Briefing

A sticky predicament

Inflation is as corrosive to investing as it is to the real economy

The failure to quell it quickly will transform financial markets

Nothing to see here

Pretending that everything is under control in Russia

It is getting ever harder

Probing questions

Ukraine’s counter-offensive is gathering pace

Its army is mounting big pushes in the south and east

Ukraine’s D-Day

The geopolitical stakes of Ukraine’s counter-offensive

How to ensure Russia suffers a strategic defeat

The old and the zestless

It’s not just a fiscal fiasco: greying economies also innovate less

That compounds the problems of shrinking workforces and rising bills for health care and pensions

A bungled coup

Ron DeSantis has little chance of beating Donald Trump

Hopes of depriving the former president of the Republican nomination are fading

One hundred years of inquietude

Henry Kissinger explains how to avoid world war three

America and China must learn to live together. They have less than ten years

Chaguan

China learns to manage decline

Lessons from Yichun, a Chinese city where children are a rarity

History lessons

The fall of empires preys on Xi Jinping’s mind

As economic growth slows, so will the president’s anxiety

Sun Tzu’s slide-rule

How China measures national power

And how we would do it

Mountain range

How soon and at what height will China’s economy peak?

Estimates vary, depending on assumptions about population, productivity and prices

Superpower showdown

China v America: how Xi Jinping plans to narrow the military gap

From subs to nukes he is adding firepower despite a slower economy