China’s gulags

“IS THERE A God?” Answer yes, and you will get a beating. As we report this week, that is just one of the humiliations inflicted on Uyghurs, a disaffected, mostly Muslim ethnic minority of 12m people in the far west of China. A handful have carried out terrorist attacks, but none since 2017. The Chinese state has in effect locked them all in a vast open-air prison. Many are in detention centres. Even those outside must attend indoctrination sessions. Evidence suggests that hundreds of thousands of children have been separated from their parents. Women have been forcibly sterilised. This persecution is a crime against humanity. Alas, it is but the worst example of a global trend. Worldwide, human rights are in retreat, in Russia (as both politicians and artists can attest), Turkey (ask Kurdish mayors), Hungary and many more places besides. Thailand’s king (schooled in Britain and living mainly in Germany) seems bent on turning a constitutional monarchy into an absolute one. The covid-19 pandemic has made matters worse, giving authoritarians the excuse to limit their people’s liberty.

Among the pandemic’s many other effects, it has made it hard to assess the performance of the American economy under President Donald Trump as election day approaches. By our reckoning the economy performed marginally better than expected in 2017-19, before the pandemic struck. GDP was slightly higher than in Barack Obama’s presidency; it also rose faster than in other rich economies or than economists had forecast. But in other respects America’s economy has been disappointing. Although the stockmarket has boomed (fuelled in part by Mr Trump’s corporate-tax cuts), investment by companies has been nothing special. Jobs growth in 2017-19 was slower than in Mr Obama’s second term; other countries did just as well. But the tight labour market improved the lot of working-class Americans.

This week the IMF revised its forecasts for the coronavirus-afflicted world economy. It now thinks global GDP will shrink by 4.4% this year. That is not quite as bad as it thought in June, but it is still dire. And recovery will be slow and uneven—an economic form of long covid. By 2025 GDP per person will still be lower than expected at the start of this year. Poor countries will fall furthest behind. Governments in many of them are facing a choice between spending to support their people through the pandemic and paying creditors. On October 14th the G20 offered temporary relief to 73 needy countries, extending a suspension of debt-service payments until next July. But neither this nor low global interest rates will solve underlying solvency problems. Those require a speedy restructuring of debts, which looks improbable.

When the pandemic took hold, Son Masayoshi’s heavily indebted SoftBank Group staggered. Now the Japanese tech conglomerate and its boss have recovered some poise, as covid-19 has sped up the digital transformation of Mr Son’s dreams. It has also helped the Vision Fund, Mr Son’s underperforming tech-investing vehicle, launched in 2017, for which he raised nearly $100bn. SoftBank has been offloading telecom assets, raising $52bn, and is selling Arm, a British chipmaker, for $40bn. Mr Son could use the pileto buy out shareholders in SoftBank (its stockmarket capitalisation is well below its net asset value), invest in a tech giant—or double down on the Vision Fund model (a much smaller second fund is already set up).

Transgender women may not play international women’s rugby union. The decision, announced on October 9th by World Rugby, the sport’s global governing body, has drawn both praise and condemnation—not surprisingly, given the heat of the debate over trans women in sport. The English authorities have said trans women may keep playing at lower levels; the International Olympic Committee, and several other sports bodies, do allow trans women to compete in women’s events. Our leader argues that World Rugby, which consulted scientists, lawyers and ethicists, and made its findings public, is right. Male puberty confers an advantage in strength and speed. Although the IOC requires trans women to suppress the level of testosterone in their blood in order to compete in women’s events, this does too little to offset that advantage. And fairness points the same way. Women’s sport exists precisely to exclude the half of the population born with a biological advantage over the other half.