Hard Numbers: China's High-Speed Splurge

74 million: As of last weekend, a UN funding drive to help Mozambique recover from Cyclone Idai, which struck in March, had raised $74 million. That's well below an initial $282 million target and less than one-tenth of the estimated $773 million of direct economic losses caused by the storm, which hit the country's food supply hard.

3,200: China plans to build 3,200 kilometers of high-speed rail lines this year. While that is down from the average of 3,600 kilometers of new track it's built each year for the past five years, it's still nearly the equivalent of Spain's entire high-speed rail network.

64: Sixty-four percent of Americans believe that Jews face at least some discrimination in the US today, up 20 percentage points since 2016, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll.

17: More than half of India's 1.3 billion people depend on farming for their livelihood, even though the sector only makes up about 17 percent of the country's economic output. That makes farmers an unusually powerful constituency in India's ongoing national elections.

More from GZERO Media

A photo of a phone with different AI applications on the screen with the GZERO World Podcast logo superimposed on top.

Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World Podcast to talk about the risks of recklessly rolling out powerful AI tools without guardrails as big tech firms race to build “god in a box.”

- YouTube

The next leap in artificial intelligence is physical. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down how robots and autonomous machines will transform daily life, if we can manage the risks that come with them.

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer is flanked by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof as he hosts a 'Coalition of the Willing' meeting of international partners on Ukraine at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) in London, Britain, October 24, 2025.
Henry Nicholls/Pool via REUTERS

As we race toward the end of 2025, voters in over a dozen countries will head to the polls for elections that have major implications for their populations and political movements globally.