The Perfect Enemy | Your Thursday Briefing: China’s Covid Testing Problems

Plus President Biden’s security strategy and Myanmar cracks down on journalists.

China’s troubled Covid testing strategy

Testing every citizen for the coronavirus several times a week became central to China’s “zero-Covid” strategy earlier this year, when a stubborn strain of the coronavirus rippled through the country.

But that approach has failed to slow some of China’s biggest outbreaks, and the program appears to be foundering as the country prepares for a politically important Communist Party congress.

Nearly 200 million people are in some form of lockdown in China, and the punishment for failing to comply with burdensome testing requirements has grown more severe. The police have detained people, sometimes for more than a week, for skipping mandated tests.

The testing program has also created great financial strain. The Bank of China Research Institute estimated that regular mass testing would cost nearly $100 billion a year if 900 million people were tested every three days. And the government, which funds most of the testing, has shown signs that it is struggling to pay for it.

Context: China’s ability to find and isolate cases used to be the pride of its pandemic strategy. While countries around the world saw hospitals reach capacity, China’s Covid-19 numbers remained low, and the economy kept humming. Now, the economy is slowing and frustration is rising.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Biden focused on “outcompeting China and restraining Russia”

Dealing with China and Russia abroad while also restoring a damaged democracy at home will be overwhelming trials for the U.S. in the coming years, President Biden wrote in his 48-page national security strategy.

“Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system,” Biden wrote, while China “is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective.”

What leaps from the pages is a relentless focus on China. Much of the military strategy the document describes is meant to counter Beijing in space, in cyberspace and at sea. It also includes a specific warning against “Russia, or any power” using or threatening to use a nuclear weapon.

What’s next: Biden’s strategy calls for speedier modernization of the military and describes a coming struggle pitting autocracies against democracies.

War news: Ukraine said that Germany had delivered the first of four ultramodern air-defense systems, and dozens of military officials gathered in Brussels to discuss aid for Ukraine. Brittney Griner, the American basketball star facing nine years in a Russian prison, is increasingly anxious about her chances of being freed, her lawyer said.

The New York Times

Myanmar cracks down on journalists

Myanmar has become one of the most dangerous places on Earth for journalists.

Just two weeks after the military seized power in a coup last year, the junta created a new provision in its penal code making it a crime to publish comments that “cause fear” or spread “false news.”

Some of the country’s best known investigative outlets have had their licenses revoked, and hundreds of journalists have fled. Those who haven’t risk arrest, imprisonment and even death.

One of the last remnants of the free press is the literary magazine Oway, whose 22-year-old editor in chief uses the pen name Aung Sett. Nearly all the publication’s writers are in their 20s and 30s. “Every time I go out to report, I always think that I might get arrested,” said one 15-year-old reporter who dropped out of school after the coup.

Quotable: “It is not easy to fight a gun with a pen, but I need to keep doing it,” said Aung Sett, who has been in hiding since the military issued an arrest warrant on him.

Numbers: More than 140 journalists have been arrested since the coup. Three have been killed by soldiers; one was tortured to death. Myanmar is also on track to surpass China as the top jailer of journalists this year. Fifty-seven are currently in prison in Myanmar, according to an advocacy organization. At least 51 are imprisoned in China, according to rights groups.

THE LATEST NEWS

Asia

Kyodo News/Associated Press

Japan’s space agency said that a rocket failed after liftoff and had to self-destruct, becoming the country’s first failed rocket launch in 20 years, The Associated Press reports.
Some 477 pilot whales died after stranding themselves on two remote New Zealand beaches in recent days, according to The Associated Press.

World News

Sedat Suna/EPA, via Shutterstock

Protests demanding the ouster of Iran’s Islamic Republic have entered their fourth week, with workers in the country’s vital oil sector going on strike despite a lethal crackdown.
There is a growing push within the Biden administration to reshape relations with oil-rich Venezuela, in an effort to make progress in the energy war with Russia and to contain migration at the U.S. southern border.
Confusion over when the Bank of England would end a debt-buying program roiled British markets.

What Else Is Happening

A Connecticut jury ordered the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay about $1 billion in damages to an F.B.I. agent and family members of eight children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting.
The killing of a migrant on Texas’ border with Mexico by two men who work in the penal system has become a flash point in the national debate on immigration.
Misinformation about the 2022 midterm elections in many languages is deluging social media networks and seems to be aimed at immigrants within the U.S.

A Morning Read

Sinna Nasseri/Getty Images

After working long hours, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, goes out with frenetic bombast, almost as if he were live-action role-playing a billionaire playboy. He seems to be reliving his adolescence, without quite escaping his own innate insecurity.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The soft power of food

In recent years, South Korea has embarked on gastrodiplomacy, or state-sponsored attempts to make Korean food one of the world’s favorite cuisines.

The number of Korean restaurants overseas has increased exponentially, to 33,499 in 2017 from 9,253 in 2009. It’s all in service of advancing a “nation brand,” a concept codified in the annual Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index that measures how the world perceives the value of each country’s heritage and culture. In 2021, South Korea was No. 23 out of 60 nation brands.

The South Korean government has sought to protect what it calls its Important Intangible Cultural Properties — those products can have direct economic consequences (just as Greece has the exclusive right to use the word “feta” for its briny white cheese).

It may matter more at home, though, for those whose loyalties grow stronger the more established the brand is in the world. One scholar has argued that gastronationalism is a response to globalization and the erasure of difference, with flavors being more fundamental than borders on a map to a people’s sense of who they are.

But the origins of different dishes are often mythic and murky, writes Ligaya Mishan in T Magazine. Culinary traditions have crossed borders and changed hands, been adapted and made anew. Codifying a nation’s cuisine is an inexact science that can constrain the representation of a culture’s palate.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero.

This pumpkin-packed crumb cake topped with spicy, crispy streusel and an optional glaze is just the thing for an afternoon snack.

What to Watch

Angela Lansbury, who died on Tuesday at 96, shined in films like “The Manchurian Candidate.” Here’s where to watch her in some of her best roles.

What to Read

In “Nerd: Adventures in Fandom From This Universe to the Multiverse,” my colleague Maya Phillips writes about her favorite nerd media and the lessons they taught her.