Growing Pains

“In March, after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian President on war-crimes charges, Putin hosted Xi in Moscow, where they described relations as the best they have ever been. Clasping hands for a farewell in the doorway of the Kremlin, Xi told Putin, ‘Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for a hundred years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.’ Putin responded, ‘I agree.'” Evan Osnos in The New Yorker: China’s Age of Malaise. “Party officials are vanishing, young workers are ‘lying flat,’ and entrepreneurs are fleeing the country. What does China’s inner turmoil mean for the world?”

+ “The United States renewed a warning Monday that it would defend the Philippines in case of an armed attack under a 1951 treaty, after Chinese ships blocked and collided with two Filipino vessels off a contested shoal in the South China Sea.”