China’s national day holiday is over, the skies are blue, and thanks largely to a blinding comparison that everyone is making with the United States of America right now, there is an enormous sense of relief across the country. Regardless of how it all began, the way the fallout of the virus has been handled in China is a model for the rest of the world, and most particularly the United States. The US has 4% of the world’s population, but it has had 20% of the reported virus cases. For China, flip the numbers and much much more. If the prime responsibility of a government is to keep its citizens safe, they did good. It all comes down to leadership, and that is what is up for review in the US on November 3, just three weeks away now. It looks ever more like a Biden win, and possibly a wave which turns the senate blue too. But Those in Command have won themselves a fair extra grace period by how things have played out this year. No one could have guessed it six months ago. Of course, history is not over yet, and a Biden presidency is going to shake up all sorts of things, but the home front here just got a little less troublesome.
Otherwise, things are fairly quiet. In semi-conductor news, the sale of Arm to Nvidia is well worth watching with China apparently having some right of oversight, but one supposes not of veto — it’s the purchase of a UK company by a US company, after all. But it has big implications for the future of tech.
Also on the virus front, China is preparing for massive shipments of its vaccine, which will find a ready market in many parts of the world, though not in the US. Whatever chemicals Trump has been on this past week, it wasn’t a Chinese medicinal concoction.
Enjoy the weekend.
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