I used to love The Economist, and I even used to collect various articles to prescribe them to read for my students whilst I was teaching Economics at A Levels. It’s been a great influence on the way I write and approach sharing my opinion on things, and I enjoyed the dry wit and British humour, but these days I find the anti-China slant a bit uncalled for.
Take the recent report on China’s dominance in renewables. One of the article that talked about the improvement of air quality in China has the headline, ‘China’s air-quality improvements have hastened global warming’. I used to laugh at The Economist’s self-deprecating humour and when they lambasted silly but political manoeuvres of US presidents. When they try to criticise illiberal practices in China, I get it and understand the Western liberal lens that drives those considerations. However, this is a blatant low blow, a stark contrast to the highbrow approach that I would usually associate with The Economist.
The article isn’t even so much about China’s air quality but the science behind how some of the aerosols emitted by coal plants could have helped with cooling the atmosphere and how geo-engineering techniques based on that could play a role in climate change. Though latest studies suggest this will probably not be enough to cope with challenges in the shifting agriculture landscape as a result of climate change.
We are entering a new era where narratives are being distorted by English-language media, and it doesn’t help the rest of the world understand China any better.
I recall in 2018, when The Economist started a new column on China called ‘Chaguan’ (which really means Tea House in Chinese), they wanted to understand China better and to help the world do that. That hadn’t quite work.