
biggest commissioner of new scripted content in Europe). But the streamers
make only what works globally, not distinctly British creations. Those
include wholesome services like Alba, the bbc’s Gaelic-language channel in
Scotland, and raucous hits like Channel 4’s “Derry Girls”.
Those examples highlight another strength of the public broadcasters:

maintaining a shared culture for the fractious nations of the United
Kingdom. John Reith, the bbc’s rst director-general, described how
broadcasting was “making the nation as one man”. As Mr Johnson tries to
hold together a fraying union, that is something for him to consider.
Tom Wainwright: media editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Broadcast blues”
Keep updated
Boris Johnson’s infrastructure

schemes will face opposition
Money will be in short supply, protests will not
Nov 8th 2021

BY ELLIOTT KIME: BRITAIN
B oris johnson wants to go down in history as a master builder. As
mayor of London he pursued many costly transport schemes—and now
political necessity is pushing him that way again. He has promised to “level
up” Britain to secure old industrial seats won from Labour in 2019 by
making poorer places better connected.
He has also pledged to make Britain greener. But if levelling up is to happen,

then digging will have to start in 2022. And his plans are facing opposition
from environmentalists and, perhaps more important, from his own
treasury.
Heightened spending during the pandemic has made the treasury reluctant
to spend more, forcing Mr Johnson to shelve some of his wilder plans, such
as a tunnel between Northern Ireland and Scotland. He may also mothball
the extension of a high-speed rail link, known as hs2, between Birmingham
and Leeds, after projected costs rose from £33bn ($45bn) in 2012 to at least
£108bn. This will cause political headaches, since northern Tory mps wanted
it to boost their hold on those former Labour seats.
“ Heightened spending during the pandemic has made the

treasury reluctant to spend more
A series of road-building and energy projects will go ahead, including

Stonehenge Tunnel and Lower Thames Crossing, two expensive new road
projects. Work on a new electric-vehicle charging network will continue.
Construction of Sizewell c, a nuclear power station in Su olk, should start
in 2022 if planning is approved. Firms can start bidding on the government’s
new hydrogen fund, which aims to have 5gw of low-carbon hydrogen-
production capacity by 2030 for industry and home heating.
Elliott Kime: Britain correspondent, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Shovels at the ready”
Keep updated
The Church of England’s God is

becoming more liberal
Traditionalists should brace themselves for more change
Nov 8th 2021

BY CATHERINE NIXEY: BRITAIN
S miting used to be so simple. God smote and the people trembled, and
they sometimes died. He smote the rebellious Israelites (tens of
thousands died); the rstborn Egyptians (they all died) and the Philistines
(they got haemorrhoids). The Sodomites su ered a particularly striking
smiting. In Genesis, the men of Sodom are “wicked and sinners before the
Lord exceedingly”, so God rained “brimstone and re” upon Sodom. The
brimstone smouldered for centuries; the word “sodomy” entered popular
parlance—and English lawbooks. Homosexual acts remained a crime in
England until 1967.
Few in Britain celebrate a smitey Almighty today. God, as the Archbishop of

Canterbury put it recently, “is love”. And now fewer celebrate a homophobic
God. In June 2021, Methodists voted, after “prayerful consideration”, to allow
same-sex marriage. In September, the Church of Wales voted to allow
blessings for same-sex relationships. In 2022 the Church of England (c of e)
will consider similar questions. The signs are promising. As a recent c of e
book put it, in a tone not easily confused with that of Leviticus: “together we
stand against homophobia”. The evidence is clear: God is becoming more
liberal.
In theory this should not be possible. God, as well as being love, and on
occasion a cause of haemorrhoids, is supposed to be eternal: the same
yesterday, today, for ever. And yet, as critics have noted for centuries, He
manifestly is not. Historians have a theory as to what is going on. “On earth
as it is in heaven” runs the Christian prayer. A concept called
“politicomorphism” argues that the divine chain of command runs in the
opposite direction: in heaven as it is on earth. Democratic, liberal nations
get democratic, liberal deities; undemocratic, illiberal countries get the
opposite. Just ask an Afghan.
“ Few in Britain celebrate a smitey Almighty today
Shrewd politicians have long known this, says James Crossley of St Mary’s
University, Twickenham. God has been used to justify slavery and its
abolition, the oppression of women and their emancipation, as well as
numerous wars. “Left, right, centre…He’s the authority that you want,” adds
Mr Crossley. God is “a complicated chap”.
Take God’s pronouns which—like all pronouns—are currently a cause of

contention, as some now refer to Him as Her. As always, there are obscure
historical texts that appear to justify this: ancient Syriac Christians referred
to the Holy Ghost as “she”. So if He seems complicated now, that is nothing
to what He/She might yet become.
Catherine Nixey: Britain correspondent, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Nearer, my God, to me”
Keep updated
Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act will

have a chilling e ect on free speech
It is the latest example of growing authoritarianism
Nov 8th 2021

BY HELEN JOYCE: BRITAIN EDITOR, THE
ECONOMIST
I n “on liberty”, the greatest defence of free speech ever penned, John
Stuart Mill, the son of a Scottish philosopher and economist, condemned
the “assumption of infallibility”—being so certain you are right that you take
it upon yourself to settle a question for everyone else “without allowing
them to hear what can be said on the contrary side”. If only today’s Scottish
politicians were listening. The country’s new Hate Crime Act, which is
expected to come into force in 2022, will make certain political arguments
punishable by up to seven years in jail. It creates an o ence of “stirring up”
hatred, criminalising utterances that are considered in ammatory or
insulting even when they cause no actual harm and are not intended to
incite a speci c act. And it covers private conversations, even within the
home.
As debate in the Scottish Parliament during its passage made clear, it is

largely aimed at silencing women who argue that access to single-sex spaces
and services should be according to biological sex, not self-declared gender
identity. Speech considered abusive of a trans person—someone who does
not identify with their natal sex—is criminalised; abusing someone because
of their sex is not. A proposal to carve out protection for factual statements,
such as that human beings cannot change their biological sex, failed.
“Stirring up” o ences in England and Wales covering race, religion and
sexuality are narrowly drawn and hardly ever used. The new Scottish
o ences, by contrast, seem likely to be prosecuted with vigour. In 2021
Marion Millar of For Women Scotland, a feminist group, faced prosecution
under existing laws after being accused of sending transphobic tweets. One
included the slogan #WomenWontWheesht (women won’t shut up) and a
picture of ribbons in the su ragette colours that supposedly looked like a
noose. The case was eventually dropped, though only after much expense
and stress. The new act will make such prosecutions easier.
“ The new offence of “stirring up” hatred covers private

conversations, even within the home
It is the latest authoritarian move by the Scottish National Party (snp),

which has dominated Scotland’s Parliament for a decade. Critics say its
focus on Scottish independence, which has given it a near-majority, allows
it to avoid stating a coherent political philosophy or listening to critics. In
2012 it forced through a law criminalising sectarian chants at football
matches, which was repealed in 2018 after human-rights challenges. In 2019
it was forced to drop a “named persons” scheme, which would have
nominated a public-sector worker with responsibility for every child, after
the Supreme Court ruled the plan breached privacy rights. Delays in
implementing the latest act, which passed in March, may suggest cold feet.
Unless amended, it is likely to face legal challenges, says Joanna Cherry, a qc
who sits in Westminster for the snp, and who (despite her party a liation)
represented Ms Millar.
Helen Joyce: Britain editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “A new Scottish authoritarianism”
Keep updated
Marvin Rees on how mayors can save

the world
The mayor of Bristol says city leaders will be crucial in ghting climate change
Nov 8th 2021

BY MARVIN REES: MAYOR OF BRISTOL
T he leadership of cities will come to the fore in 2022, as the inadequacy
of global governance, with its overdependence on national
governments, is laid bare. In the wake of the cop26 climate conference, the
failure of national representatives will become apparent. They are unable to
move beyond high-pro le commitments to tackle the climate and ecological
emergencies by o ering clear, measurable plans with proper funding and a
clear timeline for delivery.
The ght against climate change will be won or lost in cities, which are now
home to over half of the world’s population. Cities consume around 70% of
all energy and generate three-quarters of global carbon emissions. These
numbers will increase as cities grow, with estimates that 68% of people will
live in urban areas by 2050.
At the same time, however, cities o er more sustainable lifestyles. Higher-

density living can result in smaller carbon footprints. Decarbonising urban
transport and energy systems will be important for reaching net-zero
emissions. And it is in cities where most people will be a ected by climate
change, as heatwaves threaten residents in city centres, and rising sea levels
and extreme rainstorms cause ash ooding. We know we need to prepare
for more of these weather events in 2022.
“ Cities are the missing piece of the puzzle in national and

global governance
My city, Bristol, is a member of the uk Core Cities, a network of Britain’s 11

largest urban areas. Collectively we account for 20m people and 26% of
national economic output. Yet there has been no government e ort to
convene us to devise a coherent plan for decarbonisation. This is a recipe for
underperformance at the very moment humanity has no room for error. And
it is a mistake that is repeated time and again.
Cities are organising themselves. More than 300 international city networks
have already emerged. Some are geographically organised, such as Core
Cities, Eurocities and the US Conference of Mayors. Some are organised
around common issues, such as the Mayors Migration Council or the C40
Cities Climate Leadership Group. Others, such as the Global Parliament of
Mayors, are trying to strengthen cities’ role within national and
international governance structures.
In 2018 I spoke at the United Nations during the nal negotiations of its
Global Compact on Migration. As the rst mayor to be invited to speak, I
argued that cities should be given a stronger, more formal role in setting
migration policy. Most migrants leave cities, transit through them, travel to
them and return to them—including Bristol. As with climate, cities can
provide leadership and expertise. The un’s compact had direct
consequences for the lives of Bristol people, many of whom, like me, are
rst- or second-generation migrants.
When I was rst elected in 2016, I did not anticipate how central
international leadership would be to my mayoralty. But it is a natural
extension of the argument for the devolution of more powers to individual
cities. It is not enough to be able to shape what happens within the city.
Serving Bristol means taking account of, and helping to shape, the external
context and forces that a ect life in the city.
None of this is a prediction of the demise of national governments. Rather it

is an argument for the missing piece of the puzzle in national and
international governance. National governments need to make space, and
international organisations need to redirect much of their energy and
nance through cities. My colleague on the World Economic Forum Global
Future Councils Forum, the scholar and writer Greg Clark, says we are living
in the century of the city. It is of critical importance, for all our sakes, that
national and international governance catches up with that fact. Making city
leaders equal partners in shaping national and international policy will
maximise our chances of tackling the major challenges of our time.
Marvin Rees: mayor of Bristol 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “How mayors can help save the world”
Keep updated
What next? 22 emerging

technologies to watch in 2022
New ideas can emerge seemingly overnight
Nov 8th 2021

BY THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
CORRESPONDENTS OF THE ECONOMIST
T he astonishingly rapid development and rollout of coronavirus
vaccines has been a reminder of the power of science and technology to
change the world. Although vaccines based on new mrna technology
seemed to have been created almost instantly, they actually drew upon
decades of research going back to the 1970s. As the saying goes in the
technology industry, it takes years to create an overnight success. So what
else might be about to burst into prominence? Here are 22 emerging
technologies worth watching in 2022
Solar geoengineering
It sounds childishly simple. If the world is getting too hot, why not o er it
some shade? The dust and ash released into the upper atmosphere by
volcanoes is known to have a cooling e ect: Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in
1991 cooled the Earth by as much as 0.5°C for four years. Solar
geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management, would do the
same thing deliberately.
This is hugely controversial. Would it work? How would rainfall and weather
patterns be a ected? And wouldn’t it undermine e orts to curb greenhouse-
gas emissions? E orts to test the idea face erce opposition from politicians
and activists. In 2022, however, a group at Harvard University hopes to
conduct a much-delayed experiment called scopex. It involves launching a
balloon into the stratosphere, with the aim of releasing 2kg of material
(probably calcium carbonate), and then measuring how it dissipates, reacts
and scatters solar energy.
Proponents argue that it is important to understand the technique, in case it

is needed to buy the world more time to cut emissions. The Harvard group
has established an independent advisory panel to consider the moral and
political rami cations. Whether the test goes ahead or not, expect
controversy.
Heat pumps
Keeping buildings warm in winter accounts for about a quarter of global
energy consumption. Most heating relies on burning coal, gas or oil. If the
world is to meet its climate-change targets, that will have to change. The
most promising alternative is to use heat pumps—essentially, refrigerators
that run in reverse.
Gradient, based in San Francisco, is one of several companies o ering a heat

pump that can provide both heating and cooling. Its low-pro le, saddle-bag
shaped products can be mounted in windows, like existing air conditioners,
and will go on sale in 2022.
Hydrogen-powered planes
Electrifying road transport is one thing. Aircraft are another matter. Batteries
can only power small aircraft for short ights. But might electricity from
hydrogen fuel cells, which excrete only water, do the trick? Passenger planes
due to be test- own with hydrogen fuel cells in 2022 include a two-seater
being built at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. ZeroAvia,
based in California, plans to complete trials of a 20-seat aircraft, and aims to
have its hydrogen-propulsion system ready for certi cation by the end of
the year. Universal Hydrogen, also of California, hopes its 40-seat plane will
take o in September 2022.
Direct air capture

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes global warming. So why not suck
it out using machines? Several startups are pursuing direct air capture (dac),
a technology that does just that. In 2022 Carbon Engineering, a Canadian
rm, will start building the world’s biggest dac facility in Texas, capable of
capturing 1m tonnes of CO2 per year. ClimeWorks, a Swiss rm, opened a
dac plant in Iceland in 2021, which buries captured CO2 in mineral form at a
rate of 4,000 tonnes a year. Global Thermostat, an American rm, has two
pilot plants. dac could be vital in the ght against climate change. The race
is on to get costs down and scale the technology up.
Vertical farming
A new type of agriculture is growing. Vertical farms grow plants on trays
stacked in a closed, controlled environment. E cient led lighting has made
the process cheaper, though energy costs remain a burden. Vertical farms
can be located close to customers, reducing transport costs and emissions.
Water use is minimised and bugs are kept out, so no pesticides are needed.
In Britain, the Jones Food Company will open the world’s largest vertical
farm, covering 13,750 square metres, in 2022. AeroFarms, an American rm,
will open its largest vertical farm, in Daneville, Virginia. Other rms will be
expanding, too. Nordic Harvest will enlarge its facility just outside
Copenhagen and construct a new one in Stockholm. Plenty, based in
California, will open a new indoor farm near Los Angeles. Vertical farms
mostly grow high-value leafy greens and herbs, but some are venturing into
tomatoes, peppers and berries. The challenge now is to make the economics
stack up, too.
Container ships with sails

Ships produce 3% of greenhouse-gas emissions. Burning maritime bunker
fuel, a dirty diesel sludge, also contributes to acid rain. None of this was a
problem in the age of sail—which is why sails are making a comeback, in
high-tech form, to cut costs and emissions.
In 2022 Michelin of France will equip a freighter with an in atable sail that
is expected to reduce fuel consumption by 20%. mol, a Japanese shipping
rm, plans to put a telescoping rigid sail on a ship in August 2022. Naos
Design of Italy expects to equip eight ships with its pivoting and foldable
hard “wing sails”. Other approaches include kites, “suction wings” that
house fans, and giant, spinning cylinders called Flettner rotors. By the end
of 2022 the number of big cargo ships with sails of some kind will have
quadrupled to 40, according to the International Windship Association. If
the European Union brings shipping into its carbon-trading scheme in 2022,
as planned, that will give these unusual technologies a further push.
VR workouts
Most people do not do enough exercise. Many would like to, but lack
motivation. Virtual reality (vr) headsets let people play games and burn
calories in the process, as they punch or slice oncoming shapes, or squat
and shimmy to dodge obstacles. vr workouts became more popular during
the pandemic as lockdowns closed gyms and a powerful, low-cost headset,
the Oculus Quest 2, was released. An improved model and new tness
features are coming in 2022. And Supernatural, a highly regarded vr
workout app available only in North America, may be released in Europe.
Could the killer app for virtual reality be physical tness?
Vaccines for HIV and malaria

The impressive success of coronavirus vaccines based on messenger rna
(mrna) heralds a golden era of vaccine development. Moderna is developing
an hiv vaccine based on the same mrna technology used in its highly
e ective coronavirus vaccine. It entered early-stage clinical trials in 2021
and preliminary results are expected in 2022. BioNTech, joint-developer of
the P zer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, is working on an mrna vaccine for
malaria, with clinical trials expected to start in 2022. Non-mrna vaccines
for hiv and malaria, developed at the University of Oxford, are also showing
promise.
3D-printed bone implants

For years, researchers have been developing techniques to create arti cial
organs using 3d printing of biological materials. The ultimate goal is to take
a few cells from a patient and create fully functional organs for
transplantation, thus doing away with long waiting-lists, testing for matches
and the risk of rejection.
That goal is still some way o for eshy organs. But bones are less tricky.
Two startups, Particle3d and adam, hope to have 3d-printed bones available
for human implantation in 2022. Both rms use calcium-based minerals to
print their bones, which are made to measure based on patients’ ct scans.
Particle3d’s trials in pigs and mice found that bone marrow and blood
vessels grew into its implants within eight weeks. adam says its 3d-printed
implants stimulate natural bone growth and gradually biodegrade,
eventually being replaced by the patient’s bone tissue. If all goes well,
researchers say 3d-printed blood vessels and heart valves are next.
Flying electric taxis

Long seen as something of a fantasy, ying taxis, or electric vertical take-o
and landing (evtol) aircraft, as the edgling industry calls them, are getting
serious. Several rms around the world will step up test ights in 2022 with
the aim of getting their aircraft certi ed for commercial use in the following
year or two. Joby Aviation, based in California, plans to build more than a
dozen of its ve-seater vehicles, which have a 150-mile range. Volocopter of
Germany aims to provide an air-taxi service at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Other contenders include eHang, Lilium and Vertical Aerospace. Keep an eye
on the skies.
Space tourism
After a stand-out year for space tourism in 2021, as a succession of
billionaire-backed e orts shot civilians into the skies, hopes are high for
2022. Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic just beat Je Bezos’s Blue Origin
to the edge of space in July, with both billionaires riding in their own
spacecraft on suborbital trips. In September Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX,
sent four passengers on a multi-day orbital cruise around the Earth.
All three rms hope to y more tourists in 2022, which promises to be the
rst year in which more people go to space as paying passengers than as
government employees. But Virgin Galactic is modifying its vehicle to make
it stronger and safer, and it is not expected to y again until the second half
of 2022, with commercial service starting in the fourth quarter. Blue Origin
plans more ights but has not said when or how many. For its part, SpaceX
has done a deal to send tourists to the International Space Station. Next up?
The Moon.
Delivery drones
They are taking longer than expected to get o the ground. But new rules,
which came into e ect in 2021, will help drone deliveries gain altitude in
2022. Manna, an Irish startup which has been delivering books, meals and
medicine in County Galway, plans to expand its service in Ireland and into
Britain. Wing, a sister company of Google, has been doing test deliveries in
America, Australia and Finland and will expand its mall-to-home delivery
service, launched in late 2021. Dronamics, a Bulgarian startup, will start
using winged drones to shuttle cargo between 39 European airports. The
question is: will the pace of drone deliveries pick up—or drop o ?
Quieter supersonic aircraft

For half a century, scientists have wondered whether changes to the shape of
a supersonic aircraft could reduce the intensity of its sonic boom. Only
recently have computers become powerful enough to run the simulations
needed to turn those noise-reduction theories into practice.
In 2022 nasa’s x-59 Quesst (short for “Quiet Supersonic Technology”) will
make its rst test ight. Crucially, that test will take place over land—
speci cally, Edwards Air Force Base in California. Concorde, the world’s rst
and only commercial supersonic airliner, was not allowed to travel faster
than sound when ying over land. The x-59’s sonic boom is expected to be
just one-eighth as loud as Concorde’s. At 75 perceived decibels, it will be
equivalent to a distant thunderstorm—more of a sonic “thump”. If it works,
nasa hopes that regulators could lift the ban on supersonic ights over
land, ushering in a new era for commercial ight.
3D-printed houses
Architects often use 3d printing to create scale models of buildings. But the
technology can be scaled up and used to build the real thing. Materials are
squirted out of a nozzle as a foam that then hardens. Layer by layer, a house
is printed—either on site, or as several pieces in a factory that are
transported and assembled.
In 2022 Mighty Buildings, based in California, will complete a development

of 15 eco-friendly 3d-printed homes at Rancho Mirage. And icon, based in
Texas, plans to start building a community of 100 3d-printed homes near
Austin, which would be the largest development of its kind.
Sleep tech
It’s become a craze in Silicon Valley. Not content with maximising their
productivity and performance during their waking hours, geeks are now
optimising their sleep, too, using an array of technologies. These include
rings and headbands that record and track sleep quality, soothing sound
machines, devices to heat and cool mattresses, and smart alarm clocks to
wake you at the perfect moment. Google launched a sleep-tracking
nightstand tablet in 2021, and Amazon is expected to follow suit in 2022. It
sounds crazy. But poor sleep is linked with maladies from heart disease to
obesity. And what Silicon Valley does today, everyone else often ends up
doing tomorrow.
Personalised nutrition
Diets don't work. Evidence is growing that each person’s metabolism is
unique, and food choices should be, too. Enter personalised nutrition: apps
that tell you what to eat and when, using machine-learning algorithms, tests
of your blood and gut microbiome, data on lifestyle factors such as exercise,
and real-time tracking of blood-sugar levels using coin-sized devices
attached to the skin. After successful launches in America, personalised-
nutrition rms are eyeing other markets in 2022. Some will also seek
regulatory approval as treatments for conditions such as diabetes and
migraine.
Wearable health trackers

Remote medical consultations have become commonplace. That could
transform the prospects for wearable health trackers such as the Fitbit or
Apple Watch. They are currently used primarily as tness trackers,
measuring steps taken, running and swimming speeds, heart rates during
workouts, and so forth. But the line between consumer and medical uses of
such devices is now blurring, say analysts at Gartner, a consultancy.
Smart watches can already measure blood oxygenation, perform ecgs and
detect atrial brillation. The next version of the Apple Watch, expected in
2022, may include new sensors capable of measuring levels of glucose and
alcohol in the blood, along with blood pressure and body temperature.
Rockley Photonics, the company supplying the sensor technology, calls its
system a “clinic on the wrist”. Regulatory approval for such functions may
take a while, but in the meantime doctors, not just users, will be paying
more attention to data from wearables.
The metaverse
Coined in 1992 by Neal Stephenson in his novel “Snow Crash”, the word
“metaverse” referred to a persistent virtual world, accessible via special
goggles, where people could meet, irt, play games, buy and sell things, and
much more besides. In 2022 it refers to the fusion of video games, social
networking and entertainment to create new, immersive experiences, like
swimming inside your favourite song at an online concert. Games such as
Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite are all stepping-stones to an emerging new
medium. Facebook has renamed itself Meta to capitalise on the opportunity
—and distract from its other woes.
Quantum computing
An idea that existed only on blackboards in the 1990s has grown into a
multi-billion dollar contest between governments, tech giants and startups:
harnessing the counter-intuitive properties of quantum physics to build a
new kind of computer. For some kinds of mathematics a quantum computer
could outperform any non-quantum machine that could ever be built,
making quick work of calculations used in cryptography, chemistry and
nance.
But when will such machines arrive? One measure of a quantum computer’s
capability is its number of qubits. A Chinese team has built a computer with
66 qubits. ibm, an American rm, hopes to hit 433 qubits in 2022 and 1,000
by 2023. But existing machines have a fatal aw: the delicate quantum states
on which they depend last for just a fraction of a second. Fixing that will
take years. But if existing machines can be made useful in the meantime,
quantum computing could become a commercial reality much sooner than
expected.
Virtual in uencers
Unlike a human in uencer, a virtual in uencer will never be late to a
photoshoot, get drunk at a party or get old. That is because virtual
in uencers are computer-generated characters who plug products on
Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
The best known is Miquela Sousa, or “Lil Miquela”, a ctitious Brazilian-

American 19-year-old with 3m Instagram followers. With $15bn expected to
be spent on in uencer marketing in 2022, virtual in uencers are
proliferating. Aya Stellar—an interstellar traveller crafted by Cosmiq
Universe, a marketing agency—will land on Earth in February. She has
already released a song on YouTube.
Brain interfaces
In April 2021 the irrepressible entrepreneur Elon Musk excitedly tweeted
that a macaque monkey was “literally playing a video game telepathically
using a brain chip”. His company, Neuralink, had implanted two tiny sets of
electrodes into the monkey’s brain. Signals from these electrodes,
transmitted wirelessly and then decoded by a nearby computer, enabled the
monkey to move the on-screen paddle in a game of Pong using thought
alone.
In 2022 Neuralink hopes to test its device in humans, to enable people who
are paralysed to operate a computer. Another rm, Synchron, has already
received approval from American regulators to begin human trials of a
similar device. Its “minimally invasive” neural prosthetic is inserted into the
brain via blood vessels in the neck. As well as helping paralysed people,
Synchron is also looking at other uses, such as diagnosing and treating
nervous-system conditions including epilepsy, depression and
hypertension.
Arti cial meat and sh

Winston Churchill once mused about “the absurdity of growing a whole
chicken to eat the breast or wing”. Nearly a century later, around 70
companies are “cultivating” meats in bioreactors. Cells taken from animals,
without harming them, are nourished in soups rich in proteins, sugars, fats,
vitamins and minerals. In 2020 Eat Just, an arti cial-meat startup based in
San Francisco, became the rst company certi ed to sell its products, in
Singapore.
It is expected to be joined by a handful of other rms in 2022. In the coming

year an Israeli startup, SuperMeat, expects to win approval for commercial
sales of cultivated chicken burgers, grown for $10 a pop—down from $2,500
in 2018, the company says. Finless Foods, based in California, hopes for
approval to sell cultivated blue n tuna, grown for $440 a kilogram—down
from $660,000 in 2017. Bacon, turkey and other cultivated meats are in the
pipeline. Eco-conscious meat-lovers will soon be able to have their steak—
and eat it.
By the Science and technology correspondents of The Economist7
This article appeared in the What next? section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “What next?”
Keep updated
The ght over the hybrid future of

work
People like working from home. Bosses want them back in the o ce
Nov 8th 2021

BY CALLUM WILLIAMS: SENIOR
ECONOMICS WRITER, THE ECONOMIST,
SAN FRANCISCO
T he lockdowns of 2020 represented an unprecedented shock to o ce
life. Overnight, companies the world over were forced into a giant
experiment in working from home (wfh) that few rms would ever have
dared try of their own volition. At the peak in the spring of 2020, some 60%
of total working hours in America were conducted from people’s living
rooms, kitchens and, for the lucky few, home o ces. The results of this
experiment are in, and they suggest that many of these novel working
practices will endure. And for the better.
For workers, the great wfh experiment has gone fairly well. Adjusting to the
new regime was not easy for everyone—especially those living in small ats,
or with children to home-school. Yet on average workers report higher levels
of satisfaction and happiness. Respondents to surveys suggest that they
would like to work from home nearly 50% of the time, up from 5% before
the pandemic, with the remainder in the o ce. But people’s actual
behaviour suggests that their true preference is to spend even more time in
their pyjamas. How else to explain why, even in places where the threat
from covid-19 is low, o ces are only a third full?
Few managers seem keen on so much remote working. According to a

survey by three economists, José Maria Barrero, Nick Bloom and Steven
Davis, rms expect that around a quarter of all work hours will be done from
home in a post-covid world—about half what workers want. These harder-
nosed preferences in part re ect a perception that too much time out of the
o ce is bad for productivity and company culture. Certainly some evidence
suggests that working from home full-time can make people less e cient.
Yet there is less disagreement on the bene ts of a “hybrid” approach.

Research suggests that a mixture of home and o ce work can actually be
the best arrangement for productivity. It enables a more e cient division of
labour between “deep work” (the sort requiring lots of concentration, which
may be best done at home) and collaborative work (best done with
colleagues, in person, in the o ce). Setting aside some afternoons for in-
person drinks or awaydays also helps maintain company culture.
Firms have other incentives to o er hybrid work, beyond mere e ciency.

Some recognise its importance in the ght to retain talent. Even the most
prestigious investment banks, which until now have stressed the bene ts of
the o ce, are soon likely to have people jumping ship if they do not become
more exible.
There are already signs that the move to hybrid working is paying o . During
the pandemic people’s views of their rms’ culture became more favourable,
suggest data from Glassdoor, a website that lets workers rate employers.
Surveys by Gallup, a pollster, nd that employee “engagement” in America, a
rough measure of how committed people are to their jobs, is near an all-
time high. In part this re ects a sense of solidarity with colleagues and
managers. But it also re ects a genuine improvement in working
conditions.
Further changes are on the way in 2022. Many rms realise that they need to
do more to encourage people to come into the o ce. That means investing
in perks such as tness centres and good food. And governments are waking
up to the fact that employment law needs to evolve, to recognise and protect
home-workers.
The wfh experiment has a sting in the tail, however. Not everyone can
bene t from it. Even in rich countries a majority of the workforce must be
physically present in order to do their jobs. Long before the pandemic a gap
was emerging between well-paid, intellectually stimulated workers on the
one hand, and poorly paid service workers on the other. The rise of working
from home deepens the split between these two types of people—with
consequences that no one can predict.
Callum Williams: Senior economics writer, The Economist, San Francisco7
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Pyjamas v suits ”
Keep updated
Why 2022 will be the year of the

worker
Workers have more bargaining power than they have had for years
Nov 8th 2021

BY CALLUM WILLIAMS: SENIOR
ECONOMICS WRITER, THE ECONOMIST
W orkers around the world su ered hardship during the lockdowns
of 2020 and 2021. In the rst year of the pandemic global working
hours declined by 9%. In some countries unemployment shot up so quickly
that social-security computers broke. Workers on low salaries or with fewer
quali cations bore the brunt. Some analysts worry that the pandemic will
usher in a harsher era in which such workers struggle to nd jobs, or see
their work done by robots. But there is reason not to be so pessimistic.
Already labour markets across the rich world have outperformed

expectations. In mid-2020 the oecd, a club of mostly rich countries,
reckoned that, in the event of a second wave of covid-19 infections,
unemployment in its member states would be around 9% at the end of 2021.
In fact many countries saw three or even four waves of the virus. Yet
unemployment gures were better, not worse, than expected (currently
around 6%). Even countries not known for speedy recoveries, such as those
in the euro zone, have bounced back quickly.
“ Workers have more bargaining power than they have

had for years
Three factors mean that the world of work will continue to outperform
expectations in 2022. The rst relates to working from home. Estimates
suggest that people will spend around ve times as much of their working
time out of the o ce as before the pandemic, boosting both happiness and
productivity.
The second factor relates to automation. Many economists assume that the
pandemic will usher in the rise of the robots, with AI-enabled machines
taking jobs. It is certainly true that past pandemics have encouraged
automation, in part because robots do not get sick. But so far, according to
The Economist’s analysis, there is little evidence of automation taking place.
Jobs that are supposedly vulnerable to mechanisation are growing just as
quickly as other sorts.
The upshot is that workers have more bargaining power than they have had
for years. Already in America the number of monthly resignations is near
all-time highs. Employers o ering low wages or poor conditions are
struggling to ll positions: un lled vacancies, at 30m across the rich world,
have never been so high. Too much worker power can be in ationary;
employers need some bargaining power too. Yet for much of the past decade
businesses have had the upper hand. The year of the worker need not be
feared.
Callum Williams: Senior economics writer, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Labour gains”
Keep updated
Companies’ promises to hit net-zero

will be put to the test
Much ado about nothing
Nov 8th 2021

BY VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: GLOBAL
ENERGY AND CLIMATE INNOVATION
EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST, NEW YORK
P romising nothing is all the rage these days in the executive suite.
Leading corporate bosses have been rushing to declare their
commitment to “net zero” emissions targets. By this, they imply that their
companies will dramatically slash net emissions of greenhouse gases
(ghgs) to nothing—or even go negative, possibly by making use of
technologies for sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and burying it. These
promises are in line with commitments made by many governments under
the Paris agreement to cut national emissions of ghgs by 2050 to limit
global warming.
Given that many industries were in the past reluctant to embrace

demanding climate targets (or, as the fossil-fuel industry did, lobbied
against them), this at rst seems remarkable. A recent analysis of the world’s
2,000 biggest publicly traded rms found that over a fth of them—with
combined sales of nearly $14trn a year—have embraced net-zero targets.
More than two-thirds of rms selling household and personal products, for
example, had made such commitments. In America, about a quarter of the
big industrial rms in the s&p 500 index have done so. Some technology
giants, including Alphabet and Microsoft, even claim that they will remove
from the atmosphere all carbon they have spewed out in their corporate
history.
Although climate ambition is to be applauded, such grand claims need to be

taken with a very large pinch of salt, for two reasons. The rst is that the
terms used by many rms to describe their climate ambitions, which range
from “net zero” to “carbon neutral” to “zero emission” to “carbon negative”,
are slippery indeed. Innocent bystanders may think these commit a
company to make massive reductions in its emissions of ghgs, but that is
not necessarily the case. Most companies plan to make some cuts in
emissions, which may prove painful and costly, and to achieve the rest of
their carbon goal by buying cheaper “o sets” (such as credits for renewable-
energy projects or for protecting forests that sequester carbon) that vary
wildly in quality. This loophole lets rms make green promises without
explaining exactly how they plan to clean up their act.
“ Companies will start getting serious about their net-zero

goals
The second reason for scepticism is that most of these commitments are
being made for 2040, 2050 or beyond. Given that none of the bosses making
these promises is likely to be in charge then, it is worryingly easy for bosses
to set ambitious goals for which they will not be held accountable when the
time comes. Many rms are also using the long time horizon as an excuse
not to specify how their goals will be met, pointing instead to unspeci ed
future innovations that will magically solve the problem. In television
advertisements trumpeting its goal of net-zero by 2040, Amazon even
acknowledges as much, admitting that “We don’t really know exactly how
we’re going to get there.”
The other reason for hope comes from the bottom up. The Science Based
Targets initiative (sbti), a voluntary project organised by several
environmental and international organisations including the un, is pushing
companies to make serious net-zero commitments that are consistent with
the Paris agreement’s goals on containing global warming. The sbti’s bo ns
will accredit only those companies that adopt high standards of
measurement and disclosure of climate data, and have serious carbon-
mitigation plans (o sets of any kind do not count, for example). Firms
embracing science-based targets have reduced their combined ghg
emissions by a quarter since 2015, whereas global emissions from energy
and industrial processes have risen by 3.4% over that same period.
Greenwashers, in short, need not apply.
Vijay Vaitheeswaran: Global energy and climate innovation editor, The

Economist, New York7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Much ado about nothing”
Keep updated
Antitrust regulators face vibrant

competition—with each other
The race to be the best tech regulator is highly competitive. How appropriate
Nov 8th 2021

BY LUDWIG SIEGELE: US TECHNOLOGY
EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST, SAN
FRANCISCO
F eeling confused? It’s not your fault. Regulators around the world have
launched a bewildering number of antitrust lawsuits and investigations
against the big tech rms: Amazon, Apple, Facebook (now known as Meta)
and Google. Each focuses on a di erent part of the conglomerate, from
Apple’s App Store to Google’s advertising data. Scarcely a day passes without
an existing case making headlines or a new one popping up.
That is unlikely to change in 2022. But instead of trying to make sense of

this ever-changing legal smorgasbord, it is more edifying to follow what
lawmakers are up to. While lawsuits drag on (and often end with not much
to show for all the e ort), 2022 will be the year when the world’s parliaments
and regulators start to pass substantial rules to govern the tech industry. It
will therefore be possible to guess which country (or region) might develop
the world’s best competition framework.
In early 2021 it seemed that the European Union would win, hands down. Its
executive branch, the European Commission, had just introduced the
Digital Markets Act (dma), the rst law aimed at regulating big tech “ex
ante”—that is, constraining rms’ behaviour upfront, rather than punishing
them after the fact with antitrust cases. The idea is to prohibit the
gatekeepers of important digital markets, such as apps and online search,
from engaging in unfair practices, such as discriminating against rivals that
use their platforms.
Yet lately experts have grown less enthusiastic about the dma, which the
European Parliament may vote on in 2022, says Tommaso Valletti, a former
chief economist at the commission, now at Imperial College London. The
main criticism is that the dma applies the same rules to all tech titans
despite the fact that their businesses, and their competition problems,
di er.
“ The idea is to prohibit the gatekeepers of important

digital markets from engaging in unfair practices
China’s crackdown makes America look even further behind: although a

regulatory and cultural “techlash” has raged for years now, the results have
been meagre. That may change in 2022. As with antitrust lawsuits, a
confusing number of tech bills have been proposed in Congress: the House
of Representatives has moved forward with half a dozen. Some Republicans,
who claim that the big platforms want to censor them, may yet team up with
Democrats to pass dma-like legislation.
There are two other candidates to be the leading tech regulator. One,
somewhat surprisingly, is Germany. Andreas Mundt, who heads the
country’s Federal Cartel O ce (fco), has turned his agency into a pioneer of
tech regulation, in particular by going after Facebook’s data-harvesting
practices. A new competition law allows the fco to prohibit rms deemed of
“paramount signi cance for competition across markets” from engaging in
anti-competitive practices. This approach has the exibility to cope with
tech giants in di erent markets and their e orts to evade restrictions
(though it is unclear quite how this will align with the eu’s dma).
Yet it is Britain that appears to have the best setup so far, though it is not
fully implemented. Its Competition and Markets Authority (cma) now has a
Digital Markets Unit (dmu). The government is working on new regulation,
to be passed in 2022, that would empower the dmu, like Germany’s fco, to
give tech rms “strategic market status” and require them to follow stricter
rules.
The main di erence is that the cma, even more than the fco, has invested in
relevant resources. Its researchers have published some of the best studies
of the market for digital advertising. The cma also boasts a Data, Technology
and Analytics team, which consistently recruits data scientists in order to
close the wide knowledge gap between tech titans and their regulators.
Even so, says William Kovacic, an antitrust veteran who now teaches at
George Washington University, the architects of all these regulatory setups
would be the rst to admit that they are still experiments which could go
wrong. Britain’s dmu could be politicised or captured by the industry, as has
happened elsewhere. So the contest to be the best regulator in tech is as yet
undecided, and highly competitive. It is good to see competition regulators
practising what they preach.
Ludwig Siegele: US technology editor, The Economist, San Francisco7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Race of the regulators”
Keep updated
Chinese rms are quietly pursuing a

new global strategy
They are acquiring market share under the radar, through small deals
Nov 8th 2021

BY DON WEINLAND: CHINA BUSINESS
AND FINANCE EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST,
HONG KONG
I f all goes as planned, builders will break ground on a battery plant in
the German state of Saarland in 2022. The 24-gigawatt-hours (gwh) per-
year factory will not only be one of the largest of its kind in Europe—it will
also be a beachhead for Chinese battery-makers. The company behind the
plant, svolt, is rapidly gaining market share outside China. So, too, are other
Chinese groups such as BYD and CATL. Becoming global leaders in the
industry is part of a high-level government plan.
Just a few years ago it seemed that China Inc was about to make a big global
splash. Starting in 2014 Chinese companies began buying assets across
Europe and America, including well-known brands and iconic properties. In
2016 this activity reached its peak, with Chinese rms sealing around
$200bn in mergers and acquisitions (m&a) abroad. The spree did not last.
Chinese authorities grew weary of the vast amounts of dollars draining from
China’s capital account, often to purchase trophy assets such as football
teams. Regulators in the countries receiving the investments also became
sensitive to potential security threats. As relations between China and
America came unstuck starting in 2018, so did the ability of Chinese
companies to continue the binge. Cross-border m&a by Chinese companies
in 2021 was the lowest for more than a decade.
The absence of blockbuster deals inked by jet-setting Chinese executives has

often been interpreted as a retreat by corporate China. This is far from the
truth. In fact, Chinese groups have become more disciplined. They no longer
buy Italian football teams or New York skyscrapers. Firms carry out smaller
mergers and acquisitions that do not attract attention. Many have focused
on green eld expansion in foreign markets, as opposed to buy-outs. Foreign
direct investment (FDI) from Chinese companies hit $133bn last year,
making the country the world’s biggest global investor.
Though some of that investment was accounted for by m&a transactions,

much of it was the reinvestment of pro ts from operations abroad, a sign
that China Inc is thriving and growing organically in host countries. Just as
foreign factories cropped up in China in the 1980s and 1990s, now high-end
Chinese manufacturing facilities are appearing in developed markets.
svolt’s battery factory in Germany is a prime example. Many of these
companies are also shifting their business models, as part of an attempt to
adapt to a world that is more hostile to Chinese investments.
“ Chinese firms carry out smaller mergers and

acquisitions that do not attract attention
The second trend in 2022 will be a shift in operating models. Chinese groups
such as Huawei have been stung by regulators in America and other
countries on national-security grounds. Regulators in China have also given
their own companies trouble for similar reasons. Didi Global, a ride-hailing
rm, was punished in July by China’s cyberspace administrator because of
concerns over data security, sending its newly listed New York shares
plummeting.
Chinese companies that want to operate globally must navigate this perilous
environment. Some are learning how to do it. Take ByteDance, the tech
company that owns TikTok. It has successfully decentralised its global
business. Its Chinese social-media platform, called Douyin, is controlled
from Beijing. But TikTok is owned through a holding company in the
Cayman Islands, and its executives work from o ces in Singapore and Los
Angeles. This gives regulators in Beijing fewer ways to meddle in its global
business.
Shein, a Chinese online clothing retailer, has also adapted an operating

structure t for the times. The rm, which is the fastest-growing fashion
group in the world, makes its clothes in China, but it does not sell them
domestically. Instead, it sells to American and European consumers directly,
through its mobile app. Not having any Chinese users will make it less of a
target for domestic regulators. It may even make it easier for the rm to do a
foreign initial public o ering. Expect more Chinese internet groups to adopt
creative operating models to help hedge against political risks at home.
Don Weinland: China business and nance editor, The Economist, Hong Kong7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “A new strategy”
Keep updated
Dramatic shifts in the

semiconductor industry will
continue
Geopolitics and open-source designs are reshaping chipmaking
Nov 8th 2021

BY HAL HODSON: TECHNOLOGY
T he business of chipmaking was fraught even before the pandemic
struck. China and America were engaged in a geopolitical tussle over
this strategically vital technology, with America doing everything it could to
cut o Chinese companies’ access to complex tools of chipmaking, most of
which are made in America. The United States was also mulling subsidies
for chip manufacturing on American soil, as well as the injection of tens of
billions of dollars of public money into the industry to counter the
hundreds of billions of dollars being injected by China into its own
companies.
Then covid-19 further complicated matters—and the coming year will bring
little respite. By the middle of 2021 the pandemic had triggered a chip-
supply crunch, as much of the world took to working from home and bought
lots of electronic goods to help them do so. Car manufacturers lost out,
having cancelled their chip orders early on in the pandemic only to nd
themselves at the back of the queue when demand for cars rebounded. As a
result, in 2022 chipmakers will still be working overtime to expand supply.
Meanwhile governments around the world will be doing everything they can
to incentivise the construction of the facilities that will provide for this
expansion on their soil. America will decide how to spend the $52bn it
earmarked in the summer of 2021 to boost domestic chip production. If all
goes to plan tsmc, a Taiwanese chipmaker, which leads the world in the
production of high-end chips by some margin, will be halfway through
building its own factory in America for the rst time. Europe will either still
be contemplating a stimulus of its own, or already spending it.
Yet the industry is shifting in ways which make it di cult for governments
to allocate taxpayers’ money e ciently. The cost of manufacturing cutting-
edge chips continues to rise, pushing manufacturers to seek new ways of
improving performance. Governments that spend buckets of taxpayer cash
in an attempt to grab high-end production may end up overlooking the
novel technologies that are starting to rede ne the landscape.
“ Blueprints underlying chip designs are being published

under open-source licences, for anyone to use
A new business model for the design of chips will also take hold, in which
the blueprints underlying chip designs are published under open-source
licences, available for anyone to use. An open-source chip design known as
risc-v will continue eating the industry from the bottom up; the cheapest
circuits are already being switched over to it. Companies that own and
control proprietary chip designs—such as Intel, with its x86 architecture—
will be racing to o er at least the impression of openness, in an e ort to
fend o the threat.
In a word, then, 2022 will be messy. The chipmaking industry was already
recon guring itself as the costs of continually shrinking circuits became
overwhelming. As governments attempt to use stimulus money to reshape
the chip supply chain, they will be trying to grab a beast in the midst of
transformation.
Hal Hodson: Technology correspondent, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “A messy year ahead”
Keep updated
Football is bouncing back from a

di cult period
But the World Cup will not be the only source of angst in 2022
Nov 8th 2021

BY NEIL FREDRIK JENSEN: FOOTBALL
ANALYST AND AUTHOR
U nder normal circumstances, the World Cup is the most important
event in the football calendar. In 2022, however, the tournament will
be overshadowed, to some extent, by football’s recovery from its greatest
peace-time crisis.
Football has always acted as the great distractor; a pastime that lets people
cast aside routine for at least 90 minutes. The loss of it in 2020 hit hard, as
games were cancelled completely and then allowed only in empty stadiums.
The return of spectators is symbolic of a shift to something approaching
normality. But there could still be plenty of discontent.
The decision by fifa, the sport’s governing body, to make Qatar the host for
the World Cup in 2022 was controversial from the start, because of the
country’s total lack of footballing heritage or infrastructure, and because of
protests against its poor treatment of migrant workers. Some national
teams, such as Germany (pictured), Norway and the Netherlands, have
donned T-shirts at recent games, protesting about the host nation’s human-
rights record. Such moves may not make much di erence, and those
nations are unlikely to boycott such a crucial footballing event. But they will
continue to be an annoyance to the organisers.
“ Across the industry, match-day income dried up,

transfers came to a standstill and broadcasters looked
for rebates
There could be grumbling, too, about geopolitics. The average fan on the
terraces may not be following the politics of the Middle East, but concerns
about Qatar’s support for Islamist movements such as the Muslim
Brotherhood prompted a boycott and a blockade of the country for several
years by neighbouring states, led by Saudi Arabia. Though this is now
resolved, such issues have contributed to a wariness about the competition
and could a ect the number of visitors willing to travel to watch the games.
But the World Cup will not be the only source of angst in the football world
in 2022. There has been growing resentment towards some club-owners and
their business plans. The issue came to a head in April 2021 with the
announcement of a proposed European Super League (esl). It was the
creation of a cartel of 12 of the continent’s biggest clubs, including
Barcelona, Chelsea, Juventus and Real Madrid, and proposed an elite
competition that would have generated lucrative revenues for its members.
This was not the rst time such a project had been mooted, and although the
scheme was quickly abandoned after intense criticism from fans and the
general public, it would be foolish to believe it has gone away completely.
The esl came to the fore partly because of the pandemic. In the 2019-20
season, European clubs’ revenues declined by €3.7bn ($4.3bn) and the top 20
clubs, many of them esl advocates, su ered a 12% drop in takings. Across
the football industry, match-day income dried up, transfers came to a
standstill and broadcasters looked for rebates on money already paid. In
2022 the 2020-21 season’s nances will be revealed and provide a more
accurate picture of the pandemic’s impact on the sport. As some preliminary
gures have shown, it is unlikely to be pretty.
After a whole season without spectators in 2020-21, clubs will have to

reassess their levels of debt, costs and funding. The example of La Liga,
Spain’s top- ight league, selling a stake to a private-equity company for
€2.7bn, showed how football is starting to nd alternative sources of
investment and nancing. That habit may spread in the coming year.
The nancial crisis that has unfolded is not con ned to small, cash-poor
clubs. Barcelona, the epitome of a modern, elitist institution, ran into
nancial trouble, with huge debts and an unsustainable wage bill. As a
result, the club was forced into releasing Lionel Messi, its talismanic
captain, to Paris Saint-Germain. Similarly, Inter Milan, Italian champions in
2021, saw their coach and key players leave after their Chinese owner scaled
back spending. In 2022 more clubs will have to overhaul the management of
their nances.
Football, being the global obsession that it is, will recover as long as further
lockdowns can be kept at bay. Sceptics will undoubtedly remind the world
about the sport’s problems with human rights, geopolitics and overpaid
stars. But, come November, people around the globe will gather round their
televisions and passionately cheer their teams on, while reminding each
other what a beautiful game it is.
Neil Fredrik Jensen: Football analyst and author7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Bouncing back”
Keep updated
Tareq Amin on the open future of

mobile telecoms
Networks based on OpenRAN can cut costs and address security worries
Nov 8th 2021

BY TAREQ AMIN: CHIEF EXECUTIVE,
RAKUTEN SYMPHONY
A mobile-telecoms revolution is under way—one reminiscent of the
way personal computers replaced mainframes in the 1980s, and cloud-
based apps are replacing traditional software today. Openran, a new way of
building mobile networks, will transform the telecoms industry by cutting
costs, improving security and boosting competition. This new technology
will sweep across the world in 2022.
Historically, a few large vendors have dominated the business of supplying

mobile-network equipment, providing costly proprietary systems in which
they control both the hardware and the software. Openran networks are
completely di erent: they are software-driven, based on open standards and
run in the cloud on commercial, o -the-shelf servers.
The 4g network built and launched in Japan by my company, Rakuten, is the

world’s rst large-scale deployment of Openran technology. We are now
working to build a similar network with 1&1, a German telecoms rm. Other
operators, including Dish in America, and Telefónica and Vodafone in
Europe, are also adopting Openran.
This approach has many advantages over the traditional, proprietary way of
doing things. The rst is lower costs: in our experience, a reduction of 30-
40% in capital expenditure and operating costs for 4g networks, and as
much as 50% for 5g networks. In Japan, known for its costly mobile-
network charges, this has enabled us to cut the average monthly bill by 60%.
More than 4m customers have signed up in the past year, despite the
pandemic, which hampered the operation of many of our bricks-and-mortar
stores.
“ OpenRAN provides a way to depoliticise the roll-out of

5G
Second, Openran networks are safer and more secure than proprietary
technology. Their open architecture lets operators decide what they put in
their networks. No single vendor controls the system. Our supply chain is
transparent. We know exactly what is going into our network—and, for the
record, we use no Chinese equipment. The open architecture makes it easy
to respond to any problems by switching out software or hardware. Our
network has no black boxes.
Openran should be music to the ears of security hawks, and those worried
about the security implications of trusting a single supplier, particularly in
Western countries where network operators have been advised not to use
equipment made by Huawei, the leading Chinese vendor, on security
grounds. Openran provides a way to depoliticise the roll-out of 5g.
All this will also boost competition. Little wonder, then, that Openran faces
opposition from entrenched incumbents. Some claim that our new
technology consumes more energy than traditional systems, for example. In
fact the opposite is true. Because it is software-based, an Openran network
can be exibly scaled to meet demand, optimising energy consumption.
When demand is high, it scales up to handle it, and when demand is low at
night, it scales down. And as data centres become steadily more energy-
e cient, so does the network. Sceptics also suggest that Openran networks
do not work in cities. But our network serves subscribers in some of the
largest and densest cities in the world: Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. In early
2022 we aim to cover 96% of Japan’s population with 4g. Independent
research found that our network in Tokyo outperformed comparable
networks in Berlin, London and Rome.
Open sesame
More a ordable connectivity will cause an industrial shake-up in the
coming years. Instead of proprietary systems built by a handful of
incumbents, Openran o ers new suppliers, both large and small, the
opportunity to get into the mobile-infrastructure market. Our network relies
on equipment from a range of suppliers, including radio-access technology
from Nokia, routers and switches from Cisco and other hardware from nec.
The software was provided by Altiostar (recently acquired by Rakuten) and
Robin.io.
Rakuten has established a new division, called Symphony, to bring together

these parts and share our expertise with network operators in other
countries. By the end of 2022, we hope more telecoms rms around the
world will be singing along to Openran’s tune.
Tareq Amin: chief executive, Rakuten Symphony 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “The open future of mobile telecoms”
Keep updated
International travel will get easier,

but restrictions will remain
Cross-border travel will probably not recover to pre-covid levels until 2024
Nov 8th 2021

BY SIMON WRIGHT: INDUSTRY EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST
T he start of the pandemic was characterised by empty supermarket
shelves, as global supply chains creaked under the strain of panic
buying and the disruption caused by covid-19. The system soon adjusted.
But one shortage that has not been alleviated is that of international
travellers. Planes are still often half-full at best and many of the world’s
airports remain sparsely populated. International arrivals fell by nearly 75%
in 2020, according to the un’s World Travel Organisation, with 1bn fewer
people taking trips abroad. The gures for 2021 are not expected to be much
better. But the prospects for 2022 look less gloomy.
More people will rediscover the pleasures of jumping on a plane to go on a

spontaneous city break, attend a long-planned family wedding or take the
holiday of a lifetime. And while executives will continue to spend a lot of
time sitting bolt upright in video calls, more will also recline in business-
class seats. In the decades before the pandemic, international travel grew
rapidly, with the number of visitors to foreign countries tripling between
1990 and 2019. Budget airlines, growing prosperity and more leisure time
underpinned this growth. These forces will eventually reassert themselves.
Early in the pandemic, most forecasters reckoned that international travel

would not recover to the levels of 2019 before 2023 at the earliest, and more
likely in 2024. That still seems a reasonable bet. Restrictions on
international jaunts are still tight and are lifting only slowly. Even now only
three countries—Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico—impose no restrictions
on visitors, while 88 countries are still closed completely and many more
have draconian policies in place. But as vaccination rates climb and
infections fall, rules will be relaxed and routes will reopen. Much of the
world’s population was barred from entering the United States until its rules
changed in November.
“ Cross-border travel will not recover to pre-covid levels

until 2023 at the earliest, and more likely 2024
The recovery will be uneven. Domestic travel in large countries has already
bounced back—America is getting closer to pre-covid levels and China has
surpassed them already. Regional travel is picking up. iata, an airline-
industry body, reckons Europe could be back to nearly four- fths of pre-
pandemic levels in 2022. But Asia’s recovery has been slow and may
continue to lag the rest of the world. Long-haul travel will remain at low
levels until vaccinations are more widespread and the plethora of rules and
regulations become easier to navigate.
Even if a more virulent mutation of the virus emerges, potentially putting

everything into reverse again, one type of globetrotter will y above the
lingering dark clouds—the rich. Soaring demand for seats on private jets is
likely to continue as the wealthy sidestep many of the barriers facing the
masses. The rst eight months of 2021 saw 2.9m ights by business jets,
70% more than in 2020 and a tad higher than in 2019, while commercial
ights still languish around 40% below pre-pandemic levels, according to
WingX, a private-aviation data rm.
If that is not exclusive enough, a new covid-free destination took o in 2021

and is expected to welcome many more visitors in the coming years. If you
have several hundred thousand dollars to spare, you can book a ticket for a
ight to outer space.
Simon Wright: Industry editor, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Fasten your seat belts”
Keep updated
Li Jin on the future of the creator

economy
Shared ownership and control of online platforms is the way forward
Nov 8th 2021

BY LI JIN: CO-FOUNDER AT VARIANT
FUND AND FOUNDER OF ATELIER
VENTURES
I magine a world in which Facebook is owned and operated by its users,
who vote to decide its policies on content moderation and data
collection. Those users—whose photos, videos and other posts give
Facebook its value—collectively co-own the platform, and the earliest
adopters have seen the value of their stakes appreciate greatly as it has
grown in scale. A core team works day-to-day on platform development, but
product strategy and resource allocation are decided upon by all. This
imagined future sounds radically di erent from today’s digital world. But it
is closer than you might think.
Over the past decade, big online platforms such as Facebook, Snap, TikTok
and YouTube have reached multi-billion dollar valuations. They could not
have done so without the content posted by their users. The “creator
economy”—the platforms and tools that allow creative individuals to share
content, build an audience and make money in various ways—is now worth
over $100bn. There are an estimated 50m creators around the world, and it
is the fourth most-sought-after career among British children aged 7-11.
Creators’ cultural impact is eclipsing that of traditional media. Ryan’s World,
a children’s channel on YouTube that features videos of toys being
“unboxed”, has over 30m subscribers, and its most popular video has had
more than 2bn views. Fewer than a million people, by contrast, watch cnn
in prime time.
But cracks are emerging in the creator economy, rooted in the stark
imbalance of power between proprietary platforms and the creators who use
them. A handful of social-media behemoths act as gatekeepers for nding
and connecting with audiences. Creators are reliant on mercurial
algorithms to sustain their relevance. Despite directly contributing to the
value of platforms by uploading content that engages users, creators
resemble an underclass of workers, lacking the bene ts and protections of
employees or the share options that would let them bene t from platforms’
success. I’ve called these dynamics “taxation without representation” or
“21st-century serfdom”.
“ The next step is for creators to build, operate and own

the products and platforms they rely on
Creators are in a weak position to push for change. Historically, advances in

workers’ rights were driven by collective bargaining through unions, which
represented one-third of American workers in the mid-20th century. Today,
creators are expressing their views via bottom-up organising, for example by
highlighting unfair policies to their audiences, or going on “strike” by
refraining from posting. But these e orts have had little impact, because
ultimately there is nowhere else for creators to go.
To date, co-operative ownership has struggled because of challenges in

scaling up decision-making and governance, and in attracting investment.
But new technologies promise to remove these barriers. Decentralised
networks, like those that underpin cryptocurrencies, allow ownership to be
distributed via tokens, which are earned for contributions to the network
and which often confer governance rights. It may sound futuristic and
abstract, but it is already happening. Axie In nity, a pet-battle game in
which users earn tokens they can sell and convert into income, now has
1.7m daily users, who have traded over $2bn-worth of game assets to date.
SuperRare, a digital-art marketplace, launched a “curation token” in August,
decentralising itself and giving users a say in the platform’s future.
Decentralise this
In 2022 new, decentralised networks serving the creator economy will reach
a tipping-point. The democratisation of wealth-building assets through
token distribution is an appealing prospect. For innovators, rewarding users
with ownership can help attract the enormous user bases that will enable
these new platforms to outcompete existing, centralised ones. Creator
ownership eliminates the con ict between platforms and participants and
ensures that growth bene ts all stakeholders. In the coming months and
years, creators will realise and harness their power, leading to the birth of a
new set of platforms that confer ownership and control—and treat creators
as rst-class citizens.
Li Jin: co-founder at Variant Fund and founder of Atelier Ventures 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “The future of the creator economy”
Keep updated
Decentralised nance is booming,

but it has yet to nd its purpose
DeFi is now the arena where the most exciting innovation is occurring
Nov 8th 2021

BY ALICE FULWOOD: WALL STREET
CORRESPONDENT, THE ECONOMIST, NEW
YORK
I t is common, in the minds of economists, academics and most regular
folk, to think of the real economy and the nancial economy as separate
but interlinked spheres. This is the essence of the “classical dichotomy” at
the heart of the neoclassical school of economics, which considers money
“a mere veil” obscuring real underlying activities. Those labouring in the
real economy grow wheat, write articles and build houses. Financiers
simply shu e money around on top of that. Yet at its best nancialisation
makes possible real activity that could not otherwise occur. This is apparent
for a loan made to a startup, or a bond that enables the building of a new
factory. But it is also often true of more complex areas of nance, such as
exchanges and derivatives. It is here that 2022 will see exciting innovations.
Over the past two years, many of the functions of the nancial system have
been recreated as applications and protocols on the Ethereum blockchain,
an open blockchain that can store and verify lines of code. Activities are
mostly carried out via “smart contracts”, which self-execute according to
predetermined conditions. Many things have been written into open-source
code using smart contracts, including wallets and payment systems, deposit
and lending applications, and even investment funds and systems to self-
stabilise currency regimes.
Collectively, this array of functions is known as decentralised nance, or

“DeFi”—and it is booming. From less than $10bn in early 2020, some
$100bn-worth of tokens are now locked up in nancial smart contracts for
use on decentralised exchanges or deposited to earn yields. Demand for
DeFi apps is driving up usage of the Ethereum blockchain. It settled $116bn-
worth of transactions in early 2020, but that boomed to $2.5trn-worth in the
second quarter of 2021, including payments and transactions to facilitate
trading and lending. (Visa, a payments giant, settled about the same amount
in the same period; Nasdaq, a stock exchange, traded six times as much.)
The system has many advantages over traditional nance. Payments are
often cheap and are almost instant. By pre-determining the rules of
transactions in ways that are impossible to mess with, DeFi can eliminate
things like settlement risks. By locking up collateral for a loan in a smart
contract, the risk of a counterparty defaulting can also be eliminated.
The barriers to entry are low by comparison with traditional nance, so DeFi
has quickly become the arena where the most exciting innovation is
occurring. For example, an entirely on-blockchain stablecoin (a token
pegged to a government currency, like the dollar) called dai lets anyone
create new dai tokens by depositing collateral in a smart contract. If the
value of the collateral drops below the minimum threshold of 150% of the
value of the outstanding dai, the smart contract automatically auctions the
collateral to cancel the debt. Dai is remarkably stable against the dollar and
solves many of the problems associated with previous stablecoins.
Second, DeFi may begin to merge with conventional nance. Assets

typically handled by the nancial system—houses, shares and bonds—
might nd their way onto a blockchain system. Previous attempts to do this
using “enterprise blockchains” (run by a single institution) o ered some
e ciency gains, but missed out on many of the bene ts of decentralisation,
such as interoperability and transparency. By exploring ways to move assets
such as shares onto an open-blockchain system, and to ensure that real-
world outcomes can be enforced, DeFi could become more useful for all.
Third, the development of a real economy on top of a blockchain might

ourish. Economic activities such as creating videos, images, music and
text are wholly digital, which is why media can be distributed online, mostly
by giant, centralised tech platforms. But decentralised, on-blockchain
platforms to distribute these kinds of content are nascent and ourishing. If
digital content can be purveyed on a blockchain system, DeFi will have
found its real economy.
Alice Fulwood: Wall Street correspondent, The Economist, New York7
This article appeared in the Finance section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “High ve, DeFi”
Keep updated
Central banks are getting closer to

issuing their own digital money
They are gearing up to mint “central bank digital currencies”
Nov 8th 2021

BY ALICE FULWOOD: WALL STREET
CORRESPONDENT, THE ECONOMIST, NEW
YORK
C oins minted during the reign of Augustus Caesar, the rst Roman
emperor, bore his head on one side and a dolphin intertwined with an
anchor on the other. The maritime emblem represents the emperor’s
favourite motto: “festina lente” or “make haste, slowly”. The quickest way to
do something, in short, is to do it right the rst time.
The same approach appears to have been adopted by global central bankers
as they gear up to mint digital money, or “central bank digital currencies”
(cbdcs), for the rst time. At present, the only money issued by a central
bank and used by ordinary people is physical cash. Digital payments
systems, which are ourishing, rely on private rms, such as banks, credit-
card companies and tech rms. As cash falls out of use, central bankers
worldwide have begun to ponder whether to replace it with a digital
alternative.
Central bankers have rushed to investigate—86% of global central banks are

researching cbdcs, up from two-thirds in 2018—but no big economy has yet
taken the plunge. Only the Bahamas, a Caribbean nation, and a few of its
southern neighbours (St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, St Lucia and
Grenada) have issued a “live” cbdc.
“ Jerome Powell has said it is more important “to get it

right than be first”
The big economy most likely to join them in 2022 is China. It rst ran a pilot
scheme for its cbdc in December 2019, but has ramped up quickly.
According to a paper published in July by the People’s Bank of China (pboc),
China’s central bank, almost 21m digital wallets have already been created to
hold digital yuan, and some 70m transactions have been carried out. The
pboc appears to want its digital money to be in widespread use before the
Winter Olympics, which will be held in Beijing in February 2022.
A slow and steady approach is understandable: a digital central-bank token

is a radical shift in a country’s nancial system that should not be
undertaken lightly. It is very unlikely, for instance, that a digital dollar will
be forthcoming in 2022. Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve,
has said that it is more important for America “to get it right than be rst”.
Alice Fulwood: Wall Street correspondent, The Economist, New York7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Minting, fast and slow”
Keep updated
The phenomenon of meme stocks

could be here to stay
Small-scale traders’ sheer force of will can keep stock prices pumped up
Nov 8th 2021

BY MIKE BIRD: ASIA BUSINESS AND
FINANCE EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST,
HONG KONG
H yenas, vultures, lions and wildebeest featured in January 2021 in an
imaginative description by Thomas Friedman, an American
commentator, of the feeding frenzy over a handful of American stocks.
Referring to GameStop, a consumer-electronics retailer at the centre of the
frenzy, Mr Friedman said the stock would eventually go back to four to ve
dollars. “It’s the circle of life.”
GameStop shares have not returned to the four or ve dollars at which they
traded in the summer of 2020. They currently trade at over $180 even as the
company is still making a loss. But although Mr Friedman’s metaphor may
have lacked ecological rigour, it typi ed a popular, naturalist way of viewing
nancial markets. There are winners and losers, growth and decay—which
come to an equilibrium over time. That view took a serious beating in 2021,
and it is likely to continue to struggle in 2022.
Conventional analysis gives few explanations for such a sustained rise in a

small handful of stocks such as GameStop—known as meme stocks, based
on their sudden popularity on social media—whose ascent ies in the face
of fundamentals or asset prices. Analysts have thus reasoned that what goes
up must come down.
“ Predictably, conventional finance has tried to muscle in
This dovetails with the di culty regulators have had in dealing with meme
stocks. Research by Victoria Chiu and Moin A. Yahya of the University of
Alberta Faculty of Law notes that these events are neither an example of
“pump and dump”, in which the shares of a rm are boosted then sold
quickly, nor a cybersmear scheme in which a short-seller publishes
malicious rumours about a company. Instead, it is a “pump and hold”—an
action that sits a long way outside existing frameworks of market behaviour.
Robinhood, the platform of choice for many small-scale traders, has

struggled since its ipo in August, but similar apps that turn trading into a
game are popping up across the world and will be di cult to stop. The
phenomenon is likely to continue and even intensify in 2022.
Predictably, conventional nance has tried to muscle in. An exchange-

traded fund designed by Roundhill Investments, an advisory rm, based on
an index of meme stocks, awaits regulatory approval. In cryptocurrency
markets, the arrival of mainstream nance cemented the sector as more
than a fad. The same may soon be true of meme stocks.
In May South Korea lifted a short-selling ban imposed in the early days of
the pandemic. Large short positions mounted against hmm, a container-
transport company, and Doosan Heavy, an industrial rm, which were
spurned in turn by the country’s “ants”, a term for small-scale investors. The
ants will be strengthened in 2022 as fractional trading of Korean stocks
begins. (Some trade at such high prices that individual trading is di cult.)
As long as stocks can be pumped up and held by the sheer force of will of
small-scale traders, the old thinking may no longer be a safe bet. Ants are
also part of the circle of life.
Mike Bird: Asia business and nance editor, The Economist, Hong Kong7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “The circle of life”
Keep updated
What will happen to in ation in

2022?
It’s back—but not for long. Worries about in ation will diminish
Nov 8th 2021

BY RYAN AVENT: TRADE AND
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST, WASHINGTON, DC
I n the years immediately before the pandemic, worrying about in ation
seemed as passé as bell-bottomed trousers and leaded petrol. But as the
global economy clawed its way back from the deep recession induced by
covid-19, the old scourge reappeared. In ation rose above 5% in America
and 3% in Britain, and roared much higher in many emerging markets.
Some economists warned of the imminent return of the chronically high
in ation of the 1970s. Developments in 2022 will put such fears to rest—but
not before making central bankers sweat a bit.
From the 1980s, in ation rates across much of the world began a slow
downward march that persisted into 2020. The drop was in part a re ection
of central bankers’ success in learning to keep price pressures under control,
but their work was made easier by a number of structural trends.
Globalisation reduced production costs and crimped workers’ bargaining
power, suppressing wage growth. And as rich-world populations aged, they
saved more, which meant consumption did not jump as much in response
to income growth as it had in the past. In the aftermath of the global
nancial crisis, in ation persistently undershot central banks’ in ation
targets, encouraging some, such as America’s Federal Reserve, to give
themselves more freedom to push in ation up: a striking reversal for
institutions with re exively hawkish instincts.
Then covid-19 struck. To shore up nancial markets, central banks ploughed

huge amounts of money into the nancial system. Governments borrowed
on a scale not seen since the second world war, to bolster the incomes of
those unable to work. America’s government budget de cit exceeded 12% of
gdp in both 2020 and 2021.
This stimulus kept demand from tumbling, but supply was a di erent story.
Covid-19 interrupted production of all sorts of goods and services. Droughts
and heatwaves contributed to disappointing harvests for crops such as
co ee and wheat. And problems in global shipping led to unprecedented
freight backlogs. Inadequate fuel supplies caused prices of coal, gas and oil
to rocket upward as winter approached, kindling memories of the energy
shocks of the 1970s.
In such pressures, some economists—such as Larry Summers of Harvard

University—see the rst signs of a new era of troublingly high in ation.
Firms’ struggles to ll job openings could indicate that the era of weak
labour power is drawing to a close. Central banks now place a higher priority
on achieving low unemployment than they once did, and so might be too
complacent about in ation risks. In ation can also feed on itself. As people
get used to larger and more frequent price increases, rms may nd that
putting up prices is less bad for business than it used to be. In ation
expectations, as economists say, could become “de-anchored”. Surging
energy costs could squeeze growth and productivity.
Most importantly, many of the structural factors that dragged in ation

down in the years before the pandemic remain in place. Powerful trade
unions are not staging a comeback, populations continue to age and,
despite stresses on global supply chains, there are few signs of a broad
reversal in globalisation. Neither have central bankers forgotten how to rein
in in ation. Indeed, in 2022, interest rates will rise across much of the
world. In ation is back—but not for long.
Ryan Avent: Trade and international economics editor, The Economist,

Washington, DC7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Back, but not for good”
Keep updated
Food prices will stay high, hurting

poor countries most
In 2021 they hit their highest point for a decade
Nov 8th 2021

BY MATTHIEU FAVAS: FINANCE
C ovid-19 has had a counter-intuitive e ect on food prices. In early 2020,
when much of the world went into lockdown, the fear was that
stockpiling and closed borders would cause prices to rise. Instead they
barely budged. It was only months later, when the pandemic seemed to ease
o in the rich world and economies reopened, that prices started to climb
alarmingly fast. By May 2021 they had reached their highest point since 2011,
after rising by 40% in 12 months, according to an index from the un’s Food
and Agriculture Organisation.
In 2022 the same forces that created this surge will continue to cause
trouble, which means there is little chance that prices will cool. A key factor
explaining the boom is an outbreak of swine u in China in 2018, which
reduced its pig herd by half. That forced the country to import a lot of pork
and alternative sources of protein (chie y poultry and sh), along with the
grain to feed them, throughout 2019 and 2020, reducing global stocks. The
ensuing restocking seemed to be nearly over by the middle of 2021, but
evidence that the disease has been spreading again is feeding fears of
another cull. Those doubts will persist in 2022, helping to keep food markets
volatile.
“ A key factor explaining the boom is the outbreak of

swine flu in China in 2018
Another factor has been the spate of logistical hiccups caused by the swift
reopening of international trade at a time when covid-19 is still gumming up
activity at important bottlenecks. A shortage of containers, as well as the
continued grounding of many passenger planes, which often carry the most
delicate foodstu s in their bellies, mean that shipping fresh fruit and
vegetables remains tricky. Staples like grain and sugar travel by bulk on huge
ships, but capacity there is also limited. It does not help that oil prices have
rebounded, fuelling in ation in everything from fertilisers and chemicals to
the cost of transport across elds and oceans. In the coming year these
forces may abate, but only gradually.
But perhaps the greatest source of uncertainty, as ever with agriculture, will
be the weather. In early 2021 prices rose partly as a result of droughts in the
grain-producing regions of North and South America. Planting and harvest
conditions improved throughout the year but scientists now think there is a
high probability of another La Niña—a weather event of the sort that
disturbed climate patterns a year ago—over the winter. Meanwhile, disasters
made more frequent by climate change, such as oods and wild res (of
which there were plenty in 2021), may hurt production in the world’s
breadbaskets more severely this time around.
“ Prices will probably remain below the peaks reached in

2007-08
Still, barring a worst-case scenario, the world should have no reason to

panic. Despite recent in ation, prices will probably remain below the peaks
reached in 2007-08, when a global food scare sparked riots across the world.
Most countries have eschewed the kind of protectionist measures—export
bans and stockpiling—that in amed the crisis back then. And much of the
food people consume is processed, which means the higher cost of raw
materials is often partly absorbed by those who transport, process and
market it at every step.
But dearer agricultural commodities will still cause great harm in

developing countries, because their populations eat much less processed
food: more eggs and coarse grain, fewer chocolate bars and ready-meals.
And processing margins there are often thinner. The harm will be
exacerbated by other problems that hit poor countries the hardest, such as
the depreciation of local currencies, covid-related restrictions and
disruptions, and the loss of household income because of the pandemic and
its fallout. A powerful remedy would be vaccination, so that economies
outside the rich world can reopen for good and their incomes start to rise
again. Unfortunately the prospects for rapid progress on that front are dim.
Matthieu Favas: Finance correspondent, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Unhappy meal”
Keep updated
An uptick in corporate defaults is

unlikely
But if credit tightens, junk bonds will sour quickly
Nov 8th 2021

BY JOSHUA ROBERTS: CITY AND FINANCE
E uphemisms abound in the market for risky debt. Bonds issued by the
companies most likely to default on them are no longer “junk”, but
instead “speculative grade” or “high yield”. Borrowers would never dream of
sti ng their lenders; some, however, engage in “distressed exchanges” that
reduce the value of their debt without lenders’ consent. One especially
genteel measure of pro tability that emerged during the coronavirus
pandemic was “ebitdac”—earnings before interest, tax, depreciation,
amortisation and covid.
During 2021, such politeness seemed to be justi ed. The global default rate
for speculative-grade debt started the year at just under 7%, around half the
level it hit during the worst of the nancial crisis of 2007-09. Despite waves
of lockdowns triggered by successively more contagious strains of
coronavirus, it spent the next three quarters in decline. According to
forecasts by Moody’s, a credit-rating agency, it will continue to drop in 2022,
hitting 1.6% by the end of April before beginning a gradual rise. That is some
way below the long-term average of 4.2%.
So far, the calm has been underpinned by huge scal and monetary support.
Governments have arranged grants and loans for businesses in nancial
distress, and buoyed consumer spending with furlough schemes and
stimulus cheques for individuals. As a result, companies in debt have
mostly been able to nd the cash to service it. Meanwhile, central banks
have kept interest rates low and ooded markets with liquidity via vast
expansions of quantitative easing. That has encouraged investors to lend to
riskier borrowers from whom they can extract higher interest payments.
“ Even the riskiest borrowers are likely to enjoy low

interest rates and easy access to credit for some time
The net e ect is that credit spreads for American junk bonds—the additional
interest charged on them in comparison to government debt—are at their
lowest since 2007. In Europe, much high-yield debt carries an interest rate
below in ation, meaning that in real terms even speculative-grade issuers
are being paid to borrow.
For as long as America’s Federal

Reserve keeps supporting the market,
expect this state of a airs to persist.
Although it is about to start reducing
its bond purchases, it is unlikely to
stop them altogether, or to begin
raising rates, before the middle of
2022. That means that even the
riskiest borrowers are set to enjoy
easy access to credit for some time to
come. And companies with the ability
to tap new, cheap funding don’t go
into default.
Should credit conditions tighten,

though—perhaps due to persistent high in ation—debt investors will be in
for harder times. Of the $1.7trn-worth of American junk bonds, perhaps
$250bn is owed by companies whose earnings over the past year barely
covered their interest payments. A decade and more of ever-looser
covenants has made it harder for lenders to seize the wheel when borrowers
get into nancial distress. Capital structures are also more rickety than they
used to be, with less junior debt to absorb losses.
Many of those with the worst credit ratings are backed by private-equity
funds, which have more of a reputation for nancial bait-and-switch than
they do for ensuring creditors are paid back in full. The coming year ought
to be a benign one for corporate defaults, but if it turns, it will turn quickly.
Joshua Roberts: City and nance correspondent, The Economist7
Keep updated
The outlook for emerging-market

debt in 2022
Emerging markets will su er various degrees of “ scal scarring”
Nov 8th 2021

BY SIMON COX: CHINA ECONOMICS
EDITOR, THE ECONOMIST, HONG KONG
T he year 2022 will mark the 40th anniversary of a famous default. On
August 12th 1982, Mexico’s nance minister confessed that his
government could not repay the money American banks had heedlessly lent
to it. The country “will run out of money in four days”, he reportedly told
them. After Mexico’s default, 26 other developing countries (including 15 in
Latin America) eventually had to reschedule their debts.
The crisis began less than a year after the term “emerging markets” had been
invented by Antoine van Agtmael of the World Bank. (He was looking for a
sunnier alternative to the term “third world”.) Forty years later, emerging
markets have again accumulated uncomfortably high levels of debt: their
government obligations average about 63% of their combined gdp,
according to the imf. That is an increase of more than ten percentage points
since 2018. Could the anniversary of one debt crisis be marked by another?
In a word, no. Before their bust in 1982, emerging markets mostly borrowed
at short maturities and oating rates in foreign currencies. The biggest
debtors today tend to sell longer-term bonds, mostly in their own
currencies, and often to local buyers. According to the imf and World Bank,
29 poor countries are at “high risk” of debt distress. An additional four
governments have a weak credit rating of ccc+, according to s&p Global
Ratings. (In the past, almost half of countries in the ccc or cc category have
defaulted within a year.) But most of these borrowers are too small to cause
much systemic concern.
“ Instead of a debt crisis, emerging markets may suffer

various degrees of “fiscal scarring”
The one possible exception is Argentina. Having already rescheduled its

bonds in 2020, it will have no di culty meeting its obligations to private
creditors in 2022. But the money it owes to the imf is another matter. It will
need a new long-term loan from the fund to help it repay its large existing
debts to the institution, including $18bn due in 2022. In return, the fund is
likely to insist that Argentina raise tari s on electricity, curtail borrowing
from the central bank and maintain a realistic exchange rate.
Instead of a debt crisis, emerging markets may su er various degrees of

“ scal scarring”, as Alberto Ramos of Goldman Sachs has put it. Like the sti
tissue that closes over a wound, high government debt and de cits can
restrict a government’s exibility and range of movement, hampering its
response to further slowdowns. Brazil’s scal de cit, for example, has added
to in ationary pressure in the country, obliging its central bank to raise
interest rates sharply, even as unemployment remains high.
The emerging-market debt that seized the attention of world investors in

2021 was owed not by a government, but by China’s overstretched property
developer, Evergrande. Its liabilities of over $300bn exceed the public debts
of all but nine emerging economies. How China handles its property
slowdown is likely to remain the largest question hanging over the biggest
emerging economy in 2022.
Of the ten original emerging markets identi ed by Mr van Agtmael in 1981,

three (Chile, Greece and South Korea) have since become high-income
economies by the World Bank’s de nition. China (which was not one of the
original ten) hopes to join them in the upper tier before long. The bank’s
high-income threshold is updated each year, based on a weighted average of
in ation rates and exchange rates across America, Britain, China, the euro
area and Japan. The threshold worked out at a national income per person of
$12,695 in 2020.
If China (which had an income of $10,610 per person in 2020) handles its
property slowdown well, it has a ghting chance of passing the high-income
threshold in 2023. That would make 2022 another pivotal year in the history
of emerging markets: the Middle Kingdom’s last year as a middle-income
country.
Simon Cox: China economics editor, The Economist, Hong Kong7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Scar tissue”
Keep updated
Chris Dixon and Packy McCormick

on the future of crypto
There’s more to crypto than currency and nancial applications
Nov 8th 2021

BY CHRIS DIXON: GENERAL PARTNER,
A16Z, AND PACKY MCCORMICK:
FOUNDER, NOT BORING CAPITAL
B ecause of the success of bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency
launched in 2008, many people associate blockchains primarily with
money and nance. But the applications of blockchains are much broader.
Modern blockchains are fully programmable, like a pc or a smartphone.
What makes them unique, however, is that they let programmers write code
that can make strong commitments about how that code will behave in the
future. Bitcoin’s code guarantees that there can only ever be 21m bitcoins,
that network participants cannot spend the same coin twice, plus a host of
other commitments that established trust in the currency.
The year ahead will show that blockchains can support a lot more
applications beyond money and nance. In 2022 decentralised services will
chip away at big tech companies’ stranglehold on the internet. A cluster of
new “web3” technologies, such as tokens, will dramatically improve the
digital economics of creators, technologists and small businesses.
Ethereum, released in 2015, was the rst blockchain to fully generalise the
ideas that began with Bitcoin. Ethereum can run programs (known as smart
contracts) that enable developers to build almost any application. Services
built on Ethereum can o er advanced functionality that rivals the services
o ered by centralised tech rms, while removing rent-seeking and central
points of control. Ethereum also enabled the creation of tokens—software-
based units of value that grant users ownership rights and even revenue
streams.
Blockchains also made possible the automation of traditional nancial

functions such as lending or trading. The rst Ethereum apps to gain
widespread adoption were decentralised nance (DeFi) apps like
Compound, Maker and Uniswap. In DeFi, nancial functions are handled by
fully automated protocols that are owned and operated by decentralised
communities instead of centralised companies.
DeFi attracted the money and attention needed to bootstrap the growth of
web3, but web3 is about more than money and crypto. During 2021 we’ve
seen entrepreneurs expand the ideas that started with bitcoin and DeFi to
games, media, marketplaces and even social networking. At the core of this
expansion was a new concept, non-fungible tokens (nfts). These are
blockchain-based records that uniquely represent items of digital media,
including art, videos, music, games, text and code. nfts contain
documentation of their history and origin and can have code attached to do
almost anything (a popular feature is code that ensures that the original
creator receives royalties from secondary sales).
“ Blockchains can support a lot more applications beyond

money and finance
Early headlines about nfts focused on speculation and money. Mike

Winkelmann, a digital artist known as Beeple, raised eyebrows and rolled
eyeballs when he sold an nft at Christie’s for $69m. In the six months from
April to November 2021, $7.2bn-worth of nfts changed hands on OpenSea,
the largest nft platform. But the real story is that nfts are a key building-
block for a new wave of web3 services that radically alter the economics of
the internet, redistributing value and control from tech giants back to users,
developers and small rms.
Web3 applications are wresting market share from centralised incumbents.

Braintrust, a web3 talent marketplace that incentivises participants with
tokens, works with employers including Deloitte, nasa, Nike and Porsche.
And it is gaining ground on public competitors such as Upwork.
Music is also ripe for disruption. Streaming services have created the
opportunity for artists to reach millions of fans through an awkward
marriage with record labels. Web3 platforms such as Audius, Sound.xyz and
Royal will create the opportunity for artists to make millions of dollars by
creating new revenue streams that aren’t mediated by record companies.
Web3-based competitors to large social networks like Facebook and Twitter
will also emerge. Unlike the incumbents, they will share revenue with the
creators that fuel their growth.
Let the new internet ourish

In 2022, it will become clear to more people what many in the web3 world
already know: the best way to rein in big tech companies is through
competition, not regulation. Already, there are policymakers in Washington
who appreciate that web3 is about much more than cryptocurrency or
speculation. In the coming year more leaders, in America and in other
democracies, will realise the need for sensible regulation that encourages
responsible innovation while also allowing entrepreneurs to build the next
generation of the internet.
Chris Dixon: general partner, a16z, and Packy McCormick: founder, Not Boring
Capital 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “There’s more to crypto than currency”
Keep updated
What to expect in year three of the

pandemic
New antibody and antiviral treatments, and better vaccines, are on the way
Nov 8th 2021

BY NATASHA LODER: HEALTH-POLICY
I n the well-vaccinated wealthier countries of the world, year three of
the pandemic will be better than year two, and covid-19 will have much
less impact on health and everyday activities. Vaccines have weakened the
link between cases and deaths in countries such as Britain and Israel (see
chart). But in countries that are poorer, less well vaccinated or both, the
deleterious e ects of the virus will linger. A disparity of outcomes between
rich and poor countries will emerge. The Gates Foundation, one of the
world’s largest charities, predicts that average incomes will return to their
pre-pandemic levels in 90% of advanced economies, compared with only a
third of low- and middle-income economies.
Although the supply of vaccines surged in the last quarter of 2021, many
countries will remain under-vaccinated for much of 2022, as a result of
distribution di culties and vaccine hesitancy. This will lead to higher rates
of death and illness and weaker economic recoveries. The “last mile”
problem of vaccine delivery will become painfully apparent as health
workers carry vaccines into the planet’s poorest and most remote places. But
complaints about unequal distribution will start to abate during 2022 as
access to patients’ arms becomes a larger limiting factor than access to jabs.
Indeed, if manufacturers do not scale back vaccine production there will be
a glut by the second half of the year, predicts Air nity, a provider of life-
sciences data.
Booster jabs will be more widely used in 2022 as countries develop an

understanding of when they are needed. New variants will also drive uptake,
says Stanley Plotkin of the University of Pennsylvania, inventor of the
rubella vaccine. Dr Plotkin says current vaccines and tweaked versions will
be used as boosters, enhancing protection against variants.
The vaccination of children will also expand, in some countries to those as

young as six months. Where vaccine hesitancy makes it hard for
governments to reach their targets they will be inclined to make life di cult
for the unvaccinated—by requiring vaccine passports to attend certain
venues, and making vaccination compulsory for groups such as health-care
workers.
Immunity and treatments may be widespread enough by mid-2022 to drive

down case numbers and reduce the risk of new variants. At this point, the
virus will become endemic in many countries. But although existing
vaccines may be able to suppress the virus, new ones are needed to cut
transmission.
Other innovations in covid-19 vaccines will include freeze-dried

formulations of mrna jabs, and vaccines that are given via skin patches or
inhalation. Freeze-dried mrna vaccines are easy to transport. As the supply
of vaccines grows in 2022, those based on mrna will be increasingly
preferred, because they o er higher levels of protection. That will crimp the
global market for less e ective vaccines, such as the Chinese ones.
In rich countries there will also be greater focus on antibody treatments for
people infected with covid-19. America, Britain and other countries will rely
more on cocktails such as those from Regeneron or AstraZeneca.
Most promising of all are new antiviral drugs. P zer is already

manufacturing “signi cant quantities” of its protease inhibitor. In America,
the government has agreed to buy 1.2bn courses of an antiviral drug being
developed by Merck, known as molnupiravir. This has shown its e cacy in
trials, and the company has licensed it for widespread, a ordable
production.
There are many other antivirals in the pipeline. Antiviral drugs that can be
taken in pill form, after diagnosis, are likely to become blockbusters in 2022,
helping make covid-19 an ever more treatable disease. That will lead, in turn,
to new concerns about unequal access and of misuse fostering resistant
strains.
The greatest risk to this more optimistic outlook is the emergence of a new
variant capable of evading the protection provided by existing vaccines. The
coronavirus remains a formidable foe.
Natasha Loder: Health-policy editor, The Economist7
This article appeared in the Science and Technology section of the print edition of
The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “From pandemic to endemic”
Keep updated
Tests and treatments for “long covid”

are on the horizon
They will help su erers of other disorders, too
Nov 8th 2021

BY SLAVEA CHANKOVA: HEALTH-CARE
B y the end of 2022 vaccines, better treatments and a layer of natural
immunity from prior infection will collectively consign covid-19 to the
ranks of ordinary seasonal infections that people rarely worry about. But
millions of people who were infected during the pandemic will still be
unwell. They will be persistently troubled by some combination of the
nearly 200 symptoms that manifest as “long covid”.
For many of these su erers light will begin to appear on the horizon as early
as the rst half of 2022, as some of the long-covid research projects set up in
2021 start reporting results. America’s National Institutes of Health has
spent more than $1bn on investigating causes and treatments. Britain is
running more than 15 studies with thousands of long-covid patients.
Discoveries are expected in three main areas. The rst is mapping the
biological pathways for the most debilitating long-covid symptoms, such as
breathlessness and brain fog. Some studies are looking, for example, at
changes in brain volume and structure. Knowing whether a long-covid
symptom is caused by a speci c sort of damage to blood vessels, the nervous
system or other tissues will help re ne the search for treatments. For many
su erers, knowing what is causing their symptoms will provide some
degree of relief—by proving that it is not all in their heads.
“ Large trials are under way of several existing drugs and

rehabilitation methods
The second main area of research is focused on diagnostic tests and scans
that measure the e ects of long covid on some of the main organs of the
body. These may include blood tests for speci c markers of damage, mri
scans and some newer methods. One British study is giving patients xenon,
a non-toxic gas that can be seen on scans as it travels through the body, and
may therefore show whether breathlessness is caused by damage to the
lungs or the blood vessels. Another study is looking at the presence in the
blood of cytokines, molecules that are potential markers for a hyperactive
immune response (a suspected cause of long covid). Some of these tests and
scans will then be used to track how long-covid symptoms respond to
various treatments.
Some of the discoveries that emerge from all this will also contribute to the
understanding and treatment of other ailments with similar and
overlapping symptoms, such as Lyme disease, chronic-fatigue syndrome
and complications from u. For millions of people whose lives have been
upended by a viral infection that will not go away, 2022 will be a year of
hope.
Slavea Chankova: Health-care correspondent, The Economist7
The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Long overdue”
Keep updated
Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci on the

future of mRNA therapies
The founders of BioNTech are looking beyond covid-19
Nov 8th 2021

BY UGUR SAHIN AND OZLEM TURECI:
FOUNDERS OF BIONTECH
T he rapid development of multiple covid-19 vaccines is an
unprecedented achievement in drug development that has o ered a
way out of the pandemic. But there is more good news to come. The role of
vaccines based on messenger rna (mrna) technology in this success
heralds a new era in the development of therapies for other diseases.
The mrna breakthrough was made possible by scienti c co-operation over

three decades that helped transform a promising concept into a highly
potent and versatile biopharmaceutical platform. We believe that in 15 years,
one-third of all newly approved drugs will be based on mrna.
Rather than relying on complex and time-consuming fermentation

processes to produce drugs, mrna therapies instead turn the recipient’s
own cells into drug factories. Each mrna molecule is a recipe that instructs
the cells to manufacture a speci c desired protein. Our covid-19 vaccine
prompts cells to manufacture the “spike” protein found in the coronavirus’s
outer coating, thus priming the immune system so that it can subsequently
recognise and fend o the virus.
This technology is a turning-point in the pharmaceutical industry,

comparable to the inauguration of recombinant dna technology (allowing
the production of human-protein drugs such as insulin), or monoclonal
antibodies in laboratory fermenters, more than 40 years ago. The roll-out of
this concept into readily available drugs promises to disrupt and transform
the industry—and global health.
“ We believe that in 15 years, one-third of all newly

approved drugs will be based on mRNA
It also paves the way for mrna vaccines to be deployed against other
infectious diseases. Many existing vaccines for such diseases might be
reformulated using mrna, making them more e cient. We believe that the
versatility of mrna technology o ers opportunities to go further, and to
combat currently undefeated diseases.
At BioNTech, we are now going beyond covid-19 and investing in mrna-

vaccine programmes to deal with diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and
hiv, which are still responsible for many deaths in lower-income countries.
The prospect of being able to bring mrna technology to bear is creating a
spirit of optimism in the ght against these human scourges.
The pandemic has forced people to work better together. Recently initiated
projects have seen a high degree of co-operation between institutions such
as the World Health Organisation, international regulatory authorities and
funding organisations, supported by experts who have been researching the
pathogens of interest for more than 30 years. The rst mrna-vaccine
candidates for these diseases are expected to enter clinical trials in 2022 and
2023.
We also face increasingly challenging health problems on a global scale,

such as age-related diseases in developed countries and the growing need
for a ordable primary health-care in low-income countries. These can be
conquered only by sustainable innovation that is versatile and cost-
e cient, and can enable the individualisation of treatment and targeting of
rare diseases. We believe these needs could be perfectly addressed by mrna.
The rich toolbox of mrna technologies includes an increasingly diversi ed

portfolio of mrna formats, some with the ability to multiply in cells, and a
plethora of ways to deliver mrna to di erent organs and cells in the body. In
the future, mrna drugs could be used for individualised cancer therapies,
regenerative medicine, and for a wide variety of diseases such as allergies,
autoimmune conditions and in ammatory diseases.
What mRNA did next

The stage is set for the emergence of a new health-tech industry that will
rede ne the biotech-pharmaceutical landscape. A key enabler of success
will be that health-tech leaders and pioneers welcome and support new
disruptors to the market. Only by further encouraging investment in
innovation and fostering a culture of co-operation and cross-fertilisation
will this new industry become a changemaker for public health. This new
generation of tech-pharma players may reshape the world’s health in 2022—
and beyond.
Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci: founders of BioNTech 7
The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “The post-covid future of mRNA
therapies ”
Keep updated
New therapies for a range of

conditions are coming in 2022
Haemophilia, brain disorders and malaria are being targeted
Nov 8th 2021

BY NATASHA LODER: HEALTH-POLICY
P ublic interest in medical research has lately been dominated by
treatments and vaccines for covid-19. But research in other areas has
continued, and is about to bear fruit. In 2022 giant strides will be made in
treating haemophilia, and there will be a resurgence of interest in drugs for
neurological disorders—and progress on malaria.
Haemophilia, a disorder in which blood fails to clot in the usual way, has
been with humanity throughout history, and now a ects more than 1.1m
men around the world. The earliest mention of it is in the Talmud, which
exempts a woman’s third son from circumcision if his two elder brothers
have died of bleeding after the procedure. These days haemophilia can be
treated by replacing the missing blood-clotting factors through therapies
delivered by injection. These have alleviated some of the worst outcomes of
a genetic disorder that can disable as well as kill. But for decades researchers
have hoped to correct these inborn errors by providing the correct gene via
gene therapy. At least one such treatment is likely to reach the market in
2022.
The correct genes for clotting factors are introduced into the body by a
harmless virus, a similar trick to that employed by some covid-19 vaccines.
Instead of carrying the genetic recipe for a spike protein, however, the virus
carries the instructions for making the missing proteins. And unlike a
covid-19 vaccine, the virus is engineered so that the genetic material it
carries takes up permanent residence inside the cells it infects, granting
them, in theory, life-long ability to manufacture the clotting factors.
“ In 2022 giant strides will be made in treating

haemophilia
The two rms closest to having the rst licensed product have targeted
di erent variants of the disease. Biomarin, an American rm, has developed
a treatment for haemophilia A called Roctavian; uniQure, based in the
Netherlands, has devised a treatment for haemophilia B called EtranaDez.
Either or both may gain approval from drug regulators in America or Europe
in 2022. And coming up behind them is a joint e ort by P zer, a drugs giant,
and Spark Therapeutics, a biotech rm, to treat haemophilia b.
A gene-therapy drug for beta-thalassemia, another blood disorder, was

pulled from the German market by its maker, Bluebird Bio, when it was
unable to reach an agreement with the government on pricing. This suggests
that scientists’ technical ability to develop treatments is starting to push up
against the boundaries of what society is willing to fund.
New therapeutics for diseases of the brain are also worth watching in 2022.
The granting—by American regulators—of approval for Aduhelm, an
Alzheimer’s drug made by Biogen, a biotech rm, in 2021 has reinvigorated
interest in therapies for dementia and other neurological disorders—even
though some question the e cacy of the new treatment. Eli Lilly, a drugs
giant, hopes to follow in 2022 with its own Alzheimer’s drug, donanemab,
which also targets the amyloid proteins in the brain.
Alector, a biotech rm, is betting that neurodegeneration can be tackled by

harnessing the body’s immune system. In 2022 it will be dosing patients
with a drug to treat frontotemporal dementia, a rapidly progressing and
severe form of the condition that a ects about 170,000 people in America
and Europe. In addition, interest is growing in using psychedelic drugs to
treat brain disorders.
A new malaria vaccine will be rolled out in sub-Saharan Africa towards the
end of 2022. It is a historic step forward, even though it is only 30% e ective
and requires four doses. Better vaccines will follow. Meanwhile, P zer and
BioNTech will start producing their mrna-based covid-19 jab in Africa by
the end of the year. That will give e orts to make new vaccines in Africa, for
Africa, a welcome shot in the arm.
Natasha Loder: Health-policy editor, The Economist7
The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Blood and treasure”
Keep updated
Several ambitious space missions

will blast o in 2022
The stakes are high for national space agencies and private rms
Nov 8th 2021

BY BENJAMIN SUTHERLAND: FREELANCE
F or a taste of forthcoming space missions, consider a European Space
Agency (esa) probe due to blast o , in mid-2022, for Jupiter’s icy moons.
The spacecraft, called juice, will use gravity assists from a series of
planetary y-bys to accelerate, reaching Jupiter in under eight years. Once it
arrives, manoeuvring among Jovian moons 45 light-minutes from Earth will
be complex—project manager Giuseppe Sarri describes the realm as “a mini
solar system” with “not much margin for error”. The probe will not be able to
establish whether one of those moons, Europa, harbours life, but scientists
hope to nd clues in the vapours it ejects. And if a manoeuvre near
Ganymede succeeds in 2032, the spacecraft will become the rst to orbit
another planet’s moon.
Earth’s Moon, for its part, will also see lots of action. Countries planning to
launch lunar craft in 2022 include India, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
nasa, America’s space agency, is sponsoring an astonishing 18 missions in
2022, as it paves the way for a return to the Moon by astronauts as part of a
lunar programme called Artemis. Thales Alenia Space, a Franco-Italian rm,
is expected to deliver the shell of Gateway, a space station to be put in lunar
orbit, to America in late 2022.
Mars, and asteroids beyond, also beckon. In the second half of 2022 esa
plans to launch ExoMars, a mission that missed a 2020 launch window for
the red planet, from Kazakhstan. It includes a Russian-built lander that,
after arriving in 2023, will disgorge a rover that will enable scientists to
deepen their search for signs of past or present life. As for asteroids, nasa
plans to launch three probes in 2022 to study space rocks between Mars and
Jupiter. It will also conduct a “hypervelocity test crash” with a small asteroid
named Dimorphos in late 2022. Experts will study how a collision with a
car-sized spacecraft alters the harmless rock’s path, lest another threaten
Earth one day.
“ For Russia’s space agency, 2022 could be a make-or-

break year
Upcoming missions will entail much nail-biting for engineers. India’s rst
lunar lander, Vikram, crashed into the surface in 2019. Russia last landed a
probe on the Moon in 1976; its new lander, Luna 25, has su ered lengthy
delays. Starliner, a capsule which America’s Boeing hopes will make its rst
crewed mission in 2022, has been plagued by setbacks including sticky
valves and software problems.
As for space tourism, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic (founded by Je Bezos
and Sir Richard Branson respectively) both made their maiden suborbital
ights in 2021. Both hope to pick up the pace with “regular, predictable,
reliable” ights in 2022, says Tom Shelley of Space Adventures, a space-tour
operator based in Virginia. But with Virgin’s vehicle grounded for safety
checks, he reckons Blue Origin has the edge.
For Russia’s space agency, 2022 could be a make-or-break year as it pursues

funding via tourism and participation in international missions. Florian
Vidal of ifri, a think-tank in Paris, says Russia’s space industry has been
hobbled by corruption, underinvestment and technical problems. As a
result, the success of a big expansion of Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome in
2022 has become, he says, “a question of credibility”.
In 2022 a Chinese space station, Tiangong, could become fully operational,

according to an American intelligence report from 2021 that described it as
part of China’s e orts to “match or exceed” America’s military power, with
systems including anti-satellite weapons. Other countries are also worried.
Some strategists think it is no coincidence that in 2022 South Korea “will be
getting busier in space”, as Lee Joon, planning chief at the country’s space
agency, puts it delicately. The perceived threat from China will also push
India to use its space programme for military messaging and other
“purposes of foreign policy”, predicts Ajey Lele, an expert at mp-idsa, a
think-tank in Delhi funded by the defence ministry. That is one motivation
for a possible 2022 maiden launch of Indian astronauts. Much of the
progress of modern space technologies, in short, is driven by old-fashioned
geopolitical competition.
Benjamin Sutherland: Freelance correspondent, The Economist7
The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Higher stakes”
Keep updated
Can Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites

bankroll a base on Mars?
SpaceX is betting that there is money to be made in satellite telecoms
Nov 8th 2021

BY TIM CROSS: TECHNOLOGY EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST
E lon musk, SpaceX’s ambitious founder, has always been clear about
why the company exists. Humans are currently a single-planet species.
Mr Musk would like to change that by establishing a permanent base on
Mars. Ideally, he would join its inhabitants. “I want to die on Mars,” runs his
familiar joke, “just not on impact.”
Progress has been steady and spectacular. SpaceX’s partly reusable Falcon
rockets have driven down the cost of launching things into space, a vital
step for its Martian ambitions. The rm’s newest vehicle, dubbed Starship, is
due to make its rst orbital test ight at the end of 2021. If and when it ies,
it will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V that took the Apollo
astronauts to the Moon. Both the vehicle and its booster will also be fully
reusable, reducing the cost-to-orbit even further. Starship has been
explicitly designed with trips to Mars in mind.
Until now SpaceX has nanced itself by providing rocket launches for nasa,
on whose behalf it ferries both cargo and astronauts to the International
Space Station, and by launching satellites for private companies such as
broadcasters and telecoms rms. But going to Mars will be expensive. To try
to pay for it, SpaceX is getting into the telecoms business back on Earth. It
plans to ll the skies with at least 10,000 low- ying satellites, or around
four times as many as are currently active and in orbit. “Starlink”, as the
service is known, was due to come out of its beta-testing phase in October.
“ The sheer number of satellites in the Starlink

constellation will allow it to serve millions of users
Satellite internet is not a new idea. But, as he has already done with both
rockets and electric cars, Mr Musk believes he can make transformative
improvements to an old technology. Existing services rely on satellites in
high orbits. That allows them to cover plenty of ground. But it also means
that many customers must share a single satellite, which limits capacity,
while the round trip signals must make to and from high orbit adds
irritating delays. The result is that satellite internet is usually treated as a
last resort when nothing else is available.
But it is not just the unserved who are interested. Some high-frequency
traders reckon Starlink might o er a faster way for buy and sell orders to
cross the Atlantic than existing bre-optic cables do. That, at least, is the
theory.
Starlink has competitors: OneWeb, a rival which emerged from bankruptcy

in November 2020, plans to y 648 satellites of its own. Amazon is
developing a similar project called Kuiper, though it has yet to launch any
satellites. Astronomers, meanwhile, worry that lling the sky with
thousands of low- ying satellites will interfere with their scienti c work.
SpaceX has changed the design of Starlink satellites, and added an anti-
re ective coating, in response to such concerns.
Previous attempts to sell satellite-internet services to consumers have

foundered on the cost of the high-tech antennae needed to send and receive
data (SpaceX reckons it has reduced the manufacturing cost of its terminals
from $3,000 to $1,500 in the past two years). And Starlink’s price of $99 per
month is not cheap, even for customers in rich countries.
No one knows yet how well Starlink will work: Morgan Stanley, a bank,
assigns SpaceX a valuation of somewhere between $5bn and $200bn, with
uncertainty about its success accounting for the wide range. More answers
should emerge in 2022. Whether even $200bn would be enough to fund the
establishment of a permanent base on Mars is not clear either. But that still
lies some way o in the future.
Tim Cross: Technology editor, The Economist7
The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “The near frontier”
Keep updated
New scienti c instruments probe the

limits of the known
A new telescope, and an upgraded LHC, tackle questions big and small
Nov 8th 2021

BY ALOK JHA: SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT,
THE ECONOMIST
W hat is the universe made of? Where has it come from? And how will
it end? These questions have occupied the minds of generations of
physicists who have probed the limits of the big and the small.
At the cosmic end, astronomers will get a big new piece of kit in the coming
year. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory (vro) is due to achieve “ rst light” in
October 2022 as it prepares to begin its science observations in 2023. Every
night, from a mountain-top in Chile, its instruments will take 15-second
exposures of patches of the night sky that are 40 times bigger than a full
moon. These 3,200-megapixel images will form the constituent pieces of a
survey of the visible sky that will be recorded every three or four nights for a
decade. The goal, say the scientists who run it, is to “record the greatest
timelapse of the universe ever made”.
This will allow scientists to tackle big questions such as the nature of dark
energy—the mysterious substance that seems to push the universe apart.
Given that it accounts for around 70% of the stu in the cosmos, it is a giant
hole in astronomers’ knowledge.
The vro will tackle the dark energy problem in several ways. One strategy
will be to measure the expansion of the universe in more detail than ever
before. It will do this by looking for type 1a supernovae, which are the death
throes of massive stars. These explosions are all exactly the same
brightness, so by measuring how bright a type 1a supernova looks from
Earth, it is possible to calculate its distance. Such explosions thus serve as a
type of cosmic yardstick for astronomers. The vro will be sensitive enough
to nd a million of these supernovae—100 times more than have been
observed so far. That will help astronomers build a better picture of how the
universe is expanding, and how that expansion may have changed over
time.
In addition, the vro will study the predictions of general relativity, Albert
Einstein’s theory of gravity, by observing clusters of galaxies. These are the
largest objects held together by gravity, and by comparing clusters that are
nearby (and younger) with those that are far away (and older), scientists will
be able to examine how these structures have evolved—and whether the
nature of gravity has changed over the history of the universe.
Since 2018, however, the lhc has been shut while engineers and physicists
upgrade, repair or, in some cases, completely rebuild its cathedral-sized
detectors. More e cient, more powerful detectors will enable them to carry
out experiments with even greater precision. With the upgrades now
complete, the next set of physics operations—known as Run 3—will begin in
March 2022.
One of the upgraded lhc’s rst tasks will be to measure the properties of the
Higgs boson in more detail. Discovered in 2012 to much fanfare, just a few
years after the lhc began operating, the Higgs was the nal piece of the
jigsaw known as the Standard Model of particle physics, a quantum-
mechanical description of all known elementary particles. Though
successful, the Standard Model is not a complete description of the universe
—it does not account for dark energy or dark matter, and cannot explain why
there seems to be more matter than antimatter in the universe. These
inadequacies point to as-yet-undiscovered physical laws, forces or particles.
Understanding the Higgs boson in more detail could open a door into a new
realm of physics. Scientists do not really know much about it. Is it truly
elementary with no internal structure (like an electron) or is it a composite
of smaller particles (like a proton)? Is it really the Higgs boson predicted by
the Standard Model, or is it actually a di erent particle from an
undiscovered theory?
By generating more Higgs bosons and measuring their properties more

precisely, the upgraded lhc will help scientists crack some of those open
questions—in particle physics, and in cosmology, too.
Alok Jha: Science correspondent, The Economist7
The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “Questions big and small”
Keep updated
Western museums are starting to

return colonial-era treasures
Europe’s museums are stu ed with imperial plunder
Nov 8th 2021

BY BARNABY PHILLIPS: AUTHOR OF
“LOOT: BRITAIN AND THE BENIN
BRONZES” (ONEWORLD)
I n an act of contrition for crimes committed during the colonial era,
German museums are expected to return some of their Benin bronzes to
Nigeria in 2022. The bronzes are the thousands of metal castings and ivory
sculptures that were taken from the west African kingdom of Benin (today
in southern Nigeria, and not to be confused with the neighbouring Republic
of Benin) by British troops in 1897. They have become emblematic of the
increasingly charged debate over colonial loot in Western museums and
private collections. Their fame derives both from their exquisite
craftsmanship—when they arrived in Europe, critics compared them to
objects from ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy—and from the brutal
manner in which they were removed by the British from the palace in Benin
City.
There are more than a thousand Benin bronzes in Germany (curators bought
loot from the expedition on the open market), and museums in several
German cities have taken a collective decision to start the process of giving
them back to Nigeria. They have been encouraged by the government, as
well as a broad consensus among the main political parties. Nigeria’s
ambassador to Germany, Yusuf Tuggar, says ownership must be transferred
to his country with no preconditions.
Privately, German o cials and curators express concern at divisions within

Nigeria between the Oba of Benin (the region’s traditional king) and the local
state government, and frustration at delays in building a secure facility to
house the bronzes in the country. A compromise seems likely: the physical
return of a minority of the objects, plus the legal transfer of the remainder,
which will stay in Germany for now.
For the rest of Europe, where many museums are stu ed with imperial
plunder, the symbolic signi cance will be profound. “It’s a very important
precedent,” says Barbara Plankensteiner, director of the Museum of World
Cultures in Hamburg. Mr Tuggar puts it more bluntly: “We hope it will open
the oodgates.”
But will it? Britain has even more Benin bronzes than Germany has. The
British Museum has the world’s largest collection, of about 1,000. In 2022 its
critics will grow ever more indignant and vocal. The British Museum
habitually responds to restitution claims with bland rebu s from the press
o ce. Expect more of these in the coming year, even as, behind the scenes,
unease spreads among curators.
O cials and museums will drag their feet in France, too. The French
government insists that a handful of high-pro le returns, to Senegal and the
Republic of Benin, should not create a legal precedent leading to further
restitution. This is ironic, as it was Emmanuel Macron’s promise in 2017 to
return plundered items from colonial times which energised campaigners.
In Africa, artists will strive to seize the opportunities presented by the winds
of change blowing through the West. Many worry that processes of
restitution have been de ned in Europe and North America, with too little
input from societies to which artefacts might be returned. One exception,
and one of the most signi cant museum developments of 2022, is the
expected opening of the John Randle Centre in the heart of Lagos, which will
celebrate Yoruba culture and history. It is named after one of the rst
Africans to qualify as a doctor in Britain, in 1888. Its architect, Seun
Oduwole, says it will be “full of the sounds and images of the marketplace
and everyday culture”. Its location is poignant: just across the road from
Nigeria’s colonial-era museum, where gloomy galleries and dusty display-
cabinets provide a warning of how institutions that fail to move with the
times can wither away.
Barnaby Phillips: Author of “Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes” (Oneworld)7
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Returning home”
Keep updated
Noteworthy new museums are

opening their doors in 2022
From Bob Dylan, to Broadway, to a new National Museum in Oslo
Nov 8th 2021

BY RACHEL LLOYD: DEPUTY CULTURE
I t has been a grim couple of years for museums. In 2019 more than 230m
people visited the 100 most popular institutions worldwide; in 2020, that
gure fell to 54m because of coronavrius lockdowns and social-distancing
requirements. More than 40% of museums surveyed by unesco, the
cultural arm of the United Nations, had to close again for parts of 2021 amid
new waves of the virus. The pandemic has negatively a ected ticket sales—a
crucial source of revenue for museums—as well as government subsidies.
Some museums have taken to “de-accessioning” (museum-speak for
“selling”) artworks from their collections in order to cover wages and
running costs.
In the midst of the gloom, 2022 will bring some bright spots for the sector.
In May the Bob Dylan Centre will open its doors in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
drawing on a collection of more than 100,000 artefacts to explore the
musician’s cultural in uence. Fans will be able to listen to unreleased
recordings by the ten-time Grammy-award-winning singer-songwriter and
learn how hits such as “Like a Rolling Stone” were made. Notebooks, letters
and other manuscripts will be on display, showing the literary sensibilities
that led to Mr Dylan being awarded the Nobel prize in literature in 2016. The
folk-rock star has also dabbled in visual art over the years, creating the
album cover for “Self Portrait” in 1970 and exhibiting his colourful,
expressionistic paintings all over the world. Even dedicated Dylanologists
may learn something new.
“ Bob Dylan’s notebooks, letters, manuscripts and

paintings will be on display
Those whose musical tastes are of a more theatrical bent will be able to get
their toes tapping at the Museum of Broadway when it makes its debut in
New York in the summer. It will tell the story of the historic arts district
from 1735, when the rst theatre opened, to the present day. (Before the
pandemic struck, Broadway had enjoyed its best season in history, grossing
$1.8bn in the year to May 2019.) Through visual art and interactive
installations, visitors will learn about the industry’s pioneers, go backstage
at historic musicals and discover how a Broadway show is produced.
In June, 12 years after the architectural design was chosen, the National
Museum in Oslo will open in its new location on the city’s waterfront. The
institution was established in 2003 when several museums, including the
National Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art, were integrated.
There will be plenty of room in the new premises, as the museum boasts a
total surface area of 54,600 square metres (587,700 square feet), making it
the largest of its kind in the Nordic countries (though some locals grumble
that it looks like a prison). Around 5,000 artworks from the museum’s
collection will be on display, twice as many as before. Its most prized
possession is Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, but the inaugural exhibition
will focus on contemporary Norwegian art, asking: “What is good art? And
who decides?” Good questions, indeed.
Ahead 2022 under the headline “xxx”
Keep updated
Why stand-up comedy is on the rise

in authoritarian countries
Did you hear the one about the general?
Nov 8th 2021

BY FROM OUR REGIONAL
CORRESPONDENTS, THE ECONOMIST
M ocking mirthless despots may be funny, but it comes at a price. At
the softer end, Hong Kong’s government-run broadcaster closed
“Headliner”, a popular satirical show that had run for 31 years; its hosts left
for Taiwan and Britain. In Singapore, whose government is dominated by an
elite from the ethnic-Chinese majority, a rapper and comedian known as
Preetipls sent up an excruciating government advertisement in which an
ethnic-Chinese actor wore brownface to represent Malay and Indian
minorities. Her video highlighted the government’s own racial blind spots,
but the police response was to put her on notice for undermining racial
harmony.
Authoritarian rule does not necessarily kill comedy, but it does circumscribe
it. In China, traditional comedic forms such as xiangsheng, or “crosstalk”,
remain staples of televised galas. But their avoidance of any sensitive topic
renders them cloying. By contrast, stand-up comedy is growing. Tickets for
the most popular comedy clubs in Shanghai and Beijing sell out in seconds.
“Rock and Roast”, a variety show that features competing comedians, often
attracts more than 100m views a week on the streaming platform of Tencent,
an internet giant. It avoids politics, too, but comedians do explore sensitive
social themes such as feminism, mental health and body image. One female
comedian, Yang Li, has prompted several nationwide debates.
“ Tickets for the most popular comedy clubs in Shanghai

and Beijing sell out in seconds
Stand-up comedy is on the up in authoritarian countries from Kazakhstan to

Vietnam. But as a means for taunting governments, cartoons may still be the
most popular and potent form of satire in Asia, not least because cartoonists
can cloak their critiques more easily. One cartoonist in Thailand says the
government’s attempts to scrub the internet clean of caricatures resemble a
never-ending game of whack-a-mole.
Myanmar’s junta, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, is the bad joke that keeps
on giving. With civic life shuttered and the economy crumbling, state
newspapers trumpet the junta’s ambitions to develop electric vehicles and
build a metro for the deserted capital, Naypyidaw.
One group of Burmese satirists, which has gone underground to avoid arrest
and torture, continues to put out comedies online that ridicule the generals.
Others have melted into the jungles to join the growing armed resistance—
judging that the sword, for now, will prove mightier than the put-down.
From our regional correspondents, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Did you hear the one about the general?”
Keep updated
How the pandemic has boosted

artists’ creativity
Exhibitions in 2022 will show the fruits of their productive seclusion
Nov 8th 2021

BY FIAMMETTA ROCCO: CULTURE
I n mid-2020 William Kentridge, a world-renowned sculptor, performance
artist and lm-maker, caught covid-19. The South African had been
working at the Centre for the Less Good Idea, an incubator space for
performers he had opened in 2016 in central Johannesburg. Forced to isolate
after he and some of his fellow dancers and musicians tested positive, he
took to working in the small artist’s studio he had built at the bottom of the
garden at his family home in Houghton.
For nearly four decades, Mr Kentridge had been travelling year-round,

overseeing installations, performances and exhibitions from New York to
Salzburg to Sydney. It was rare for him to be at home for more than a couple
of weeks at once. Finding himself unexpectedly with time on his hands, Mr
Kentridge was at last able to concentrate on a project he’d been mulling over
for many years: a series of one-hour lms called “Studio Life”, based on what
he describes as the natural history of the studio, the alchemy of art and what
happens when the artist closes the door. “One can think of the studio as a
kind of enlarged head,” he says. “Instead of the ideas moving a few
centimetres from one part of your memory to your active thinking, it’s the
walk across the studio that has the same e ect of bringing ideas together
and allowing something to emerge.”
Covid-19 was the cause of much su ering. But for many artists—especially
those whose global reputations meant they were almost constantly on the
road—it has been a blessing, o ering an unexpected chance to think and
work uninterrupted for months on end. Sir Harrison Birtwistle, an 87-year-
old British composer, has been concentrating on a new opera. Crystal Pite, a
Canadian choreographer and director, has focused on a series of works that
will be unveiled from 2022 at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in
London. The American artist Michael Heizer has been adding the nal
touches to a project he started 50 years ago, the creation of a hand-carved
pharaonic “city”, the world’s biggest sculpture, in the Nevada desert.
Two international exhibitions will showcase the work of artists from around
the world. From April, work by more than 100 artists will be on display at the
rst Venice Biennale since the pandemic, including, for the rst time, artists
from Oman, such as Hassan Meer (pictured). Curated by Cecilia Alemani,
the 2022 Biennale will be called “The Milk of Dreams”, inspired by a
children’s book by Leonora Carrington, a British surrealist. “Carrington’s
stories describe a world set free, brimming with possibilities,” says Ms
Alemani.
Two months later, in June, a new and largely unknown group of artists will
exhibit their work at the 15th edition of Documenta, a show held every ve
years in the German city of Kassel that is known for introducing to the world
the next generation of artistic greats.
Fiammetta Rocco: Culture correspondent, The Economist7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Productive seclusion”
Keep updated
A new space race is under way—

between lm-makers
Spacesuit, camera, action!
Nov 8th 2021

BY RACHEL LLOYD: DEPUTY CULTURE
F ilm-makers have been fascinated by space for well over a century. “Le
Voyage dans la Lune”, a silent short lm, followed ve astronomers
propelled to the Moon by a cannon; it was an international hit after its
release in 1902. When the space race between America and the Soviet Union
took o in the mid-20th century, lm and TV storytellers capitalised on
public interest with “Thunderbirds” (1965-66), “Star Trek” (1966-69) and
“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). Viewers and critics are still captivated by
spacefaring odysseys today, as evinced by the success of science- ction
lms such as “Gravity” (2013) and “Interstellar” (2014) as well as biopics of
Neil Armstrong and nasa mathematicians.
Producers often enlist the expertise of theoretical physicists and former

astronauts in order to create a faithful portrayal of space travel. The most
realistic depiction yet may arrive on screens in 2022. In October 2021
Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, sent Yulia Peresild, an actor (pictured)
and Klim Shipenko, a director, to the International Space Station (iss) to lm
scenes for “Vyzov” (“The Challenge”). A co-production between Channel
One, Russia’s main broadcaster, Roscosmos and a lm studio, the story
follows a surgeon as she is dispatched to operate on a cosmonaut before he
can return to Earth. Ms Peresild had to meet certain physical requirements
and undergo rigorous preparation before the mission at the Yuri Gagarin
Cosmonaut Training Centre—named after the Soviet pilot who became the
rst person to journey into space in 1961. This included High-G, which
involves putting people in centrifuges to test their tolerance of acceleration,
as well as parachuting and zero-gravity lessons.
The Russian lm-makers are hoping to beat old foes in their creative
endeavour: in May 2020 an American lm crew, led by director Doug Liman
and star Tom Cruise, announced its intention to get their own cameras
rolling on the iss with the help of nasa and SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocketry
rm. Universal Pictures has reportedly set a budget of $200m for the project
—around the same amount as it spent on the ninth instalment of the “Fast &
Furious” franchise. It seems, however, that Russia was better prepared for
lift-o . Although Messrs Liman and Cruise were also hoping to begin
lming in October 2021, further details about this endeavour remain scarce.
(A publicist for the project states merely that the lm is in “active
development”.)
Whenever these tales make it to the big screen, both are hoping to rekindle a
public passion for celestial exploration. Roscosmos has said it strives to
“popularise Russia’s space activities”. The agency also plans to take Yusaku
Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, to the iss in December 2021 (he will record
the trip for his YouTube channel). Similarly, when announcing the
Hollywood project, Jim Bridenstein, a former administrator at nasa, said
that “we need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and
scientists to make [nasa’s] ambitious plans a reality.” To in nity, perhaps,
and beyond.
Rachel Lloyd: Deputy culture editor, The Economist7
Keep updated
Ai Weiwei on reclaiming art from

capitalism
Contemporary art has become just a form of entertainment
Nov 8th 2021

BY AI WEIWEI: ARTIST AND ACTIVIST
C ontemporary culture, by which I mean the paintings, sculpture,
audio-visual media, literature and poetry that have emerged since the
Industrial Revolution, bears the mark of the times. Over the past 200 years
fundamental changes in manufacturing, and an emphasis on the pursuit of
pro t, have transformed economics, politics and culture. It was a huge leap
unlike anything that had previously occurred in history, dramatically
expanding mankind’s capabilities and resulting in global di erences in
wealth and development. Powerful European and North American nations
plundered other parts of the world. In the post-cold-war era, a new
framework of globalisation emerged, championed by the West, its political
bodies and monopolistic corporations. Political and cultural discourses are
dominated by the need to make pro ts. The national boundaries that once
delineated territories seem not to exist any more.
All this is re ected in our era’s culture. It is unduly in uenced by pro t-

driven companies with inordinate power over our economic and political
structures, education and media. Their pervasive impact is manifested in
society’s value judgments, aesthetic education and philosophy. The cultural
landscape is also shaped by the framework of Western capitalism and its
associated concepts of democracy, freedom and a partial dose of socialism.
A complete system has been formed, spanning from the shaping of
aesthetics under these conditions, through cultural education, art criticism
and the curatorial processes of galleries and museums, to artworks’ eventual
entry into the narrative of Western art history. This system re ects the
values and aesthetic tendencies of capitalism in every respect.
“ Contemporary art has become just a form of

entertainment, detached from spiritual life
It is characterised by capitalism’s fervent advocacy of individual freedom, its

encouragement of so-called “creativity” and the idealisation of unfettered
personal development. Its symptoms can be observed in the overwhelming
tendency to consider art from a purely commercial perspective, neglecting
spiritual concerns in favour of wealth accumulation. At the same time,
societal injustices, regional inequalities, exploitation of the weak and
unsustainable use of natural resources are ignored. By dodging these
questions, contemporary art has become just a form of entertainment,
detached from spiritual life. Art’s power to shape self-awareness and assist
in the understanding of identity has been compromised. The outlook is
dim.
I believe that art can develop in a meaningful and rewarding manner only
when it rede nes the human condition. An artist, as a human being, is both
an individual and a member of society. It is impossible for individuals in
our era to escape from the broader political context. To be aware of one’s
unique existence and spiritual nature, it is vital to remain sensitive to the
human condition and conscious of the origin of morality. Without
consciousness, there is no morality. Over the years, my artworks have been
concerned with life and death, the bigger sociopolitical context, global
environmental change and the ongoing pandemic and its impact on
humanity and the human condition. They are all connected with the human
condition and human dignity, which provided the inspiration for “Black
Chandelier” (2021) and “A Tree” (2021). My future works will continue in this
vein.
A cornerstone of life
Humans’ intellectual limitations provide artistic possibilities. Despite
mankind’s exaggerated self-esteem, extreme arrogance and tendency to
overestimate the degree of control we have over the universe, humans have
been unable to escape the fact of their own mortality. Life and death, pain
and disappointment, exploitation and sacri ce—all provide the best soil in
which art can ourish, awakening humanity and constantly reshaping self-
awareness. Art is as vital as religion and science, an indispensable
cornerstone of life. Even if it is temporarily eclipsed by human greed and
desire, its re-emergence is inevitable, and all of humanity will be the better
for it.
Ai Weiwei: artist and activist 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Reclaiming art from capitalism”
Keep updated
The video-streaming battle is going

global
But in some territories, streamers are forming alliances
Nov 8th 2021

BY TOM WAINWRIGHT: MEDIA EDITOR,
THE ECONOMIST
A fter covid-19 forced directors everywhere to shout “Cut!”, new
television series were thin on the ground in 2021. But with lming back
under way, viewers will be spoilt for choice in 2022. Net ix, the world’s
leading video-streamer, will launch the fourth season of its sci- hit,
“Stranger Things”. Amazon Prime Video, the online retailer’s entertainment
arm, will unveil a lavish “Lord of the Rings” spin-o which cost nearly half a
billion dollars to make.
These are among the next salvos in the competition for eyeballs known as
the streaming wars, in which the entertainment giants of Hollywood and
Silicon Valley vie to outspend each other on content. Yet in much of the
world the “wars” have been limited to two or three combatants. Net ix and
Amazon are everywhere. Apple tv+, the tech rm’s video venture, is in more
than 100 countries. The rest are relative works in progress.
In 2022 that will change, as Hollywood’s other streamers pile into new
markets. International expansion o ers them a chance to sign up tens of
millions of new customers and swell their war chests. But the battle for
subscribers will be harder than at home.
“ In some territories, streaming wars are giving way to

streaming alliances
Disney, Hollywood’s biggest studio, has been pushing deeper into Asia,
launching its Disney+ service most recently in Hong Kong, Taiwan and
South Korea (the setting for “Squid Game”, Net ix’s global smash-hit in
2021). Peacock, the streaming platform of nbc-Universal, part of the
Comcast cable empire, has just begun its roll-out in Europe, as has hbo Max,
part of WarnerMedia. Discovery+, which serves up light factual
entertainment, recently set up shop in Brazil, Canada and the Philippines.
The year ahead will see further

expansion. Disney+ plans launches in
eastern Europe, the Middle East and
Africa. Paramount+, a streamer
owned by Viacomcbs, will arrive in
Europe’s largest markets. hbo Max,
which has some of America’s most
valuable tv, from “Game of Thrones”
to “Succession”, will expand its
footprint in Europe, too.
Hollywood will nd foreigners a

tough crowd. Emerging markets
mean lower revenues: Disney+ makes
less than $1 a month from subscribers
in India. Even in rich countries,
budgets are lower than in America. The average American cable bill comes
to nearly $100 a month, according to Ampere Analysis, a research rm. In
Britain the equivalent is half that. And whereas Americans are ditching their
overpriced cable packages in record numbers, freeing spending power for
streaming, Europeans seem to be much more attached to their pay-tv
subscriptions.
There are also questions about rights. Some studios, like Disney, are putting
all their lms and shows on their own streaming service. But others still
have licensing obligations to di erent distributors. hbo Max has yet to
announce a launch date in some big European countries, including Britain,
where the rights to its most popular programmes are held by Sky, a satellite
broadcaster owned by Comcast.
The di culty of cracking these markets is one reason why streaming wars
are giving way to streaming alliances. Discovery and WarnerMedia hope to
complete their proposed merger in 2022, to help them take on Net ix.
Comcast and Viacomcbs, whose streaming platforms, Peacock and
Paramount+, compete with each other in America, have agreed to co-operate
internationally. Their output will be combined into yet another streaming
service, called SkyShowtime, which will launch in Europe in 2022. There
will be plenty on tv in the year ahead. The challenge will be working out
what to watch, and on which platform.
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Streaming’s global ght”
Keep updated
H.E. Mohamed Al Mubarak on cities

and culture
Culture and creativity will drive the cities of the future
Nov 8th 2021

BY H.E. MOHAMED AL MUBARAK:
CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE
AND TOURISM, ABU DHABI
T he pandemic has had a profound impact on cities, especially in the
developed world. With companies allowing workers to continue to
work from home as the lockdowns ease, many people have decided to move
out altogether. To retain their economic edge in the post-pandemic world,
city leaders must do more to make sure that urban areas are places where
people want to live and work.
Embedding more cultural and creative activity within the social life of a city
is one of the most important ways to do this. This will help preserve the
heart of our urban spaces even as they embrace the connecting power of
digitisation. A city is not solely de ned by its nancial markets, o ce
buildings or economic activity, but by the unique creativity and culture
woven throughout everyday life.
Even though many of us turned to cultural pursuits to get through the

lockdowns, these elements of urban life have never been more at risk. They
represent a positive force that is sorely needed to help create a sustainable
shared future. “Cultural localisation” has become a pillar of Culture2030, a
coalition of international agencies dedicated to the fuller integration of
culture in the un Sustainable Development Goals and the un Decade of
Action. It puts the local at the heart of cultural development.
Culture and creativity are an integral part of our growth as a society and
imperative for our personal and collective well-being. A recent study by the
World Health Organisation and University College London found that
engaging with the arts is crucial for dealing with physical and mental-health
challenges, and aids social cohesion.
My own family’s rst excursion after the lockdown was to Louvre Abu Dhabi.
It was an almost spiritual experience, reminding us that cultural and
creative activities are medicine for the mind and the heart. They are also
drivers of a powerful economic sector. Transforming a city to harness this
power is not something that can be achieved by governments alone; it
requires collaboration between policymakers, the non-pro t and education
sectors, committed individuals and private industry.
“ Culture and creativity are an integral part of our growth

as a society and imperative for our personal and
collective well-being
At our fourth Culture Summit in March 2021, the Department of Culture and
Tourism in Abu Dhabi partnered with unesco to announce a new joint
study aimed at measuring the impact covid-19 has had on the global cultural
and creative industries. It will also devise solutions to support the sector’s
recovery and help it to become part of wider social and economic
regeneration strategies.
One good case study is the city of Miami, which has developed over the past
20 years into a vibrant centre for contemporary culture through a
combination of factors, including an accessible public art programme
featuring well-known artists such as Keith Haring and Robert Rauschenberg,
and successful impact philanthropy. Adrienne Arsht’s $30m gift to the
Center for the Performing Arts was credited with attracting as much as $1bn
in investment in the local community. Commercial activity is at the heart of
its success, with Art Basel Miami Beach, a mega-fair, generating hundreds of
millions of dollars in economic activity, and developers commissioning
some of the world’s greatest architects, such as Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel
and the late Zaha Hadid, to transform the city’s skyline. This has helped
create a global cultural destination where people want to live, work and
visit.
Abu Dhabi has been trying to do the same, investing more than $8bn
between 2016 and 2026 in our own cultural and creative industries. This
strategy encompasses more than 800 initiatives—from promoting
traditional local handicrafts to opening major cultural institutions such as
Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Zayed National Museum and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
The upcoming lm “Mission Impossible: 7” will feature scenes in both the
expansive local deserts of Abu Dhabi and our modern international airport,
representing the emirate’s unusual blend of ancient heritage and future-
ready ambition.
Looking forward, looking back

As we celebrate the uae’s 50th anniversary at the end of 2021, Abu Dhabi is
rapidly diversifying its economy to embrace innovation and creativity, and
we believe that other cities around the world would bene t greatly from
doing the same. A rich cultural life with humming public spaces and a
supportive economic framework is essential for creating ful lled
communities that can make cities vibrant, energised places—where workers
in the new economies of the 21st century want to live, thrive and raise their
families.
H.E. Mohamed Al Mubarak: chairman, Department of Culture and Tourism, Abu

Dhabi 7
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Culture’s central role in cities”
Keep updated
Coal is being phased out—in British

homes, at least
2022 is the last year in which coal may be burned in British domestic hearths
Nov 8th 2021

BY ANN WROE: OBITUARIES EDITOR, THE
ECONOMIST
T here was a time, not so long ago, when people in Britain’s cities and
suburbs woke in winter not to cock-crow or the beep of a mobile phone,
but to the strident riddling with pokers of stoves, boilers and grates. The ash
that fell from them was not soft and white, like wood-ash, but scraped grey
clinker that had once been coal.
Coal was king of the winter household. Its arrival each autumn was a
ceremony, with the knobbly sacks hauled o the lorry and onto the
shoulders of straining men with at caps and dust-smeared cheeks. Into the
cellar or garden bunker the coal poured with a roar and a tumbling soot-
cloud; then the door was sealed again. Behind it the coal could be imagined
brooding, waiting, like a presence.
This was a fuel both ancient and strange. Its smell was salty and slightly
spicy, of the deep earth. It had come from beds laid down in the
Carboniferous and the Permian periods, dug out by miners who toiled
underground half-naked. It was compacted of giant wetland ferns and
towering unknown trees, pressed down so hard for so long that they became
stone. Users of coal warmed themselves not with logs sawn from any old
regular tree, but by burning prehistoric forests that had been stalked by
dinosaurs.
“ Users of coal warmed themselves by burning prehistoric

forests stalked by dinosaurs
Coal came in many grades, from proud, glossy, sharp-cut anthracite to poor
brown lignite, left for power stations. To burn any kind was very di erent
from burning wood. Wood res were spirited, amey and lively; coal took
time, slowly digesting its starter of kindling and balled-up newspaper,
letting the gas and tar smoke o . Only when it had “dried” would it open its
heart of heat, to reveal scarlet lakes of magma and outcrops of glowing ore.
Robert Louis Stevenson saw armies there; any child could imagine them in
this war-landscape, as the red mountains slowly subsided into plains of lava
and ash.
Holmes’s era was close to peak coal in Britain. In 1913, between industrial
and domestic use, the country burned 287m tonnes of it, most of it from
more than 1,300 deep mines. By then every chimney in London, south Wales
and the northern towns had been belching coal dust for decades. Coal made
the weather, as Charles Dickens described in the incomparable rst chapter
of “Bleak House”:
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it ows among green aits and
meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls de led among the tiers of
shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city…Fog on the
Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights…Fog in the eyes and throats of
Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the resides of their wards.
Almost no coal was imported, for Britain had deposits so accessible that the
invading Romans forged their weapons with it, merely pecking with picks at
the surface, and so abundant that the country industrialised well before the
rest of the world. Queen Elizabeth I was already “greatly grieved and
annoyed with the taste and smoke of sea-coales”. A tax on coal introduced in
1666 was lucrative enough to pay for two-thirds of Christopher Wren’s
elegant new London churches.
In 1888 a hundredweight (112lbs; 51kg) of coal, which would last a family a

week, cost one shilling and twopence: less than the weekly bill for our or
fruit. But it involved a Faustian bargain. Burned in quantity (as it will
continue to be in America, China and India), it produced the cheap energy
on which modern life depends. It also poisoned the air and disrupted the
climate. The cheering warmth of individual hearths was balanced always by
the inescapable pollution of thousands of them, just as the mellow
sweetness of a miner’s song was ltered through deadly black dust.
Ann Wroe: Obituaries editor, The Economist7
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition of The World
Ahead 2022 under the headline “Ashes to ashes”
Keep updated

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Audrey Tang MaJun Ai Weiwei

The World Ahead 2022

Ten trends to watch in the coming

Nov 8th 2021

1 Democracy v autocracy. America’s mid-term elections and China’s

2 Pandemic to endemic. New antiviral pills, improved antibody treatments

3 In ation worries. Supply-chain disruptions and a spike in energy

4 The future of work. There is a broad consensus that the future is

“ The coming year will be dominated by the need to adjust

6 Crypto grows up. Like all disruptive technologies, cryptocurrencies are

7 Climate crunch. Even as wild res, heatwaves and oods increase in

8 Travel trouble. Activity is picking up as economies reopen. But countries

10 Political footballs. The Winter Olympics in Beijing and the football

The rapid development of mrna coronavirus vaccines, a bright spot in 2021,

Tom Standage: Editor, The World Ahead 20227

The World Ahead 2022

Rivalry between America and China

Nov 8th 2021

Mr Allison’s analysis was studied closely in Washington and Beijing.

“ Each side is striving to show the superiority of its system

Mr Biden has already described it as such, saying that Western democracies

Xi who must be obeyed

Meanwhile, Western democracies will showcase all their frustrating

The biggest disappointment will be America itself. Mid-term election years

Meanwhile, in the economic arena…

Mr Xi has embarked on a no-holds-barred e ort to cut China’s capitalist

In both of these cases, China’s draconian approach will eventually cause

All this will complicate China’s already challenging macroeconomic

“ The good news is that a military confrontation seems

Divergent political and economic performance will dominate the headlines

Unfortunately, this all seems highly unlikely. In a deeply polarised America,

Zanny Minton Beddoes: Editor-in-chief, The Economist7

The World Ahead 2022

Energy investment needs to increase

Nov 8th 2021

In 2021 the world was awash in easy promises. Some 70 countries,

“ Because energy investment needs to increase, bills and

It’s not easy being green

The emerging world accounts for two-thirds of energy-related carbon

Patrick Foulis: Business a airs editor, The Economist7

The World Ahead 2022

Covid-19 is likely to fade away in

Nov 8th 2021

“ Immunity has been acquired at a terrible cost

Vaccines do not o er complete protection, however, especially among the

Just another endemic disease

Covid is not done yet. But by 2023, it will no longer be a life-threatening

Edward Carr: Deputy editor, The Economist7

The World Ahead 2022

Will the world economy return to

Nov 8th 2021

The dilemma facing policymakers is acute. The textbook answer to in ation

Yet the comparison with the early

Unfortunately economies are plagued by shortages of workers needed for

Central bankers in a tightening spot

Henry Curr: Economics editor, The Economist7

The World Ahead 2022

The aftermath of the pandemic will

Nov 8th 2021

In 2022 the risk of turbulence is greatest in middle-income countries. The