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There are signs the US-China trade dispute could be settled soon. But so what? The battle over tariffs is just a skirmish in the broader economic war.
Donald Trump said he expects to meet again with Chinese president Xi Jinping to resolve their differences before a March 1 deadline that would ratchet up tariffs. Either way, US trade representative Robert Lighthizer is unlikely to alter his view that (paywall) Chinese state capitalism is an unprecedented threat to the world trading system.
Take the tussle over Huawei, a target of US suspicion long before Trump took office. The upgrade to 5G telecom networks promises to unleash fast, ubiquitous data connections among all sorts of devices. The opportunities for self-driving cars and the like are immense—and so are the risks of mass surveillance. (The US would know.)
And so geopolitics is intruding on the sector (pdf). The blacklisting of Huawei might appear to be an opportunity for rivals like Ericsson and Nokia. Instead, buyers are putting off purchases (paywall) until the dust settles.
Another Chinese company to watch is Ant Financial, a 15-year-old fintech firm worth about as much as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley combined. Its Alipay payment system boasts 700 million users, and has thrived as China blocks US card networks from its domestic market.
Ant Financial is now rolling out in the West so that Chinese tourists can buy things with a familiar system. Western finance execs fear the day when it flips the switch to serve non-Chinese customers as well. In what could be seen as a countermove, the US blocked the $1.2 billion sale of transfer service MoneyGram to Ant a year ago, citing national security.
Perhaps most important, China appears to be ahead of the US in implementing AI and machine-learning technologies. The top-down nature of its policymaking is an advantage, as the US lead in patents is irrelevant if China steals a march on real-world applications.
Such episodes show that US-China turmoil was simmering before Trump and Xi came along, and may last long after they’re gone. —Jason Karaian and John Detrixhe
Five things on Quartz we especially liked
Naomi Osaka’s place in a changing Japan. The newly crowned No. 1 tennis star is being feted in her birth country, but the discussion about her goes beyond sports, as Isabella Steger writes. Osaka, a citizen of both Japan and the US who has a Haitian father, must decide when she turns 22 in October whether she’ll keep her Japanese nationality (the country prohibits dual citizenship). The looming deadline is advancing the debate over identity in a society slowly shedding its racial homogeneity.
The dubious science publication funded by a libertarian tech billionaire. Inference bills itself as a review of the sciences and has run essays questioning evolution and whether humans are really causing climate change. It appears to be funded entirely by Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder who also backed Donald Trump’s presidential run. As Michael J. Coren writes, the publication and others like it aim to shift the “Overton Window”: the range of publicly acceptable discourse.
The water crisis isn’t coming—it’s already here. The world is running out of water. In Syria, a multi-year drought pushed many farmers into the hands of Islamist extremists. In South Africa, Cape Town came dangerously close last year to being the first major city to run out of water. In a Quartz member exclusive, Peter Green explains who will suffer—and who will gain an upper hand—as shortages become increasingly common around the globe.
An Indian nonprofit shows how free childcare at work can help disrupt the poverty cycle. In India, urban construction projects lure workers and their families from remote areas. The children of those families often wander about work sites without proper schooling, nutrition, or medical care. As Annabelle Timsit explains, one nonprofit is helping these children by offering onsite daycare, in a template that could work in other developing countries, too.
The moral dilemma of the progressive football fan. As millions of viewers watch the NFL Super Bowl this weekend, many will feel tinges of guilt. Among other issues, it’s become clear that players do real damage to their brains as they play for our entertainment, as Oliver Staley notes while admitting that he too is a fan—albeit one who has “come to feel like I’m party to an endeavor that’s morally repugnant.”
Five things elsewhere that made us smarter
Your doorbell is looking a bit creepy. Smart video doorbells like those from Ring and Nest Labs (owned by Amazon and Alphabet, respectively) have their practical uses, such as catching package thieves. Still, the fast-selling systems could evolve into a privacy invasion, as Geoffrey A. Fowler notes in the Washington Post while offering an ethical field guide (paywall).
The golden age of Hollywood tax avoidance. In the 1950s, the US top marginal tax rate was above 90% and well-paid entertainers like Bing Crosby were eager to find loopholes. And they did, writes Joe Nocera for Bloomberg (paywall), whether it was via buying rental properties or entering the oil-drilling business—a timely reminder as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others call for drastically hiking taxes on Americans making more than $10 million.
Why making iPhones in America would be difficult. In 2012, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced his company would make a Mac computer in the US. It’d be the first Apple product in years to be manufactured by American workers. As Jack Nicas reveals in the New York Times (paywall), Apple struggled to find enough tiny custom screws—never a problem in China, where manufacturing operates at an entirely different level.
Inside the UAE’s secret hacking team of American mercenaries. After spending years working for the US National Security Agency, Lori Stroud joined Project Raven, in which she helped the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of militants, other governments, and human-rights activists. As Christopher Bing and Joel Schectman write for Reuters, she eventually saw the mission cross a red line: the targeting of fellow Americans.
Welcome to the Instagram era of book covers. Half of the book purchases in the US are made on Amazon—many of those on mobile—and publishers rely on social media for publicity. As a result, covers are being designed to look great in miniature, writes Margot Boyer-Dry for New York’s Vulture. That often means fat text interplaying with a textured background, which, it so happens, also works well in today’s surprisingly resurgent independent bookstores.
Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, custom screws, and grammable book covers to hi@qz.com. Join the next chapter of Quartz by downloading our app and becoming a member. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Steve Mollman.