The collapse of property giant Evergrande will be a “wrenching adjustment for the Chinese economy,” writes Richard McGregor in Foreign Policy. But it’s not necessarily at odds with President Xi Jinping’s plans to rewrite the national narrative in his favour. With loyalty now preferred over success, rich villains like Evergrande boss Xu Jiayin have become a necessity.
The Frigid Isle
Íris Erlingsdóttir shines a light on the world’s first wholly feminized state. Women, she writes in The European Conservative, run everything in Iceland: “the presidency, the prime minister’s office…[the] national state church…schools, municipalities, police…newsrooms and [the] ever-expanding public bureaucracy.” As for the men, Erlingsdóttir observes, they describe themselves ruefully as (bad-taste alert) “pussy-whipped.”
