The Times - UK (2020-10-20)

the times | Tuesday October 20 2020 1GM 31

Leading articles

loans to companies and local government. This is

likely to be reined in to avoid fuelling a debt crisis.

A large part of the boost to factory output is likely

to reflect exports of medical and computer equip-

ment driven by the pandemic. China may also

struggle to hold on to market share gains as other

countries resume full production.

Nonetheless, the rest of the world should be

grateful that at least one engine of the global

economy is firing given the grim outlook

elsewhere. In recent weeks, hopes for a V-shaped

economy in Europe have given way to fears of a

double-dip recession as the second wave appears

to be intensifying across the continent, leading to

new lockdown restrictions. While Britain grapples

with its three-tier system of localised lockdowns,

similar debates are playing out in Germany,

France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. That is

bound to have an impact on economic activity and

business and consumer confidence.

The good news is that China’s rebound should

strengthen hopes of a robust recovery when the

pandemic is finally bought under control, as it has

been in China and other parts of Asia. Indeed the

IMF continues to expect global growth to rebound

by 5.2 percent in 2021. Of course this depends on

the pandemic actually being bought under control

in the coming weeks as a result of the latest

restrictions without the need to slide back into

national lockdowns. It also depends on govern-

ments getting their financial policy responses

right. That means striking a difficult balance

between protecting the public finances and

avoiding the long-term scarring of demand and

supply shocks arising from mass business failures

and soaring unemployment.

The longer-term economic ramifications of the

pandemic will in part be determined by the geo-

political responses to the crisis. As in so much else,

Covid-19 seems certain to accelerate trends in the

global economy that were already under way.

China’s economy is likely to have grown by more

than 10 percentage points relative to the US over

this year and next, further narrowing the gap in

terms of the size of the overall economy, even if

GDP per capita in the US is six times higher. The

risk is that alongside sensible efforts to boost the

security of global supply chains and reduce

reliance on China, rising poverty and unemploy-

ment will lead to increased nationalism and

protectionism. That in turn could lead to a further

unravelling of multilateralism and global trade,

undermining global economic prospects. That is

in no one’s interests, least of all China’s.

ational equity arising from such issues as climate

change and demographic pressures. It is admit-

tedly hard to be optimistic amid a global pandemic

and the most severe economic downturn of the

postwar era. Young people are especially likely to

bear the brunt of the disruption to livelihoods.

Those who work in customer-facing sectors,

such as retailing or hospitality, face a precarious

future in an age of social distancing. Those who

have migrated to home working, often in cramped

accommodation and without easy access to pro-

fessional mentors, find it is no easy alternative to

office life. With the high cost of housing, along

with the need to support a rising number of retired

people, millennials may feel that a liberal market

order does not work for them in the way that it did

for their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

In truth, there is nothing unusual in such dissat-

isfaction. As the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski

noted, the trouble with the democratic ideal is that

“it does not stock and does not sell any of the excit-

ing ideological commodities which various totali-

tarian movements... offer dream-hungry youth. It

is no ultimate solution for all human misery and

misfortune.” Kolakowski was a heroic dissident

against communism in Eastern Europe, and the

totalitarian temptation endures in the urge, not

least on university campuses, to shut down the

expression of controversial opinions.

Against these tendencies, democracy may seem

embattled. Yet a sense of history is in order. In the

Cold War, especially at the dawn of the space age,

the Soviet Union seemed to be outstripping the

West in power and influence. Yet it was built on

sand. Soviet economic statistics were fabricated,

inequalities of wealth were deep-rooted, indust-

rial pollution was extensive and the whole totali-

tarian empire was held together by repression.

Systems of bureaucratic control and autocracy

cannot easily identify and correct errors. The

merit of democracy is not that it guarantees justice

but that it peacefully settles differences and is cap-

able of reform. There is no reason to believe that

the democratic West will ultimately cede its appeal

to authoritarianism, but those whose lives have

already benefited from liberty and opportunity

need to explain the stakes. Democracy’s virtues

should be proclaimed, defended and trusted in.

from months of deep slumber in bitter cold, scien-

tists at Cambridge University sought far rarer

specimens to test whether a similar reaction might

be induced in humans whose shattered synapses

have hitherto been thought irreparable.

Some 40 fanatics who have swum in Parliament

Hill Lido in north London every day for a decade

may have proved otherwise. Blood samples taken

by the Cambridge study after their bodies had

endured the daily shock of the cold contained high

levels of RBM3, a protein that helps to repair

broken brain connections as the body warms up. A

similar effect was observed in the study’s lab mice.

Those with high levels of the protein had synapses

severed by a cold shock repaired as they warmed

up. Those bred with the biological characteristics

of Alzheimer’s sufferers, however, had far less

RBM3, and were afflicted with permanent brain

damage. Scientists now hope this knowledge

could lead to new treatments that at least delay the

onset of dementia.

Fashionable though cold water swimming may

be, mandating early morning constitutionals in

the December gloom is clearly not the answer.

The challenge is to find a way to produce the pro-

tein without anyone having to get wet. And cold.

Beijing Boom

The pandemic may have started in China but its economy has been the fastest

to recover and it is now closing the gap with America at an accelerated pace

The world is a famously unfair place. Even so, it is

galling that even as the rest of the globe grapples

with the calamitous effects of a pandemic that

originated in China, which initially tried to cover

it up, the country yesterday reported that its eco-

nomy grew by 4.9 per cent in the third quarter

compared with a year ago. What’s more, it is likely

to be the only big economy to grow this year and

is the first to have regained its pre-pandemic level

of GDP. In contrast, the International Monetary

Fund (IMF) expects the world economy to

contract by 4.4 per cent this year, with the US and

British economies shrinking by 4.3 per cent and

9.8 per cent respectively. To rub salt into the

wounds, Chinese tourists took more than 600 mil-

lion trips during this month’s Golden Week

holiday. Wuhan, where the pandemic began,

received more visitors than any other city.

As always, Chinese statistics should be treated

with caution. Indeed, there are good reasons to

question whether the latest reported growth rate,

which in fact came in slightly below market expec-

tations of 5.3 per cent, is sustainable. Much of the

growth was driven by a recovery in retail sales and

industrial production. In common with other

countries, this was underpinned by a substantial

stimulus package, which took the form of cheap

On Liberty

The merits of democracy need to be expounded to new generations

The cause of limited, constitutional government is

hardly calculated to set the pulse racing. New

evidence suggests that it assuredly does not

enthuse young people. Researchers have found

that in almost every global region, satisfaction

with democracy is in decline among those aged 18

to 34. Young people’s faith in democratic politics is

indeed lower than that of any other age group.

The research, by the Centre for the Future of

Democracy at Cambridge University, draws on a

dataset covering almost five million respondents

in 160 countries between 1973 and 2020. It finds

that young people are most positive about

democracy when it empowers populists of left or

right, and that millennials in advanced democra-

cies are most likely to regard those with whom

they disagree as morally flawed.

It is a matter for concern if the young feel dis-

affected from a free society. Yet whatever their

scepticism, liberal democracy has historically

proved a sturdy system. It is the most effective

method so far devised of remedying injustice,

expanding choice and advancing living standards.

Western societies do face problems of intergener-

Cold Comfort

Regulars at a north London lido could hold the key in the fight against dementia

Those hardy souls who count among their hobbies

voluntary immersion in cold water, often uncon-

scionably early in the morning, would appear to

pose more questions than answers to the

mysteries of the human condition. But perhaps it

is now time to reassess the characters of those who

haunt lidos and lakes even in the darkest depths of

winter. Brave? Undoubtedly. Foolhardy? Not

according to a study that could yet hold the key to

delaying the onset of dementia.

Intrigued by the ability of hedgehogs, bears and

other hibernating mammals to repair the broken

connections between their brain cells after waking

UK: Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, takes

questions in the House of Commons; the

Orionid meteor shower peaks; Uefa

Champions League group stage begins.

The sea’s offerings

to the land alter

with each trip to the

beach. Today it has

left several huge

fleece shipping

blankets stolen from

a cargo vessel along with a rash of tiny red

contusions on the sand. They are one of the

dozen or so Ceramium algae that live in UK

waters, a genus previously known as

Ceramium rubrum and more commonly

called rosetangles. Only a few inches long,

they consist of fine, branched, dark red

fronds extending from a tiny holdfast

attached either to rocks or other marine

plants. Left flat on the sand by the tide, they

look like clusters of threadlike capillaries on

golden skin. melissa harrison

In 1960 the obscenity trial against Penguin

Books, the publisher of Lady Chatterley’s

Lover, began in London.

Danny Boyle, pictured,

film director,

Trainspotting (1996), 64;

Monica Ali, novelist,

Brick Lane (2003), Untold

Story (2011), 53; Baroness

(Jane) Bonham Carter

of Yarnbury, prime

minister’s trade envoy for Mexico, 63;

Maureen Cleave, journalist, interviewed

John Lennon (reporting his remark that the

Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”) and

Bob Dylan in the 1960s, 79; Chris Cowdrey,

cricketer, Kent (1976-91) and England (1984-

88), 63; Niamh Cusack, actress, Heartbeat

(1992-95), 61; Sandra Dickinson, actress, The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981), 72;

Allan Donald, cricketer, South Africa

(1992-2002), 54; Valerie Faris, film director,

Little Miss Sunshine (2006), 62; Jamie

George, rugby union player, Saracens and

England, 30; Jess Glynne, singer, Always In

Between (2018), 31; Kamala Harris, US

Democratic Party vice-presidential 2020

election nominee, 56; Dolores Hart, actress,

Where the Boys Are (1960), who starred with

Elvis Presley and George Hamilton, and

nun, 82; Patrick Hughes, artist, creator of

the “reverspective” style, 81; Elfriede Jelinek,

playwright and novelist, Nobel prize for

literature (2004), 74; Mark King, musician,

Level 42, Something About You (1985), 62;

John Krasinski, actor, Tom Clancy’s Jack

Ryan, 41; Eddie Macken, showjumper, 71;

Dannii Minogue, singer, judge on The X

Factor (2007-10, 2012-15), 49; Hugh

Montgomery, geneticist, professor of

intensive care medicine, University College

London, 58; Viggo Mortensen, actor, Witness

(1985), 62; Kate Mosse, novelist, The

Taxidermist’s Daughter (2014), 59; Thomas

Newman, film composer, Skyfall (2012), 65;

Julie Payette, governor-general of Canada

and former astronaut, 57; Robert Pinsky,

poet, The Figured Wheel (1996), 80; Antonia

Romeo, permanent secretary, Department

for International Trade, 46; Virender

Sehwag, cricketer, India (2001-13), 42; Philip

Sutton, artist, 92; Martin Taylor, jazz

guitarist and composer, 64; Fiona Weir, chief

executive, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust,

61; Timothy West, actor, Brass (1983-90), 86.

“Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in

diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of

differences.” Mikhail Gorbachev, former

Soviet Union leader, Nobel address, 1991

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