31.9%: Citizens of Hong Kong still aren’t enthused about the “patriots only” system of pseudo-democracy, as just 31.9% of the city’s 4.1 million registered voters showed up at the polls in Sunday’s legislative election. China implemented this system – whereby only pre-approved candidates can run – in 2021. Turnout in the last election before this new rule, back in 2016, was 58%.
2: Tensions between two old rivals in East Asia continue to rise. Chinese fighter jets twice fixed their radar on Japanese military planes that were flying over international waters over the weekend, the Japanese government said. Beijing disputed Tokyo’s account. Japan is frustrated that the Trump administration hasn’t offered more support amid this growing dispute.
$1.08 trillion: China’s trade annual surplus climbed past the trillion dollar mark this last year, reaching $1.08 trillion. No country has reached such a level of exports before. The record comes despite US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, which Chinese companies have bypassed by shifting the transshipment or final assembly of products to other countries. It is also due to China now selling twice as much to the EU as it buys.
8: First the jewel robbery at the Louvre, and now, two different men stole eight engravings from French artist Matisse and five from Brazilian painter Candido Portinari from a library in São Paulo, Brazil on Sunday.
$82.7 billion: Netflix, the world’s largest streaming service, announced on Friday that it would purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO Max. However, the deal could be over before it begins: Trump said yesterday that the deal “could be a problem” because of Netflix’s existing market share in streaming. His administration must greenlight the deal before it goes through.
In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer unpacks the Trump administration’s new national security strategy, particularly its heightened focus on Europe.
Remember Xinjiang? There was a time, not long ago, when China’s crackdown on the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group living in Xinjiang province in Northwestern China, was a hot topic. But these days the attention has faded.
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Despite the lavish ceremony, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting produced few concrete outcomes.