Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

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

For many people in the rich world, death is an abstraction, not a topic for polite conversation.

But the pandemic has them increasingly thinking and talking about their own mortality,

bringing them more in line with how many cultures have long dealt with death.

And you can always find a staggering variety of cheap street food in Singapore's famed hawker centers.

But maybe not for long.

The short-order chef Old Guard is dying off and a new generation is struggling to set out its stall.

First up, though.

In Beijing today, China's leadership will wrap up discussions of the country's next five-year plan.

The fifth plenum, as this meeting is known, lays out a long list of economic and social policy goals.

At the time of the last one in 2016, President Xi Jinping reiterated the party's key target for 2020 of achieving a moderately prosperous society.

From now to 2020, it's a full-geting a social society

in a

measure of prosperity have certainly

been on the up,

and while the rest of the world economy

will shrink this year,

China's will grow,

moderately.

The new five-year plan will have to

accommodate a world battered by COVID-19

...