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Why Netanyahu relented to protests in Israel, but France's Macron didn't
Why Netanyahu relented to protests, but Macron didn't | World In :60 | GZERO Media

Why Netanyahu relented to protests in Israel, but France's Macron didn't

Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

Why did Netanyahu end up backing down to protests in Israel, but not Macron in France?

Well, they are two different countries. But really, in Israel, they hadn't yet pushed the reform through. At this point, Netanyahu hasn't said he is given up on it. He said he's waiting for 30 days. Now, he might not be able to get it through, but still, it wasn't like it was passed and then he said, "Too much. Now, I've got to undo it." Where in the case of Macron, he had already gotten the vote in the upper house. He'd already forced it through, avoiding the lower house through a constitutional measure, which meant that essentially he had already gotten the agreement and then he was dealing with massive demonstrations. Which, by the way, the demonstrations themselves not super popular in France, even though the pension reform is strongly opposed, so I'm not surprised by that.

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2022 showed Xi Jinping is not invincible; 2023 will be "rocky year" for him
2022 Showed Xi Jinping Is Not Invincible; 2023 Will Be “Rocky Year” for Him | GZERO World

2022 showed Xi Jinping is not invincible; 2023 will be "rocky year" for him

What a year 2022 has been for Xi Jinping.

On the one hand, China's leader made clear he's the big boss after the 20th Communist Party Congress. On the other, he's been forced to roll back his zero-COVID policy following protests and the damage to the economy.

What will 2023 hold for Xi?

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China isn't budging on zero-COVID
China Isn't Budging on Zero-COVID | Quick Take | GZERO Media

China isn't budging on zero-COVID

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here. And yes, we are seven weeks into the war, but we also have real problems in containing COVID in China.

In the United States and the rest of the developed world, everyone's saying, "We're done with COVID. We don't want to wear masks anymore. We want to get our lives back." But in China, the zero-COVID policy means that they've got still major lockdowns. In particular, in Shanghai, the largest city in China, which is now entering a second week of lockdown. And record numbers of cases in Shanghai, nothing close to the numbers of cases you were seeing in the United States or in Europe, but in China -- where very few people have gotten COVID, and so there's no natural immunity, vaccines don't work very well and the hospitals would get overwhelmed very quickly if they were just going to let COVID rip -- understandable that they are extremely nervous about these small numbers and as a consequence, they're locking down the entire city.

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The Winter Olympics in a divided world
The Winter Olympics in a Divided World | Quick Take | GZERO Media

The Winter Olympics in a divided world

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a happy start of the week to you. Got your Quick Take to get you going on a Monday, and why not talk about the Olympics, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, so different from the Summer Olympics that they hosted back in 2008, when the American president was there, and was enormously impressed, and this was China coming out onto the world stage, and seen as a global leader. Though the presumption in the West was still as they got wealthier and more powerful, and we let them into global leadership roles, including hosting the Olympics, they would eventually become more of a free market and more democratic. And of course, that was wrong.

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Beating China at AI
Beating China at AI | GZERO World

Beating China at AI

The US and China compete on many fronts, and one of them is artificial intelligence.

But China has a different set of values, which former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is not a big fan of — especially when those values shape the AI on apps his children use.

"You may not care where your kids are, and TikTok may know where your teenagers are, and that may not bother you," he says. "But you certainly don't want them to be affected by algorithms that are inspired by the Chinese and not by Western values."

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Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy
Omicron and the Undoing of China’s COVID Strategy | GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy

Omicron is here. The bad news is that it's more contagious. The good news is that mRNA vaccines work against death and hospitalization. COVID may soon become endemic in some parts of the world.

Not in China, where Xi Jinping's zero-COVID approach faces its toughest test to date with omicron. Why? Because China lacks mRNA jabs, and so few Chinese people have gotten COVID that overall protection is very low.

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Nicholas Thompson on China's tech U-turn
Nick Thompson on China's Tech U-turn | GZERO World

Nicholas Thompson on China's tech U-turn

Six months ago, China's tech giants were champions of the state, working with the government to conquer US Big Tech. But then Xi Jinping started cracking down, and a trillion dollars in their market value is gone. Huh? For Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and former editor-in-chief of WIRED, it makes sense for Xi to go after cryptocurrencies to ensure they don't replace the yuan. But going after national tech champions, he says, could be fool's errand because it's inevitable they'll someday become more powerful than the state itself.

Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Big Tech: Global sovereignty, unintended consequences

LinkedIn right to shut down in China, says journalist Nick Thompson

LinkedIn out of China | GZERO World

LinkedIn right to shut down in China, says journalist Nick Thompson

The Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson believes in tech firms doing business in China because connecting with people there is a huge social good for the world. But in demanding LinkedIn de-platform certain people, he says, the Chinese government crossed a line, and "you can't justify that."

Watch Ian Bremmer's interview with Nicholas Thompson in an upcoming episode of GZERO World, airing on US public television.

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