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An elderly woman walks past a poster encouraging seniors to get vaccinated against COVID in Beijing.
What We’re Watching: Beijing vax mandate, DRC-Rwanda tensions
Beijing gets China's first COVID vax mandate
Somewhat late to the party compared to many parts of the world, China introduced on Wednesday its first COVID vaccine mandate in Beijing. Starting next week, residents of the capital will need to show proof of vax to enter most public spaces as authorities scramble to contain a new outbreak of a more infectious omicron subvariant. Oddly enough for an authoritarian state, China shunned mandates early in the pandemic because most people agreed to get vaxxed on their own, which helped keep the virus under control until late 2021. While nearly 90% of the population is fully vaccinated, inoculation rates among the elderly — those most vulnerable to becoming seriously ill or dying from COVID — are lower because many older Chinese adults are wary of getting jabs. What's more, China's vaccines are not as effective as Western mRNA jabs against new variants, so perhaps the goal of Beijing's mandate is to keep the unvaccinated elderly at home without implementing a citywide lockdown like in Shanghai. How will this affect Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy? If major outbreaks are reported, expect other big Chinese cities to follow Beijing's lead.
DRC & Rwanda go head to head
This week, the Democratic Republic of the Congo President Félix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, are meeting to discuss rising tensions along their shared border. In the eastern DRC, which borders both Rwanda and the Uganda, the M23 — a DRC rebel group claiming to defend DRC ethnic tutsis that wreaked havoc in the region in 2012 — has gained ground. Things heated up when the DRC recently blamed Rwanda for supporting the M23, which Rwanda denies. But conflict has been a constant in the region since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Since then, the area has seen two wars, violence by more than 100 militant groups, peacekeeping missions, and humanitarian crises. Still, the eastern DRC remains one of the richest areas in the world for minerals used in technology, so it’s an area ripe for investment — and targeting. In April, the DRC tied itself to the economic interests of other countries in the region by joining the East African Community, which includes both Rwanda and Uganda. We'll keep an eye on how this messy situation plays out as the DRC and Rwandan leaders talk through their issues.
Boris Johnson is going to be out, one way or the other
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60:
First, will Boris Johnson step down?
I certainly think it is getting likely. He's going to be out, one way or the other. The question is, is it as a result of a second in one month no-confidence vote that he loses this time around, or he reads the writing on the wall, knows he's going to get voted out and so decides to resign himself. If you made me bet, I think he's going to resign, but he might well just force them to do it. He's lost… a majority of conservative voters in the United Kingdom now want Boris Johnson to step down. He's had scandal after scandal after scandal, lied, been caught lying about so many of those scandals, and it's just a disaster, frankly. While the economy's doing badly, while Brexit has not played out the way he said it would, this is a man that has well passed his sell-by date and I don't expect he will be there as prime minister for much longer.
Secondly, with Beijing rolling out China's first vaccine mandate, how soon will China ease its lockdowns?
Not soon enough. This is a big mistake for the Chinese. They're the one country in the world, of course, that had no problem, at scale, doing lockdowns and surveillance for their population and yet they didn't bother with vaccine mandates, and they should have, especially for older populations, especially for vulnerable populations. This mandate is only in Beijing. It's not hitting restaurants. It's just hitting a bunch of other public venues. It's not hitting public transportation. It will matter for Beijing, but it's not enough. They need to be much more extensive around the country before they're going to be able to start loosening zero-COVID policy. I think we're still looking at early to mid next year at the earliest.
Is the United States the only developed country struggling with mass shootings?
Yeah, nobody else close than the United States, and the US is the only country that has assault type weapons that are so easily accessible in the hands of its population. That is the fundamental policy difference between the United States and Canada, between the US and Australia, between the US and Japan, the US and the Europeans. If you look at all of these different countries, they all have various amounts of mental illness, they have different amounts of economic inequality, they have different amounts of racial challenges than the rest. The United States is the one where you have all of this gun violence. Yes, a lot of the gun violence isn't mass shootings. A lot of it is, frankly, in inner cities. It's poor, it's overwhelmingly Black in the United States, but it's with guns. And if you look at how many people are killed through violence and it's not with guns, it's a tiny fraction of that. And so if you had more effective background checks on who's able to get guns, if you had effective checks on assault weapons, assault type weapons, it would be a very different story in the US. The US is very significantly struggling with it and is doing absolutely nothing to make a difference.
A truck sits near Parliament Hill as truckers protest COVID vaccine mandates in Ottawa.
Freedom Convoy or disorder fleet?
Canada’s picturesque capital isn’t known for high-stakes political protests and standoffs with police. But for many days, Ottawa has been paralyzed by the Freedom Convoy, a fleet of some 500 trucks whose drivers crossed the country to protest a new federal law requiring all unvaccinated truckers to quarantine when returning from the US.
Protesters’ demands have since expanded to include, variously, an end to all COVID restrictions and the ouster of center-left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who refuses to meet with them. Although they’ve been “mostly peaceful,” the protests have been disruptive — a local court even issued a 10-day injunction against horn-blowing this week. The cops are overwhelmed, and the city is under a state of emergency.
Trudeau has dismissed the protesters as a “fringe minority,” though there doesn’t seem to be a clear plan for uprooting them. Meanwhile, his opponents in the Conservative Party are split over whether the truckers are promoting freedom or fomenting disorder.
Given that protests like this are almost always viewed through a partisan lens, here are a few questions to try and give them a fair shake, whatever your political leanings.
How popular is the Freedom Convoy? Polls show that about 30% of Canadians support the convoy, and 44% share the truckers’ frustration with pandemic restrictions. The Canadian Truckers Alliance says the “vast majority” of the country’s truckers are already vaccinated, and it has blasted the Freedom Convoy’s choice to occupy public roads and highways.
Is it having an effect? At the federal level, no. But provincial governments in Saskatchewan and Alberta — where many of the truckers live — have recently scrapped all local vaccine mandates and restrictions. Supporters of the truckers credit their #honkhonk convoy for tipping the needle out West, though plummeting cases and infection rates are also part of the story.
Do the truckers … have a point? The grand pandemic debate about individual freedom versus collective responsibility won’t be resolved on the streets of Ottawa. The idea of vaccine mandates was to incentivize the broadest possible protection for society, so that business and society could resume as normal.
But Canada has already vaccinated more than 80% of the population. And while the jabs are clearly effective at preventing severe illness, they aren’t containing the virus. So the benefit of being vaccinated is now mostly individual rather than collective.
Ought we continue to force vaccination on a small number of hardcore holdouts in a largely vaccinated country — particularly if the collective case for vaccination is now weakened?
Are they going too far? Civil disobedience relies on being disruptive enough to catalyze political action for a just cause without becoming such a nuisance that people broadly turn against the movement. This is the challenge that essential workers face all over the world when they protest about issues important to them — whether it’s farmers in India, construction workers in Australian, or truckers in Brazil.
Messing with the economy of downtown Ottawa is one thing, but on Monday some of the truckers took the extraordinary step of blocking the single busiest international border crossing in North America, the nearby Ambassador bridge linking Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan.
At a moment when Canada, like just about everyone else, is struggling with soaring inflation, blocking a crossing that accounts for a quarter of Canada’s trade with the US — its largest commercial partner — was a risky move. The Trucking Alliance has already been sounding the alarm about shortages of cross-border drivers and deliveries. The Freedom Convoy’s actions could make that worse. If so, it certainly won’t help their cause, will it?
What do you think? Is the Freedom Convoy a justified reaction to outdated policies, or an unacceptable threat to public order? Let us know here.
Signs of Russian climbdown following Macron-Putin meeting
How did the Macron-Putin meeting go? What is going on with the Canadian truckers' protest? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How did the Macron-Putin meeting go?
What was five hours long and it was like a football field away from each other. And of course, Macron is focused on his election coming up. So with all of that, you'd think it would be problematic, but actually engagement between Macron and Biden the day before was pretty strong. And it does look like the ball’s moved a little bit diplomatically. Most importantly, some of the news coming out of the Kremlin overnight that indeed the Russians are planning on taking those troops out of Belarus after the military exercises are over. Now I mean, of course, if they say they are planning on taking them back out of Belarus and putting them into Ukraine, that would be a technicality, but pretty bad. But no, actually that does seem like a bit of a climbdown. Still, Putin is not friendly. He is blustering all over the place and certainly, he wants to be respected. He doesn't feel like he is right now. But on balance we're in a slightly better place because of the Macron meeting than we were the day before.
What is going on with the Canadian truckers' protest?
Well, a relatively small number of Canadian truckers who are anti vax mandate in the country decided to basically shut down central Ottawa. And first of all, it's not about the truckers as a whole. 90% of truckers in Canada are vaccinated. Secondly, this was largely the Canadian government in Ottawa not wanting any confrontation and so allowing these truckers to come in and basically take over the city and make lots of people miserable. And now they've declared a state of emergency. What is interesting is that the Conservative Party in Canada is becoming much more populist and the potential for a Trump-style leader in Canada to take over the conservative movement and potentially even win the premiership is real. And that would be kind of shocking for those that are focused on Canada as the nicer, softer side of the United States. There is a real populist movement that's gaining strength in Canada and the truckers are a part of it.
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A photo illustration of Green Pass and the Christmas Tree, in L'Aquila, Italy, on December 6, 2021. From today, 6 December 2021, the Super Green Pass comes into force throughout Italy.
Hard Numbers: Italian vax mandate, China ups its space game, Malawi’s food inflation woes, Indian online abuse
50: Italy will make COVID vaccines mandatory for everyone over 50. No penalties have been announced for those who don't comply, but those who refuse jabs — or have not recently recovered from infection — will be denied the "super green pass" necessary to enter a workplace.
40: China plans to carry out more than 40 space launches this year, a number roughly on par with the US. Beijing clearly wants to up its space exploration game, as China also aims to complete its first orbiting space station and kick off at least two crewed missions there in 2022.
5,000: Skyrocketing food prices have prompted Malawi’s government to issue a new 5,000 kwacha ($6) bill that’s worth more than double the previous highest-denomination currency. Malawians have taken to the streets in recent months to protest inflation in a country that has been one of Africa's biggest democratic success stories.
4: Four men have been arrested in India for setting up Bulli Bai, an "auction" website that offered photos of more than a hundred Muslim women presumably for sale to the highest bidder. The revelation has sparked an uproar in the country, where online anti-Muslim misogyny has risen since the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party of PM Narendra Modi swept to power in 2014.
Biden's vaccine mandates caught in a growing culture war
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares insights on US politics:
What is happening with Biden's vaccine mandates?
Well, Biden put in place a mandate for employers to vaccinate or test, on a weekly basis their employees, if they have more than 100 of them. And there's been pushback from a lot of corners of society. Some smaller businesses have objected. Some governors, particularly Texas, Louisiana, have objected.
Texas said the mandate doesn't apply for large employers in its state, even though that puts the employers in a terrible situation of having to choose which level of government they should listen to. And these states have sued in federal courts. The federal courts have stayed the mandate, meaning it won't be implemented until the decision is made probably by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the Labor Department overstepped its authorities in issuing this mandate, claiming that they have the ability to protect workplace safety.
A lot of large employers have embraced the mandate. They want their employees to be vaccinated, but they don't want to worry about people quitting in mass numbers. If everyone has to get vaccinated, that's not really an issue. The evidence shows vaccine mandates generally work. People respond to them. The numbers of people who have actually quit their jobs over vaccine mandates is relatively small, although you are seeing widespread protests.
Interestingly, as coronavirus cases have dropped in the country, the vaccine mandate has probably become a little bit less important, but it is growing as a culture war issue and fostering some backlash against President Biden.
Interestingly, the Democratic Governor of Kansas herself said she's against the vaccine mandate. Kansas is a pretty conservative state, but she claims it won't achieve the President's goals, at least in Kansas, and they want to find their own way.
What We're Watching: Israel finally gets a budget, US expands vax mandate, Portugal elections loom
Israel's political breakthrough. Israel's government has passed a budget for the first time in more than three years. This might sound boring, but it's actually a big deal: for years, former PM Benjamin Netanyahu refused to do it for political reasons, resulting in a lengthy stalemate with four divisive elections in just two years. Getting it done is a big win for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who managed to get his ideologically-diverse coalition of eight parties to agree on the 2021 budget. Failure to pass it by November 14, as per the coalition deal, would have resulted in yet another election, likely a death knell for the current government which only came together this summer at the eleventh hour. The bill includes $10 billion for Arab communities over five years demanded by Mansour Abbas, head of Ra'am, an independent Arab party that serves in the coalition. For now, Bennett and his main partner, the centrist Yair Lapid, are proving wrong the naysayers who warned that the diverse coalition was doomed to collapse. Negotiations now continue over next year's budget ahead of the March 2022 deadline, but passing the 2021 budget has made a fresh vote — and Netanyahu's dream of returning to power — even less likely.
Joe Biden's New Year's vaccination mandate. In a bid to boost slowing vaccination rates in the US, the Biden administration has ordered that workers at all companies with more than 100 employees around the country must be fully vaccinated by January 4 or submit to weekly COVID testing. The order will apply to more than 80 million workers, according to the AP, and will include exemptions for medical or religious reasons. Companies that fail to comply will face fines of up to $14,000 per violation, though it's not clear exactly how the Feds plan to enforce the measure at every one of the thousands of companies affected nationwide. At the moment, 58 percent of US adults are vaccinated, a figure that trails other large democracies such as the EU (75 percent), Japan (73 percent), the UK (68 percent). Even Brazil, which had a lousy start to the vaccine rollout, has now surpassed the US in first doses. The new mandate will likely boost the US numbers, but it's also certain to further inflame the political polarization around vaccine mandates. Although a recent Gallup poll showed 58 percent of Americans support a mandate for companies with 100 employees or more, the split was sharply partisan: only 17 percent of Republicans agree with the idea.
Congressional spending cuts | US Politics :60 | GZERO Media
From $3.5 trillion to $2 trillion: Cuts to US spending bill mean less money for families
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares insights on US politics:
What does it actually mean to cut $1 trillion from the Democrats' $3.5 trillion social spending bill?
President Biden has proposed one of the most ambitious expansions of federal spending in recent memory. If he gets everything he wants, it would probably be the largest expansion of government since the Great Society, but he's not going to get everything he wants. Democrats have basically said they cannot do all $3.5 trillion in spending. They're probably going to end up around $2 trillion. So what gets cut? Well, we don't know yet. There's kind of two ways to go about this. They could either cut the number of programs that have been proposed, doing fewer things with more money on a permanent basis, or they could try to do more things, each program getting less money and potentially doing them on a temporary basis. So, a future Congress would have to extend it. What does this mean for you? Well, a lot of the money in here is designed to go directly to families, either in the form of cash payments, through the tax code, the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, or subsidies for things like child care, early childhood education, and community college. And if you cut these things back, it means less money is going to go out the door to the American people. It also means less tax increases to finance it. So the implications of what's being proposed could actually end up being a big deal for a lot of Americans who would qualify for benefits under these new programs.
More American law enforcement officers have died from COVID-19 than from other work-related causes. What is happening to them?
It turns out police officers really reflect the rest of society. They tend to be a little bit more conservative than the general population, and they read the same misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine that the rest of us do. So what you've seen, as you've seen in the case of other unions and other workforces that have tried to mandate vaccines and force their workers to protect themselves against the coronavirus, is some resistance on the part of police officers, who also happen to be in a dangerous line of work. There've been many stories of unionized workforces resisting vaccine mandates. The New York teachers union protested the mandate to the mayor a couple of weeks ago. There were rumors that a slowdown among Southwest pilots that happened last weekend was related to the vaccine mandates. Although those rumors have generally been unfounded, and could have more to do with the way that Southwest manages its airline fleet. However, this is a really common theme and it's going to continue to be common as individuals push back against these mandates, putting themselves at risk of catching the coronavirus.