Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Staffing the American government is a monumental task, a fact clearly not lost on President Joe Biden,

who had a thousand staff ready to go on his first day in office.

So where are all of his ambassadors, and what are the risks of having so few in post?

And defining the boundaries of oceans is not straightforward.

Not even the number of oceans in the world is widely agreed.

We look into why it's all more than just words and lines on a map.

First up, though, when American markets open today after the long weekend, investors will be watching Chinese tech giants closely.

Last week, Didi, a Chinese ride-hailing app, listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

It was the biggest American initial public offering of a Chinese company since the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba listed seven years ago.

But then Chinese regulators put the brakes on, first announcing an investigation into

Dedi's data practices and then pulling it from China's app stores. Didi isn't the first firm

to fall foul of fickle regulators. Far from it. As its big tech companies stretch their wings in

international markets, China's leadership seems set on bringing

them back to Earth. So the cyberspace administration of China has put out a series of announcements

over the past couple days. D.D. listed in New York on June 30th. Two days later, the regulator

said that it was investigating the company. Two days later, the regulator said that it would

drop the DD app from the app store. Don Weinland is the economist's China, business, and finance

editor, and is based in Hong Kong. So this is obviously a devastating development for the company.

It can no longer acquire new customers.

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