Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives.

I'm your host, Richard Wolfe.

In today's program, we're going to be talking about

the economic strategy of China, which is becoming such an important driver of the whole world

economy. We're going to be looking at a very contended act, a living wage act in California,

on and off the ballot and what that's all about.

We're going to talk about the remarkable mayor of the city of Boston and her solidarity with

strikers at Starbucks. And finally, we're going to talk about the so-called revolving door

in the government in this time

in relationship to the tobacco industry in the United States. So let's go. China's strategy

is becoming clearer with each passing month. How is it going to cope with the changing world, the world that isn't anymore a globalization

project where free trade and open exchange is what everybody led by the United States

wanted and pursued for the last 30 to 40 years, if not longer. The Chinese clearly see that that time is over.

Economics have been weaponized. The United States under Trump went right after China,

slapping tariffs, engaging in trade wars. Mr. Biden, in his sanctions against Russia, has taken all of that even

further, literally taking over and freezing their reserve assets that back up their currency,

their gold, things that were thought to be unthinkable before, and that, of course, threaten every other country

that has assumed the United States would play the role of making sure everything works properly,

which it is now leaving behind.

So what are the Chinese doing?

They're reorienting everything they do, away from areas that are dangerous,

like the United States and Western Europe. This has been going on for a while, long before

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