Trouble in Shangri-La: Sino-American tensions escalate

Economist Podcasts

The Economist

News & Politics, News

4.4 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At a meeting of defence ministers from the Asia-Pacific region, heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington were all too apparent. A naval spat in the Taiwan Strait looms large over relations. What will it take for both sides to talk? In Brazil, Lula faces an uphill battle to undo his predecessor’s policies. And are British boarding schools worth it?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.
0:08.0	And I'm Orer Ogdenby. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
0:20.0	Brazil's left-wing president Lula is back in office and wants to undo the policies of his populist predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
0:28.0	That won't be easy. Mr. Bolsonaro still has fans among evangelicals, gun nuts and big tech companies.
0:38.0	And British boarding schools are often upheld as the pinnacle of privilege for the poshest kids.
0:45.0	But psychologists argue that sending children away creates problems in later life.
0:51.0	So why are parents still spending so much on these institutions?
0:54.0	About first.
1:03.0	On Saturday, a US warship, the Chang-Hoon, was on a joint operation with the Canadian Navy vessel HMCS Montreal.
1:15.0	The ships were floating through the Taiwan Strait, the contested waters between the island of Taiwan and mainland China.
1:22.0	The American said that they were simply asserting the rights to freedom of navigation in an international waterway.
1:30.0	But it wasn't all plain sailing. The ships were cut off by a Chinese warship.
1:37.0	A crew from global news, a Canadian broadcaster, was aboard the Montreal and recorded the Clayson counter.
1:44.0	We shot this video of one of the Chinese ships stepping up their aggression, picking up considerable steam coming in.
1:51.0	The American told the Chinese to stay clear of their ship, but ultimately, they were cut off and needed to slow down to avoid getting hit.
1:59.0	The two ships, missing each other by only 150 yards.
2:04.0	The Chang-Hoon was forced to slow and American commanders denounced the naval action as unsafe.
2:11.0	It's just the latest near-miss to happen in the region.
2:15.0	A few days earlier in the South China Sea, a Chinese military aircraft conducted what US forces called aggressive maneuvers in front of an American spy plane.
2:28.0	Both incidents could have turned ugly and escalated into something much bigger than a naval spat.
2:35.0	And the dire state of the US-China relationship is doing little to reduce that chance of conflict.
2:41.0	For the past week, I've been travelling with the American Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin as he's been touring Asia.
	...

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