Flagship

Turkey OKs Sweden’s NATO bid

Turkey’s parliament approved Sweden’s accession to NATO on Tuesday, ensuring the military alliance will soon cover the entire Baltic coast. Stockholm’s membership, now only dependent on Hungary’s expected approval, cements a strategic shift triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Sweden and Finland, which had long sought to maintain military neutrality, applied for NATO membership shortly after the war began, their joining only delayed by Ankara demanding concessions over Kurdish separatists and Hungary’s ties to Moscow. Sweden, which has the world’s fifth-largest navy, would particularly help transform the Baltic Sea into a “NATO lake,” as an Atlantic Council expert put it.

India’s stock market passes Hong Kong

India overtook Hong Kong this week as the world’s fourth-largest stock market, as political and economic headwinds in China drive investors away. Demographic advantages and a strong local investor base have also boosted the combined value of shares on Indian exchanges. The world’s most populous country has seen a boom in initial public offerings in the last year, while Hong Kong deals with a historic stock slump. The shift brings with it enormous pressures: A Mumbai-based fund manager said last month that investors had called him to ask if India could offer “the same kind of returns that China delivered in the first decade of 2000.”

Measles cases on the rise

Cases of measles spiked 30-fold in Europe last year, the result of lower vaccination rates. The World Health Organization said more than 30,000 cases of the disease were reported in the first nine months of 2023, up from just 950 in all of 2022. Countries in Central and South Asia, including India, Kazakhstan, Nepal, and Russia, have also struggled with measles outbreaks in the last year. Researchers said the decline in vaccinations was largely caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, when fewer people wanted to visit medical facilities and misinformation about vaccines ran rampant.

China revamps carbon program

China is revamping its voluntary carbon credits program, but the move might not be enough to make a major dent in the country’s emissions. The system, which was halted in 2017 due to low trading volumes, provides funding to projects that promise to curb carbon emissions. Asian countries have outpaced much of the rest of the world in launching new carbon trading exchanges, but their programs only cover a small portion of the world’s outputs. Analysts at Trivium China said Beijing’s new program would only be “truly effective” if it put tighter restrictions on the release of greenhouse gasses — hence raising the price of emissions and the value of their carbon offsets.

China developers get creative

Chinese real estate developers and local government officials are resorting to increasingly desperate marketing strategies to lure buyers as the country’s property crisis worsens. One firm ran an advertisement with the tagline “buy a house, get a wife for free,” using a play on words, while another promised to give buyers a 10-gram gold bar, The Wall Street Journal reported. The tactics reflect growing concern over the fate of China’s property market: More than 50 developers have defaulted on their debt during the crisis, and millions of buyers have been left with unfinished homes. Beijing has been reluctant to take dramatic steps to prop up the local real estate sector, choosing instead to implement incremental measures.

Boomers, Gen X love Temu

Older Americans are flocking to the Chinese-owned e-commerce platform Temu, which poses an emerging threat to Amazon. Baby Boomers and Generation X shoppers in the U.S. are among the app’s most loyal customers, spending more per purchase and buying more often than their younger counterparts, Bloomberg reported. Temu’s parent company, the bargain shopping site Pinduoduo, similarly found success in China by targeting older shoppers outside major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The app has been downloaded over 100 million times in the U.S. since it launched in late 2022, an astonishing rise fueled by an equally massive marketing campaign: Temu spent more than $500 million on national advertising in just the last four months of 2023, according to one estimate.

Fewer South Koreans studying in China

The number of South Koreans studying in China hit a new low in 2023 as relations between the two countries became increasingly strained. Roughly 16,000 students from South Korea attended universities and language institutions in China as of April last year, down from a peak of about 73,000 in 2017. As Seoul’s military ties with the U.S. have grown in recent years, Beijing has responded by limiting tourism to South Korea and urging boycotts of Seoul’s cultural exports. The drop in exchange students mirrors a similar trend in the U.S. — fewer than 500 Americans were studying in mainland China as of last year.

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Pentagon looks to AI-powered weapons

The U.S. Department of Defense plans to use artificial intelligence to develop more sophisticated autonomous weapons, including drones that need less human direction. The Navy brought “swarms of air and sea drones” to a recent military exercise, Defense One reported. Around the world, militaries are increasingly turning to drones for reconnaissance and attack, with Ukraine deploying an estimated 200,000 last year. Washington wants to set international norms for the development of AI-powered military tools, and advocacy groups have warned about the defense tech sector’s growing embrace of the technology. OpenAI said last week it is dropping its ban on making military tools to work with the Pentagon, but insisted it still prohibits weapons development.

Amid Oscar season, China snubs US

Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and Killers of the Flower Moon dominated the Academy Awards nominations Tuesday. And for the first time, three movies with female directors — Barbie, the French thriller Anatomy of Fall, and part-Korean, part-English Past Lives — were nominated for Best Picture. While U.S. blockbusters predictably boasted a strong showing, their reach in places like China is diminishing. No Hollywood films were among the 10 highest-grossing releases in the country last year — Oppenheimer and Barbie didn’t even crack the top 30, The New York Times reported. For a movie to be successful there, “You must study deeply to understand the Chinese market, Chinese audiences, and Chinese pop culture,” one of the leaders of the Shanghai Film Association said.

NY, Cape Town are 2024’s best cities

New York is the world’s best city to live in right now, followed by Cape Town, which took the No. 2 spot in TimeOut’s annual ranking despite South Africa’s severe domestic economic challenges. Locals lauded Cape Town’s beauty and culture, with one resident telling CNN that it’s “perhaps the most unpretentious coastal city in the world,” though its wine farms and vibrant nightlife scene aren’t readily accessible to most residents. “The inequality in cities like Cape Town is starker than ever.” Only one Asian city, Tokyo, made it into TimeOut’s top 10, but other places in the region, including Mumbai, Singapore, and Bangkok, placed in the top 50.

Semafor’s 2024 World Economy Summit, on April 17-18, will feature conversations with global policymakers and power brokers in Washington, against the backdrop of the IMF and World Bank meetings.

Chaired by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, and in partnership with BCG, the summit will feature 150 speakers across two days and three different stages, including the Gallup Great Hall. Join Semafor for conversations with the people shaping the global economy.

• The two-day Asian Financial Forum begins in Hong Kong.
• Tamil Hindus celebrate the festival of Thaipusam.
• Slovakia’s prime minister meets with Germany’s chancellor in Berlin.

Percentage of cars sold in India equipped with a sunroof, up from about 7% five years ago. The growing popularity of sunroofs has “boggled carmakers,” The Economic Times reported, because they are less practical in India’s often hot and humid climate. An executive at Maruti Suzuki — India’s most popular car manufacturer — said the trend will likely only continue as the country’s auto consumers get younger, richer, and more aspirational.

A new experimental documentary chronicles “everyday life in the midst of war and migration” at the border between Syria and Turkey. As part of the project, artist Marc DaCosta scraped every public photo uploaded to Instagram in the late 2010s within roughly 3 miles of the two countries’ border. He then sorted through them manually, using the experience to explore how memory is “mediated by big tech companies.” The Border Line goes on exhibit at Onassis ONX art center in New York City later this week.

• Exxon’s latest shareholder lawsuit marks the end of the ESG era.
• The new trends driving China’s busiest travel season.
• Nigeria’s central bank is slowly marching towards crypto regulation.