China
781 issues · 358 keepers · 89 tier-5 · 269 tier-4
17 tier-5 · 40 tier-4
The spine of the whole archive. FTChinese tracked the US-China relationship from its still-cooperative mid-2010s frame through every escalation: the opening steel tariffs of March 2018, the first $34bn shots fired in July 2018, the Huawei saga (Meng Wanzhou's arrest, the Entity List, the US criminal indictment), the ZTE near-death, the semiconductor export-control regime, the audit-oversight standoff over Chinese ADRs, the Phase One truce, venture-capital separation, and into the second-Trump-term 'Liberation Day' tariff blitz. Running alongside the events are the era's best framing essays — Martin Wolf on why a peer power can't be beaten on Trump's terms and why a 'new cold war' should be avoided, Graham Allison's Thucydides Trap, and the recurring question of whether the rivalry is really about chips and AI rather than soybeans and steel.
Day-of report on the landmark July 12 2016 Hague (PCA) South China Sea arbitration ruling rejecting China's nine-dash line — a defining moment in the territorial dispute still cited years later.
FT editorial framing the South China Sea ruling and the real risk of US-China conflict — durable analysis of the most consequential post-ruling fault line.
Reports Trump's election victory the day it happened — the landmark 2016 result that reshaped US-China relations, trade policy, and the global order for years.
The Trump-Tsai Ing-wen phone call — the first direct US president-elect/Taiwan leader contact in decades, a genuine landmark break in cross-strait and US-China protocol that still shapes the relationship.
FT interview with Graham Allison ('Destined for War', the Thucydides Trap) on North Korea risking dragging the US and China into unwanted war — durable framing that still shapes US-China analysis.
Philip Stephens' durable geopolitical thesis that Belt and Road is China's path to Eurasian dominance, aided by Trump-era US isolationism — a clear articulation of the 'Eurasian century' framing.
Early framing of genomic/genetic data as a US-China contest arena — a theme (data security, biotech rivalry) that grew into a major recurring policy concern.
FT Big-View on China betting on AI-linked drone swarms to win asymmetric warfare — an early durable framing of the PLA's AI/unmanned-systems doctrine that became a defining defense-tech theme.
Marks Trump's decision to impose steel and aluminum tariffs — the opening move of the US-China trade war whose effects defined the following years.
Disclosure that Facebook shared user data with Huawei and three other Chinese firms — a durable data-privacy and China-tech-trust story emerging from the Cambridge Analytica fallout.
The Singapore Trump-Kim summit signing — the first-ever meeting of a sitting US president and a North Korean leader, a genuine historical landmark.
Marks the day the US-China trade war officially began (first $34B tariffs effective July 6, 2018) — a genuine historical inflection point that reshaped the next decade of geopolitics and supply chains.
Chen Zhiwu's historical analysis drawing parallels between today's trade conflict and the interwar period that led to world war — durable framing that still anchors debate on deglobalization risk.
FT editorial marking the September 2018 tariff escalation on $200bn of Chinese goods — the pivotal step that entrenched the trade war.
Martin Wolf's argument on why a trade war against a peer power like China cannot be won on Trump's terms — durable structural read on the conflict.
Edward Luce on US bipartisan use of China and Russia as domestic punching bags instead of building a multipolar consensus — durable read on the politics behind the rivalry.
Durable analysis of how the US-China trade war exposed and threatened the WTO dispute-settlement system, foreshadowing its later paralysis.
Martin Wolf's landmark argument against a US-China 'new cold war' — one of the defining 2018 framings of the strategic rivalry that still anchors the debate.
Frames the Buenos Aires G20 Xi-Trump dinner as the opening of a US-China 'full-spectrum competition' era — the conceptual turning point that defined the next decade of bilateral relations.
First substantive coverage of the Meng Wanzhou (Huawei CFO) arrest in Canada — the landmark event that escalated the US-China conflict from trade to a tech/security cold war.
FT editorial on the geopolitical stakes of the Meng Wanzhou arrest — durable contemporaneous analysis of a pivotal moment in the tech war.
Editorial on escaping the Thucydides Trap framing of US-China rivalry — durable IR analysis of the structural conflict that defined the era.
Xi Jinping's January 2019 Taiwan speech ('China must and will be unified') — a landmark policy statement on cross-strait relations that remains frequently cited.
Interview with Graham Allison ('Destined for War' author) on the Thucydides Trap and the trade war — durable expert framing of the structural US-China conflict.
US Justice Department files formal criminal charges against Huawei (bank fraud, sanctions, trade-secret theft) — a landmark escalation in the tech war alongside FT editorial analysis.
Joseph Nye essay arguing China will not soon overtake the US and that exaggerated decline fears are self-fulfilling — durable IR analysis from a major thinker.
China ordering its airlines to ground the Boeing 737-8 made it the first major regulator to act, kicking off the global grounding of the aircraft.
Gideon Rachman's thesis that US-China rivalry is creating a new bipolar order split along technology lines became a defining lens for the decade's geopolitics.
Graham Allison's Thucydides Trap framing of US-China rivalry is one of the era's most-cited durable analytical concepts.
Trump's executive order banning Huawei was the landmark escalation of the US-China tech war, a turning point still shaping global supply-chain decoupling.
Records the day the US Commerce Department placed Huawei on the export Entity List — a landmark escalation that reshaped global tech supply chains and US-China decoupling for years afterward.
Signing of the US-China Phase One trade deal — the landmark pause to a two-year trade war that defined US-China economic relations.
China's closure of the US Chengdu consulate (retaliation for Houston) marked a sharp, durable escalation in US-China relations; the issue also carries Wirecard audit-scandal reporting.
Anne-Marie Slaughter on China's Chang'e-5 lunar sample-return success against the backdrop of declining US R&D — a milestone framing of the US-China tech-research shift.
On the death of Harvard sinologist Ezra Vogel and the future of US-China relations — a reflective marker of the passing of a generation of China scholars who shaped engagement-era thinking.
Analysis of the contentious Anchorage US-China summit, the first high-level meeting under Biden and a landmark moment that set the confrontational tone of the relationship.
G7 reaches the 'historic' minimum-corporate-tax deal that seeded the later 130-country OECD pact — the originating political agreement on taxing multinationals.
First use of CRISPR gene editing to treat an internal organ (in-body) — a durable medical-science milestone marking the clinical arrival of in-vivo gene editing.
Surprise US-China joint climate declaration at COP26 — a rare moment of cooperation amid otherwise frozen bilateral relations.
Analysis of China's contest for economic leadership and its superpower trajectory — a durable structural read on US-China competition.
Thesis that sanctions on Russia mark the largest blow yet to globalization — a durable argument in the deglobalization/decoupling debate.
Durable analysis questioning whether the CHIPS and Science Act's industrial policy can actually make the US a semiconductor power.
Durable political-economy analysis of the CHIPS and Science Act as a landmark turn toward US industrial policy and the realignment of the economic-policy debate.
Landmark resolution of the long-running US-China audit oversight standoff that had threatened to delist Chinese ADRs (HFCAA), with analysis of its durability.
Scholz's controversial Beijing visit — the first major Western leader to China post-COVID, a flashpoint in the EU decoupling debate.
Covers the Biden-Xi Bali G20 summit — the first in-person leaders' meeting that set the floor for the US-China relationship after deterioration.
Frames the October 2022 US semiconductor export controls as the formal start of the US-China tech cold war — a durable inflection point in chip geopolitics.
Sequoia Capital's decision to split off its China arm, a marquee signal of US-China venture-capital decoupling.
SoftBank's Arm IPO — the largest US listing in nearly two years — is a landmark capital-markets and semiconductor-industry event.
US tightens advanced-chip export controls on China — a key escalation in the durable US-China semiconductor war.
Death of Henry Kissinger at 100 — the passing of one of the 20th century's most consequential statesmen and architect of US-China rapprochement.
Durable analytical framework (Ju Jiandong) staging US-China great-power competition into five phases — a reusable lens for the bilateral relationship.
Canada's 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, a notable escalation in the Western EV trade-war alignment with the US.
First Trump-Xi phone call in four years, on Trump's inauguration day — a notable diplomatic marker opening the second-term US-China relationship.
Records the launch of Trump's blanket 'Liberation Day' reciprocal tariffs — the defining trigger of the 2025 global trade war that reshaped markets and supply chains.
一周精选,聚合本周高价值评论与专栏:伍治坚论美国关税移民政策困境、周浩谈港股"新重估周期"、里奥弗兰科斯批特朗普资源民族主义、埃里安论美国法院关税裁决的真正意义、石烁评特朗普入股英特尔、曹辛析中国阅兵下东北亚局势。全篇为署名深度文章而非快讯,可读性与保存价值高于日常综述。
Weekly curated selection built around a strong strategic theme: the Xi-Trump summit underscoring China as a US peer competitor, an FT editorial on the temporary trade truce, and Miller on why China keeps winning trade wars by disrupting supply chains. Adds substantive essays on batteries as the key 21st-century technology, the rise of 'industrial geopolitics', and signals from the Fourth Plenum and the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan. The most analytically dense and editorially weighted issue in the batch.
17 tier-5 · 39 tier-4
Wars, territorial disputes, and the redrawing of alliances. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its long aftermath (Bakhmut, the Wagner mutiny, Prigozhin's death); the weaponization of finance against Russia (SWIFT cutoff, frozen central-bank reserves) and its implications for the dollar order; the South China Sea arbitration; the North Korea nuclear standoff and the Trump-Kim summits; the 2024-25 cascade in the Middle East (Gaza ceasefire, the Israel-Iran war) and the fall of Assad in Syria; Afghanistan's collapse into a 'post-American world'; and the Belt and Road as China's grand strategy — from Italy's G7-breaking accession to its 2023 exit. Diplomacy threads through: Anchorage, Bali, the cross-strait flashpoints, and the recurring Xi-Trump and Xi-Biden encounters.
Founding-era analysis of the AIIB (亚投行) as China reshaped Asia's financial architecture and the US/Japan response — a landmark institutional moment.
FT editorial on the Charlie Hebdo attack (Jan 7 2015) — a landmark terrorism/free-speech event that reshaped European debate on Islamism, satire, and press freedom.
Reports the Minsk II ceasefire agreement (Feb 12 2015), the landmark accord that governed (and repeatedly failed to halt) the Donbas conflict until the 2022 full-scale invasion.
Reports the assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov (shot dead Feb 27 2015) — a defining event in Putin-era Russian politics and the suppression of dissent.
Germany, France and Italy join the AIIB over US objections — the watershed Western defection that marked a real shift in global financial governance toward China.
Reflective post-mortem on the 2015 A-share crash (刘胜军) — a durable retrospective framing of the year's defining market event and the state rescue.
Covers the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), the landmark July-2015 P5+1 agreement — a defining geopolitical event of the decade.
Lunch with the FT featuring Ben Bernanke defending post-crisis Fed policy against the charge it enriched the wealthy — a durable named interview with a key crisis-era figure.
Landmark FT investigative reporting into how ISIS finances its war machine, showing bombing oil infrastructure alone cannot cut off its funding.
Covers the Fed's first interest-rate hike in nearly a decade (Dec 2015), ending the post-subprime-crisis era of ultra-loose policy — a historic monetary turning point.
FT names Merkel its 2015 Person of the Year for opening Europe's doors to Syrian refugees — a landmark editorial verdict on the European migration crisis.
Covers the landmark January 2016 Taiwan election in which the DPP under Tsai Ing-wen won both the presidency and, for the first time, a legislative majority.
Captures the Apple vs. FBI San Bernardino iPhone-unlocking standoff, a landmark encryption/privacy battle whose precedent still frames the debate.
Covers Obama's historic Hiroshima visit — the first by a sitting US president — a symbolically durable moment in US-Japan postwar relations.
Covers the Nice Bastille Day truck attack (80+ dead), a major European terror event, alongside post-arbitration South China Sea diplomacy.
Commentary on the July 2016 Hague tribunal ruling against China in the South China Sea arbitration, a landmark geopolitical event with lasting consequences for the dispute.
Taiwan's constitutional-court ruling making it the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage — a durable landmark for LGBT rights in the region (issue also carries Moody's China downgrade).
North Korea's first successful ICBM test (Hwasong-14, judged able to reach Alaska) — a landmark milestone that reset the US-DPRK nuclear standoff.
Apple's removal of VPN apps from its China App Store — a landmark, oft-cited instance of a US tech giant complying with PRC censorship that still anchors the Apple-China debate.
Declassified US documents on support for Indonesia's 1965 mass killings, Xi declaring China has entered a 'new era,' and Google's Toronto Sidewalk Labs smart-city plan — three items of lasting historical record.
'Xi Jinping Thought' enshrined in the CCP constitution and the Hambantota port handover to China — landmark constitutional and Belt-and-Road events with lasting significance.
Records the end of Zhou Xiaochuan's 15-year PBOC governorship (a major institutional milestone) alongside the run-up to the first Trump-Kim summit.
Martin Wolf's tenth-anniversary essay on why the 2008 crisis failed to reform the system — a landmark reflection that still frames post-crisis political economy.
Nouriel Roubini's much-cited forecast pinpointing 2020 as a likely window for the next global recession/financial crisis — a durable, testable prediction.
FT's tenth-anniversary editorial on the 2008 financial crisis, warning that resurgent nationalism erodes the cooperation that contained it — durable retrospective.
Double landmark: China's Chang'e-4 achieves humanity's first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, AND Apple's historic China-driven revenue warning — two events that still anchor their respective histories.
The collapse of the Hanoi Trump-Kim summit was a defining moment in US-North Korea denuclearization diplomacy that effectively ended the engagement era.
Italy becoming the first G7 nation to join the Belt and Road Initiative was a historic fracture in Western unity (later reversed in 2023), a durable geopolitical milestone.
The Boeing 737 MAX MCAS revelation is a landmark aviation-safety and corporate-failure case studied for years afterward.
Obituary of Paul Volcker, the Fed chair who broke the Great Inflation — a defining figure in 20th-century monetary policy.
Paul Volcker's final warning to America, published days after the legendary Fed chair's death — a durable reflection on institutional integrity.
Boeing announces it will halt 737 MAX production in January 2020 — a milestone in the worst crisis in the company's history.
ECB launches the €750bn Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) — the defining monetary-policy intervention of the COVID crisis in Europe.
Joint op-ed by two former Fed chairs (Bernanke and Yellen) laying out the case for the Fed's aggressive pandemic response — a notable primary-source policy statement.
CanSino's vaccine approval for the Chinese military was among the first COVID-19 vaccine authorizations anywhere — a durable milestone in the global vaccine race.
The landmark result of the 2020 US presidential election — Biden's victory ending the Trump first term, an anchor event for the era.
FTC and US states file the landmark antitrust suit seeking to break up Facebook — a defining Big Tech antitrust case of the era.
Sinovac's CoronaVac efficacy revised to a borderline 50.4% in Brazil trials — a durable episode in pandemic vaccine diplomacy and credibility of Chinese vaccines.
Biden's inauguration as the 46th US president — a landmark political transition following the contested 2020 election and January 6 Capitol attack.
The AUKUS pact — a landmark Indo-Pacific security realignment (and the France submarine rupture) that durably reshaped Western-China strategic alignment.
Kissinger declaring the world had entered a wholly new era amid the Ukraine war — a durable framing of the post-2022 geopolitical order from a defining statesman.
Lead analysis as the SVB collapse breaks — the opening of the March 2023 US banking crisis, the year's defining financial event.
The Fed's emergency BTFP backstop launched to contain SVB contagion — a landmark crisis-response facility.
Putin's declaration of the capture of Bakhmut, the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine war to that point.
Coverage of the Wagner Group withdrawal following the Prigozhin mutiny, the most serious internal challenge to Putin's rule during the Ukraine war.
The BRICS expansion agreement (adding six new members) is a durable marker of the bloc's evolution and the multipolar realignment narrative.
The death of Wagner chief Prigozhin in a plane crash, two months after his mutiny, is a major geopolitical event with lasting implications for Russia and the Ukraine war.
The US-Vietnam upgrade to comprehensive strategic partnership and accompanying deals is a durable marker of supply-chain realignment away from China.
Italy formally exits China's Belt and Road Initiative — the only G7 member to join then leave, a notable geopolitical reversal.
Julian Assange's release via Australian backroom diplomacy, ending a 14-year legal saga.
Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed Harris — the pivotal turning point of the US presidential election.
The Fed's outsized 50bp cut that opened its 2024 easing cycle — a durable monetary-policy inflection point that anchored markets and rate expectations well beyond the day.
Durable analytical anchor for the South Korea martial-law crisis under Yoon Suk-yeol, framing it as a structural failure of presidentialism that still matters for understanding the 2024-25 constitutional shock.
Records the fall of Damascus and Assad's flight to Moscow, ending five decades of Assad family rule in Syria — a landmark geopolitical turning point.
Records the Gaza ceasefire ending the 15-month Israel-Hamas war, a landmark event in the conflict's timeline.
Israel's strike on Iran — the opening of the June 2025 Israel-Iran war, a major geopolitical inflection point.
7 tier-5 · 46 tier-4
The structural story of China's growth deceleration and the monetary architecture around it. Successive 'slowest in N years' GDP milestones marking the end of the high-growth era and the 'new normal'; the 8·11 2015 devaluation and its shockwaves; the long campaign of RMB internationalization (SDR inclusion, reserve-currency ambitions); the debt-overhang and balance-sheet-recession debates (Martin Wolf, Richard Koo); the property crisis centered on Evergrande; and — increasingly after 2022 — the question of whether dollar weaponization is accelerating de-dollarization and fragmenting the international monetary system.
Strategic analysis of China's plan to break US dominance in global finance via RMB internationalization — a durable thesis that framed the next decade of de-dollarization debate.
Coverage of the AirAsia QZ8501 disaster (crashed Dec 28 2014, 162 dead) — a major aviation tragedy of the era; same issue also flags China's 'zombie factory' overcapacity problem.
Marks China's 2014 GDP growth as the slowest in 24 years — the data point widely cited as confirming the end of double-digit growth and the start of the 'new normal' slowdown era.
Landmark corporate event: Google's reorganization into the Alphabet holding company, one of the defining tech-structure changes of the decade.
Durable analysis (徐瑾) of the second- and third-order shockwaves of the 8·11 RMB devaluation — a reference framing for the 2015 FX turning point.
First-day FT editorial reaction to the landmark Aug-11-2015 RMB devaluation (8·11汇改), the most consequential PBoC FX-regime change of the decade.
Covers the Tianjin port warehouse explosion (Aug 2015), a major industrial disaster, alongside FT's verdict on the RMB devaluation.
Marks the delay of the RMB's bid for global reserve-currency status (it joined the IMF's SDR basket a year later) — a useful monetary-history milestone.
HSBC's Stephen King argues the August 2015 yuan move marks the end of China's role as the global economy's shock absorber — a durable framing of a structural turning point.
The signature FT analysis of the August 2015 surprise yuan devaluation, arguing China was in a quiet economic crisis it lacked tools to manage — the defining read of the period.
China ends the one-child policy and allows all couples two children — a landmark demographic-policy reversal whose long-run consequences are still unfolding.
Examines China's role at the COP21 Paris climate conference (which produced the Paris Agreement) and the imminent SDR confidence vote on the RMB.
Analysis of the RMB's inclusion in the IMF's SDR basket as the fifth currency — a milestone in RMB internationalization and China's financial-market opening.
FT's annual bold-predictions piece for 2016 (RMB devaluation, US election, etc.) — a durable forecast snapshot useful as a record of expert expectations at the time.
Reports China's 2015 GDP growth as the slowest in 25 years — a landmark macro data point marking the end of the high-growth era; also confirms HK bookseller Lee Bo case.
Martin Wolf's framing of the four structural challenges of China's economic transition — a defining mid-2010s analysis of the 'new normal' growth shift.
Reports Bayer's $62bn all-cash bid for Monsanto — a landmark agrochemical merger that reshaped the global seeds/pesticides industry.
Reports SoftBank's £24.3bn acquisition of chip designer ARM — a landmark tech M&A deal with lasting strategic significance for the semiconductor industry.
One-year retrospective on China's Aug-2015 '811' RMB devaluation reform, durable analysis of a pivotal episode in China's exchange-rate policy and global market turmoil.
Marks the death and intellectual legacy of Nobel economist Kenneth Arrow plus Liaoning's stunning 23% GDP collapse after data-falsification revelations — both durable reference points (economics canon + the Northeast China provincial-data fraud episode).
Confirms 2017 China GDP growth at 6.9% (annual data milestone) and the US National Defense Strategy's pivot to great-power competition with China and Russia.
Early escalation marker of the US-China trade war plus the much-debated Xiaomi $100bn pre-IPO valuation question.
ZTE's $1.4bn settlement after the US export ban nearly killed it — a pivotal early episode of the US-China tech war that crystallized China's chip-dependency vulnerability.
Reports the imminent $200bn tariff list at 25% — a concrete landmark event in the trade-war timeline rather than commentary.
Marks CPTPP/TPP-11 crossing its ratification threshold (entry into force Dec 2018) — a durable trade-architecture milestone, plus the Fujian Jinhua chip-sanctions flashpoint.
Durable analysis of the institutional roots ('institutional DNA') of the China economic miracle — a framing essay rather than a daily recap.
China's full-year 2018 GDP growth at its slowest since 1990 plus a record year for corporate bond defaults — durable macro data marking the post-stimulus slowdown.
Martin Wolf's argument that the trade war could reverse China's rise (the 'Argentina' cautionary tale) is durable analysis directly tied to the era's defining conflict.
Documents the US Treasury formally labeling China a 'currency manipulator' as the yuan broke 7 — a discrete, named milestone in the 2019 trade-war escalation.
Early backers begin exiting Facebook's Libra project — the start of the unraveling of the most consequential corporate stablecoin attempt, a turning point in crypto-regulation history.
China's Q3 2019 GDP grows 6% — the slowest pace in nearly 30 years, a notable marker in China's structural growth slowdown.
UK Conservative landslide under Johnson clears the path to Brexit, alongside the largest Chinese SOE dollar-bond default in 20 years and FT's verdict on Aramco's $2tn valuation — three durable markers in one issue.
Two durable data milestones: China's GDP growth hit a 29-year low (pre-COVID slowdown) and Alphabet crossed the $1 trillion market-cap mark.
Four former IMF chief economists declare the global COVID recession has already begun — the moment the 2020 recession became expert consensus.
China's Q2 +3.2% GDP marked it as the first major economy to return to growth after the pandemic shock; the issue also covers the landmark mass Twitter account hack.
Najib Razak's conviction in the 1MDB scandal is a landmark verdict in one of the largest financial-fraud cases in history.
Buffett's $6bn stake in Japan's five trading houses is a much-cited, durable Berkshire investment move.
First report of the Ever Given grounding that blocked the Suez Canal — an iconic global supply-chain event — alongside Intel's $20B US fab announcement marking the start of the chip-reshoring era.
Tally of the Archegos collapse — over $10bn in combined bank losses (Credit Suisse, Nomura, etc.) — a durable case study in family-office leverage and prime-brokerage risk.
Lex framing of Evergrande as an over-leveraged outlier heading to default — the defining moment of the 2021 China property crisis that reshaped the sector for years.
Biden signs the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law — landmark bipartisan US legislation with long-term policy significance.
Apple becomes the first company in history to reach a $3 trillion market capitalization — a milestone marker in tech/market history.
Lex column on cutting Russian banks from SWIFT and the durable thesis that dollar weaponization accelerates RMB and alternative-payment-rail adoption.
Analysis of the freezing of Russia's central-bank FX reserves — a watershed moment for the reserve-currency order whose consequences for dollar trust and reserve diversification are still unfolding.
IMF argument that sanctions on Russia could erode dollar dominance and fragment the international monetary system — a structural debate that outlasts the news cycle.
Premium analysis of whether weaponizing the dollar backfires — a durable framing of the post-invasion debate over financial-system fragmentation.
Justin Yifu Lin's essay on the Needham puzzle — why pre-modern China led in science yet fell behind, and what drives its resurgence; durable big-picture economic-history analysis.
The $30B Wall Street bank rescue deposit into First Republic — a defining (and ultimately failed) episode of the 2023 banking crisis.
Credit Suisse's $17B AT1 bonds written to zero in the UBS takeover — a landmark that reshaped the global AT1/CoCo bond market and is still cited.
First Republic Bank's $100bn+ deposit flight and stock collapse, a key episode of the 2023 US regional-banking crisis days before its failure.
A durable analytical piece applying Richard Koo's balance-sheet-recession framework to China's slowdown — an explanatory model that keeps recurring in China-economy debate.
Structural-thesis analysis arguing Trump's policies are dismantling the dollar-centered global financial order — a defining 2025 narrative with lasting analytical value.
12月13日一周精选，精挑本周深度评论，头条为胡伟俊"展望2026：外需是最大变数"，论中国经济运行模式由外需重大变化触发。整期皆为长篇分析：套息交易终章、AI反垄断难题、沃尔夫警惕稳定币、中美竞争秩序重组、新版美国战略报告的中国叙事等，作为周度精选信息密度与思想性高于日常速递。
6 tier-5 · 34 tier-4
FTChinese's signature commentary layer — the columns readers kept rather than the news they skimmed. Gideon Rachman on strongman politics, 'Easternisation,' the civilization-state, and a new bipolar world; Martin Wolf on the limits of globalization and the detachment of Western elites; Fukuyama, Edward Luce, and Philip Stephens on the fracturing of American democracy and the populist turn that Brexit and Trump made undeniable. Plus the long-arc intellectual pieces — Piketty, Snowden, Frankopan's Silk Roads, the 'from 2066' speculative-history series, and the recurring 'where is the world order heading' essays that bracket the entire decade from the 2014 'age of the strongman' to the 2025-26 'Warring States era.'
Gideon Rachman / Stephens thesis on the global rise of strongman politics displacing the post-Soviet liberal order — a prescient framing that defined the following decade.
FT Lunch interview with Thomas Piketty at the height of his Capital in the Twenty-First Century fame — a durable intellectual profile of a defining inequality economist.
Foundational framing of Belt and Road as China's modern Marshall Plan / 19th-century 'Great Game' — a reference framing for understanding BRI's geopolitical stakes.
A substantial profile of Kissinger built around Niall Ferguson's biography, reframing him as idealist rather than pure realist — durable intellectual-history piece.
Martin Wolf argues Western ruling elites have detached from the masses, fueling Trump/Le Pen-style populism — a prescient framing months before Brexit and Trump's win.
Martin Wolf's early-2016 warning that a Trump presidency would be a global catastrophe — a prescient real-time read on the populist turn that defined the decade.
Historian Peter Frankopan on the Silk Road as the recurring axis of world history — a durable big-picture civilizational thesis tied to the Belt-and-Road era.
Rachman's prescient column arguing Trump had already permanently shifted US and global politics (nationalism, anti-globalization, anti-elite) regardless of the election outcome — durable framing of a defining political era.
Xu Jin's landmark essay written days after the Brexit referendum, reading it as the opening crack of a disordered era — a durable interpretive take on a historic vote.
Gideon Rachman's thesis on the eastward shift of economic and political power ending Western dominance, durable framing later expanded into his 'Easternisation' book.
Martin Wolf's landmark essay arguing globalization has hit its limits and could collapse amid weak growth, rising inequality, and shifting power, a defining diagnosis of the 2016 inflection.
Lunch with the FT interview with Edward Snowden, a landmark long-form feature with the PRISM whistleblower on his exile in Russia and loyalty to the US.
Gideon Rachman's analysis of how Trump's rise exposed the flaws of American democracy and damaged Western prestige, a representative durable take from the 2016 turning point.
Companion piece in FT's 'from 2066' series asking why 'the end of history' lasted only 20 years, a durable meditation on populism and human nature.
Part of FT's distinctive speculative-history 'from 2066' series imagining Trumpism's long arc and an Ivanka presidency, a memorable framing of the populist wave that did not peak in 2016.
Xu Zhangrun's signed essay reading the 2016 election as the return of politics and Monroe-doctrine instinct to a weary empire; notable as commentary from a since-silenced public intellectual.
Edward Luce's election-day essay on the fracturing of American democracy ('a house divided cannot stand'), a durable read on the structural strains the 2016 vote exposed.
Francis Fukuyama's essay framing Trump's win as the end of an era of America-as-symbol-of-democracy — a durable, widely-cited interpretation of the 2016 inflection point.
Xi Jinping's landmark Davos speech defending globalization and free trade against rising US protectionism — a much-cited symbolic role-reversal moment in the global-order narrative.
FT 大视野 deep-dive on the meaning of 'America First' as Trump takes office — durable framing of the doctrine that defined the next four years of US foreign policy.
Edward Luce's reading of Trump's inauguration address ('Buy American, Hire American') as a signal he intends to tear up the US-built global order — a landmark-moment analysis.
FT data investigation finding that by 2015 nearly two-thirds of the world's top-50 container ports had Chinese investment (up from one-fifth in 2010) — durable original reporting documenting China's maritime/port-acquisition expansion.
Martin Wolf's landmark essay framing Trump's war on the liberal world order — durable analysis of the breakdown of the postwar international system.
Philip Stephens' 10th-anniversary argument that the 2008 financial crisis bred the populism behind Trump, Brexit and beggar-thy-neighbor nationalism — a still-cited explanatory thesis.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam's call for a cooperative international order — a durable statesman essay on global governance amid rising protectionism.
FT review of Klaus Schwab's book that crystallized the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' framing — a durable conceptual reference rather than a daily recap.
Analytical essay on whether the world is returning to a China-centered 'tianxia' order — durable conceptual framing of China's rise.
Big-picture essay on the long-run decline of violence in human society (Pinker-style long trend) — durable analytical reading independent of news cycle.
Rachman's 'civilization-state' framing for the rise of China and India is a durable conceptual lens on the challenge to the nation-state order.
The 'Asian Century' threshold — Asia's economy surpassing the rest of the world by PPP — is a durable structural marker of the global rebalancing.
WHO declares COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern — the dated landmark of the pandemic's globalization.
FT editorial arguing COVID would reverse globalization — an early, durable framing of the de-globalization thesis that shaped the decade.
Larry Summers argues COVID could be remembered as the turning point marking the arrival of the Asian century — durable big-picture analysis from a major economist.
Durable geopolitical analysis casting the Taliban's return and chaotic US exit as confirmation of a 'post-American world' — a framing that outlived the news cycle.
Pre-invasion analysis of the shift in world order behind the Ukraine crisis — durable framing of the great-power realignment the war triggered.
Same-day report of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022 — the landmark event that reshaped European security, energy, and the global order.
Counter-thesis arguing the Ukraine war is an interlude, not the end of globalization — pairs with the deglobalization debate and retains analytical value.
Durable obituary analysis of Kissinger's realpolitik legacy and the world order he shaped, retaining value as historical assessment.
Interview with Joseph Nye, originator of the soft-power concept (who died in 2025), giving it lasting reference value on soft power in a hard-geopolitics era.
Weekend 一周精选 curating the week's best long-form commentary rather than daily news: Martin Wolf on the world economy in a disordered age, a debate on whether China's middle class is sliding back into poverty, gold breaking $4,200, crypto investing analysis, and Pop Mart's 'star-making' playbook. The deep-analysis density and editorial selection make this more durable than the daily recaps.
9 tier-5 · 30 tier-4
The global financial cycle as the archive recorded it. The Fed's path from its first post-crisis hike (2015) through the most aggressive tightening in a generation (2022-23) and back to cutting (2024); the COVID market crash and negative oil; the 2023 banking crisis (SVB, the Credit Suisse AT1 wipeout, First Republic); retail-trading and leverage blowups (GameStop, Archegos); the crypto arc from Libra through the Terra/Luna and FTX collapses to the CZ and SBF reckonings; landmark valuation milestones; and macro signposts — Fitch's US downgrade, the global minimum corporate tax, the yen carry-trade unwind.
Shell's £47bn acquisition of BG Group — one of the largest energy-sector M&A deals of the decade, reshaping Big Oil amid the price slump.
Nikkei's acquisition of the Financial Times (July 2015) — a landmark media-industry deal, and self-referential to this newsletter's publisher.
Pilling's case for China applying to join the just-concluded TPP captures the durable trade-architecture debate over China and the Pacific trade order.
The iconic 'obituary' for China's circuit-breaker mechanism (lifespan Jan 4-7, 2016) that triggered repeated market halts and was scrapped within days — a defining episode of the Jan 2016 stock rout.
MSCI's June 2016 decision to again defer A-share inclusion — a notable milestone in the multi-year saga of China's equity-market integration (A-shares were finally added in 2018).
MSCI's decision to include China A-shares in its global EM benchmark — explicitly a milestone for opening the world's second-largest equity market to international funds.
Captures two landmark moments — Wolf Warrior 2 setting China's box-office record (watershed for nationalist blockbuster cinema) and Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong's bribery trial — both durable cultural/corporate reference points.
Records the death of Stephen Hawking, a landmark world event still referenced years later.
Records William Nordhaus winning the 2018 Nobel in Economics for climate-economics work — a durable milestone establishing the social cost of carbon in mainstream economics.
Durable analysis of the iPhone losing its luster amid China demand weakness — marks the inflection in Apple's China narrative.
IMF downgrade of the 2019-2020 global growth outlook at Davos — durable macro signpost of the synchronized slowdown.
Martin Wolf on secular stagnation and the structural roots of the low-inflation, low-rate world remains a reference frame for understanding the 2010s economy.
Martin Wolf's analysis of how the high-debt, low-rate cycle ends (inflation vs deflation) is durable macro framing for the post-GFC era.
Saudi Aramco's record IPO is set for imminent approval and China's Sept CPI hits a 6-year high on pork inflation — two durable economic markers of late 2019.
Saudi Arabia launches the 2020 oil price war, crude opening down 30% — the supply shock that compounded the COVID market crash.
Record panic selloff (S&P -7.6%, Europe into bear market) driven by oil crash — a defining day of the March 2020 COVID market crash.
WTI crude crashed to -$40.32/bbl on Apr 20 2020 — the first-ever negative oil price, a landmark event in financial-market history.
Early breaking of the Wirecard fraud collapse — EY failed to verify deposits for three years — one of Europe's largest accounting-fraud scandals.
Snowflake's debut was the largest software IPO in history, a durable landmark in the 2020-21 cloud/software boom.
Record of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Economics to Milgrom and Wilson for auction theory — a durable scholarly milestone.
Explains the gamma-squeeze mechanics (weaponized options) behind the GameStop mania — durable market-structure insight from the most significant retail-trading episode of the decade.
Reflective analysis of the GameStop/WallStreetBets short squeeze, a landmark retail-investor market event whose lessons about market structure and social-media-driven trading still resonate.
The WHO joint-study finding that a lab leak was 'extremely unlikely' — a much-cited landmark in the COVID-origins debate — plus the Archegos blow-up hitting Wall Street.
The IPCC AR6 'code red' finding that warming would hit 1.5C around 2040 — a landmark climate-science assessment that anchored subsequent policy debate.
The Fed's first 0.75-point hike in decades — the inflection that launched the most aggressive US monetary tightening cycle in a generation.
Durable analysis of the Terra/Luna and UST algorithmic-stablecoin collapse — a landmark crypto failure whose mechanics and lessons still inform stablecoin regulation.
US June 2022 CPI hit 9.1%, a 40-year high — the peak data point of the post-pandemic inflation surge that defined the 2022-23 Fed tightening cycle.
The moment FTX's collapse became inevitable when Binance walked away — the pivotal day of the largest crypto fraud blowup.
Durable retrospective analysis of the FTX rise and implosion, capturing the SBF-era crypto mania and its undoing.
The unprecedented federal classified-documents indictment of Trump (37 counts), the first-ever federal criminal charges against a former US president.
The Fed's hike to a 22-year-high rate marks the peak of the 2022-23 tightening cycle, a reference point for the post-pandemic monetary era.
Fitch stripping the US of its AAA credit rating after the debt-ceiling standoff is a landmark macro-fiscal event signaling longer-run concerns about US fiscal trajectory.
Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud trial over the FTX collapse — a landmark crypto-fraud case that reshaped industry trust.
Binance founder CZ pleads guilty and resigns in a record US settlement — a defining moment in crypto-industry regulation.
Durable structural analysis (numbered '一国一策' series) of Japan's 1989-2024 economic trajectory and the mechanics of its renewed rise.
Historic market milestone: the Nikkei breaks its 1989 bubble-era peak after 34 years, marking the end of Japan's lost decades narrative.
DOJ's landmark antitrust suit against Apple over smartphone-market monopoly is a defining Big Tech enforcement action.
Sentencing of Binance founder CZ caps a defining enforcement chapter in the crypto industry's reckoning with US regulators.
Weekend analysis of the early-August 2024 global market crash driven by the yen carry-trade unwind — a named market event.
6 tier-5 · 26 tier-4
The rise of the Chinese internet giants and the state's reassertion of control over them. The Ant Group IPO halt and the fintech crackdown it launched; Jack Ma's Bund speech; the Didi cybersecurity probe and the chilling of overseas listings; the 'double reduction' tutoring ban; platform antitrust and the 'common prosperity' redistribution turn; PIPL and data governance; the earlier conglomerate deleveraging (Anbang, Wanda, HNA); and the cultural inflection points — Wei Zexi and Baidu, the 996 labor debate, the bike-sharing bubble, Uber's surrender to Didi, and TikTok's global saga from ban threat to forced-divestiture law.
Martin Wolf's much-cited thesis that the world economy is addicted to credit and China is likely the next victim — a durable framing of China's debt-overhang risk that anticipated later deleveraging debates.
Analysis of the Wei Zexi affair — a watershed Chinese internet scandal that forced regulation of Baidu medical ads and reshaped debate over private healthcare.
Lex analysis of Tencent's $8.6bn Supercell acquisition — a landmark deal that made Tencent the world's largest gaming company.
Analysis of Uber's August 2016 surrender to Didi and exit from China, a landmark business case on why Western tech firms fail in the Chinese market.
Durable framing of the 2017 crackdown on China's acquisitive conglomerates (Wanda/Anbang/HNA deleveraging and capital-flight controls) — a genuine turning point for the era of debt-fueled overseas dealmaking.
Qualcomm completes the world's first 5G data connection — a genuine technology milestone marking the start of the 5G era.
Alibaba's Singles' Day hits a record $25.4B GMV — a benchmark figure for the scale of Chinese e-commerce that remains a reference point.
Weekly synthesis of the rise and fall of Wu Xiaohui and the Anbang regulatory takeover, a landmark case in China's financial deleveraging crackdown.
China's 25% retaliatory tariffs on 106 US products — the landmark April 2018 tit-for-tat that marked the formal opening of the US-China trade war.
Retrospective on the 2018 collapse of China's bike-sharing bubble (ofo/Mobike) and the deposit-driven death spiral — durable case study of a Chinese tech mania.
The 996.ICU movement was a culturally durable inflection point in Chinese tech-labor discourse, debated for years afterward.
Alibaba's Hong Kong secondary listing is confirmed and the FDA approves a Chinese-developed cancer drug for the first time — two structural firsts for Chinese capital markets and biotech.
Lex on Ant Group's planned mega-IPO, which was abruptly halted by Beijing weeks later — a pivotal moment in China's fintech crackdown.
Abe Shinzo's resignation ended the tenure of Japan's longest-serving prime minister — a landmark political event.
The Oracle-TikTok deal resolution and Suga's LDP leadership win are the durable endpoints of two major 2020 stories (the TikTok ban saga and Japan's post-Abe transition).
Analysis of Jack Ma's Bund Summit speech — the speech that directly precipitated the Ant IPO halt and the broader tech crackdown.
The suspension of Ant Group's record IPO — the inflection point that launched China's fintech/big-tech regulatory crackdown, with FT's editorial framing it.
China's draft platform-economy antitrust guidelines — the opening move of the platform-monopoly regulatory era that reshaped Alibaba, Tencent and others.
PBoC's rare public rebuke of Ant Group — a pivotal moment in China's tech-and-fintech crackdown that reshaped the regulatory landscape for Alibaba and big tech.
Durable analysis of Robinhood's role and the payment-for-order-flow business model exposed by the GameStop squeeze, a defining fintech controversy.
The Didi cybersecurity probe — the post-IPO crackdown that became the template for China's data-security control over overseas-listed tech and chilled US listings.
Documents how the tutoring-sector ban barred IPOs and foreign investment, the moment that durably chilled foreign capital's view of Chinese regulatory risk.
The double-reduction (双减) crackdown that abolished the for-profit tutoring industry overnight — a landmark of the 2021 'common prosperity' regulatory campaign that erased a whole sector and its foreign capital.
Passage of China's Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) — a foundational, lasting data-governance statute for the Chinese internet.
Completion of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending the 20-year war — a world-historical event, alongside the start of 'common prosperity' wealth-redistribution pledges by Chinese tech.
Early durable analysis of whether Evergrande could escape its debt trap, at the onset of the crisis that triggered China's broader property-sector deleveraging.
Plan to break up Alipay and hand credit-scoring data to a state-linked entity — the forced restructuring of Ant's lending business that capped the Ant/fintech crackdown.
Analysis of the March 2023 TikTok congressional hearing (Chew testimony) — a landmark moment in the US-China tech and data-sovereignty fight.
Landmark US legislative milestone: the House passes the bill forcing ByteDance to divest TikTok, opening a multi-year forced-divestiture and US-China tech-decoupling saga.
TikTok's lawsuit against the US government over the divest-or-ban law marks a landmark tech-sovereignty and First Amendment battle.
周末"一周精选"，头条为赵莹论TikTok对中国科技企业出海的品牌叙事启示。汇集本周署名评论：周浩论降息后美元（人民币锚定作用上升）、李伟论新能源车"反内卷"、郑志刚论马斯克天价薪酬、数字化落地四种思维、刘远举论预制菜价格风波、邓聿文论美国控枪困境、孙太一"益州困境"看台海等深度内容。高密度评论精选集。
Weekend 一周精选 of the week's best commentary: 邓聿文 on the real aim of the US TikTok forced sale (discourse control), China renouncing WTO developing-country special treatment, 莫里茨 on Trump's counterproductive H-1B rule, Martin Sandbu on the dollar absorbing all US anxiety, and analyses of gold-vs-AI-vs-Bitcoin and the WEF/Davos crisis. Curated long-form makes it more durable than daily recaps.
6 tier-5 · 23 tier-4
A decade-long technology arc captured in real time. AlphaGo's defeat of Lee Sedol (2016); Microsoft's foundational OpenAI investments (2019, 2023) that opened the generative-AI age; DALL-E and the early image models; the ChatGPT-era competitive scramble (Musk's xAI/Grok, the Altman board coup); the Nvidia-led compute boom and its trillion-dollar milestones; the China-vs-US AI contest crystallized by the 2025 DeepSeek moment; and the maturing debates — AI-vs-dot-com-bubble comparisons, AI safety governance, Hinton on AI and inequality, and the first signs of an AI capex war of attrition.
Contemporaneous coverage of AlphaGo's landmark defeat of Lee Sedol and a profile of Demis Hassabis — a defining milestone in AI history.
Alibaba commits $15B to found its DAMO Academy research institute — a landmark corporate R&D move that anchored China's AI and frontier-tech ambitions.
Early articulation of the thesis that the US-China trade war is really driven by fear of China's technological/AI rise rather than steel and soybeans — a framing that proved central to the subsequent tech-decoupling era.
Martin Wolf engaging Kai-Fu Lee's 'AI Superpowers' thesis on China's applied-AI advantage frames a debate that only grew more consequential.
Marks Microsoft's foundational $1B investment in OpenAI — the partnership that later produced GPT/ChatGPT and reshaped the entire AI industry.
IBM publicly rebuts Google's landmark 'quantum supremacy' claim — a defining moment in the early quantum-computing debate.
Covers OpenAI's first text-to-image system (DALL-E) — an early landmark in generative AI history — plus the Jan 6 Capitol attack aftermath and NYSE's China telecom delistings.
Google engineer suspended for claiming the LaMDA chatbot was sentient — a notable pre-ChatGPT marker in the public debate over AI consciousness.
Microsoft's $10B OpenAI investment — the deal that opened the generative-AI era and remade Big Tech competition.
Durable analysis of OpenAI's unusual capped-profit equity structure — the deal architecture that defined the Microsoft-OpenAI era.
Early reporting on Musk's plan to build an AI startup rivaling OpenAI, marking the origins of xAI.
Musk launches Grok to challenge ChatGPT — the debut of xAI's chatbot, a marker in the generative-AI competition.
Blow-by-blow of the November 2023 OpenAI board coup against Sam Altman — a landmark moment in the AI era and corporate-governance history.
Defining moment of the AI/GPU boom: Nvidia declares an AI 'tipping point' with revenue up 265%, the datapoint that anchored the 2024 AI-capex narrative.
Launch of Nvidia's Blackwell GPU architecture — a defining hardware milestone of the generative-AI compute era.
The first US-UK bilateral AI safety-testing agreement set an early template for cross-border AI governance.
Nvidia crossing the $3 trillion market-cap threshold is a defining milestone of the AI-driven equity boom that reshaped global markets.
Nvidia became the world's most valuable company, a landmark marker of the AI-driven market era.
Lex column tying the August 2024 Asian equity selloff to the AI boom — durable analysis of the AI-trade fragility.
Marks the DeepSeek moment — a landmark in the China-vs-US AI narrative — arguing its significance extends beyond model economics to geopolitics and the cost structure of frontier AI.
Second durable DeepSeek analysis distilling three lessons from its breakout, useful long-term as contemporaneous interpretation of the 2025 AI inflection.
Durable analytical piece comparing the AI boom to the dot-com bubble across 25 years, the kind of framing that retains value as a reference for the AI-cycle debate.
US-Saudi $600B AI and arms deal — a landmark agreement signaling Gulf capital's central role in the global AI buildout.
一周精选,汇集本周署名深度评论:伍治坚论关税移民政策困境、周浩谈港股新重估、里奥弗兰科斯批资源民族主义、杨超析关税对中越家具业、埃里安论法院关税裁决意义、石烁评英特尔,以及辛顿专访(AI将让少数人更富、多数人更穷)、"看门人的终结"等FT商学院长文。多为可保存的分析文章而非快讯。
周末"一周精选"，头条仍为邓聿文论美国强购TikTok的真实目的。汇集本周署名评论：H-1B新规反作用、美元承压、房价与降息、北京消费、消费vs投资之辩、欧洲燃油车纠结，以及佩蒂斯专访"我们误解中国的地方"、英伟达千亿AI工厂、比特币金库搅乱并购等深度内容。高密度评论精选集。
周末"一周精选"汇集本周高价值评论：邓聿文论美国强购TikTok的真实意图（封堵话语权而非数据安全）、莫里茨批H-1B新规、马丁论美元承压、沈建光辩消费与投资优先级、北京消费下滑、欧洲燃油车之争，以及AI资本开支终局、社交媒体见顶等深度专栏。精选集合密度高，多为署名观点长文。
Weekly curated compilation themed on the US-China AI race (Li Wei's 'who wins' framing, the CES innovation-path divergence, biotech non-decoupling) plus an FT editorial cautioning investor overconfidence and Sandbu on Europe going it alone. A hand-picked best-of with named analysts on durable competitiveness themes, more reference-worthy than the daily issues.
Weekly curated compilation built around 2026-outlook commentary: Shen Jianguang on China's domestic-demand year, the trade-war impact on manufacturing, Edward Luce's 'America has gone mad,' and 'the world enters a Warring States era.' As a hand-picked best-of with named analysts on structural themes rather than same-day news, it carries more lasting value than the daily editions.
头条是张昕之的署名评论《Sora之死：最烧钱的AI输给了谁》，论证生成六十秒视频不等于讲故事、以艺术创作为目标的AI视频生成可能是死胡同——一篇有观点的AI产业判断文。合辑其余为美伊停火与油价冲击的密集日常推送（戴维斯论美元脆弱、Lex论石油冲击两年才消退、中国AI陷消耗战等）。头条评论提升了整期价值。
8 tier-5 · 13 tier-4
Power transitions and constitutional moments across the major democracies and within China. The US cycle from the contested 2020 result and Biden's inauguration to Trump's historic criminal conviction, Biden's withdrawal, and Trump's 2024 return; the unprecedented Trump indictments; the UK's Conservative collapse and Labour landslide; Lula and Milei in Latin America; South Korea's martial-law shock; the US Supreme Court's affirmative-action ruling. On the China side: the 19th and subsequent Party Congresses, 'Xi Jinping Thought' in the constitution, the redefined 'principal contradiction,' and reform-era reappraisals (Hu Yaobang, late-Qing constitutionalism, the Cultural Revolution).
Carries the US Senate report on CIA torture ('历史污点') — a landmark accountability document with lasting historical significance.
Zhou Yongkang formally indicted for bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets — the most senior Chinese official ever prosecuted, the landmark trial of Xi's anti-corruption campaign.
Full transcript of Premier Li Keqiang's rare on-record FT interview with editor Lionel Barber — a primary-source statement of Chinese economic and reform policy.
Ding Xueliang's centennial reappraisal of Hu Yaobang's lifelong push to shift the party from power-centric to people-centric governance — durable political-history reflection.
An FT interview with scholar Zheng Yongnian laying out a 30-year framework for China's institutional and legal reform — durable analytical commentary, not a daily recap.
Durable historical essay drawing parallels between the late-Qing 1906 constitutional reform and present-day Chinese political reform — a standalone analytical piece, not a daily recap.
Ding Xueliang's contrarian reflection marking the Cultural Revolution's 50th anniversary — a substantive historical-memory essay with lasting interest.
Live coverage on the morning of the 2016 US presidential election day, the pivot event of the whole batch and a marker of a turning point in global politics.
Unveiling of the new Politburo Standing Committee after the 19th Party Congress — the once-in-five-years leadership lineup that defined China's top governance.
Analysis of the 19th Party Congress redefinition of China's 'principal contradiction' — a durable doctrinal shift that reframed CCP policy priorities for the following era.
The Essex lorry tragedy (39 migrants found dead) plus WeWork's post-collapse China retreat and the Beyond Meat short — a snapshot of a major human tragedy and two emblematic 2019 corporate stories.
US House votes to impeach Trump — only the third president in US history to be impeached, a landmark constitutional and political event.
Boris Johnson resigns as Conservative leader after mass ministerial resignations — a defining moment in UK post-Brexit politics.
Lead item is the assassination of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe — a landmark world-news event with lasting geopolitical and historical significance.
Lula's historic comeback victory over Bolsonaro — a landmark Latin American political turning point with lasting geopolitical weight.
Landmark SCOTUS ruling ending race-conscious affirmative action in US college admissions, a defining 2023 legal turning point with lasting reach.
Javier Milei wins the Argentine presidency — a landmark libertarian electoral upset with lasting consequences for Argentina's economy.
First-ever criminal conviction of a former (and future) US president on all 34 counts — a historic event in American legal and political history.
Labour's landslide UK general-election win ending 14 years of Conservative rule — a landmark political event.
Weekend analysis framing the sudden Harris-vs-Trump reshaping of the 2024 election, the key narrative shift of the campaign.
Marks election day of the 2024 US presidential race that returned Trump to power — the single most consequential political event of this window, reshaping trade, foreign, and economic policy for years.
7 tier-5 · 7 tier-4
The people-centered pieces with the longest shelf life: deaths that closed an era (Lee Kuan Yew, Kissinger, Gorbachev, Queen Elizabeth II, Volcker, Pope Francis) and the assessments that accompanied them; the marquee 'Lunch with the FT' and Person-of-the-Year features (Snowden, Bernanke, Merkel, Soros, Musk); and the profiles of the figures who defined the period's debates.
FT's dedicated profile-obituary of Lee Kuan Yew, assessing the authoritarian-meritocratic Singapore model he built and its global influence.
Death of Lee Kuan Yew at 91, modern Singapore's founding father and one of the 20th century's most influential world leaders — with FT's reckoning of his governance model.
FT names Trump its 2016 Person of the Year — a durable editorial verdict capturing how the year reordered Western politics.
Landmark FT Lunch interview with Henry Kissinger calling the world a 'very critical period' — a durable primary-source view of great-power order from one of its defining architects.
FT 2018 Person of the Year profile of George Soros — a marquee annual editorial feature with lasting reference value.
Includes a memorial tribute to historian Roderick MacFarquhar (preeminent scholar of the Cultural Revolution) — durable obituary/reflection of lasting reference value.
FT's Person of the Year 2021 exclusive interview with Elon Musk — a durable landmark profile capturing his peak influence over the EV transition.
Analytical piece on the paradox of Musk's Twitter takeover — the opening of an acquisition saga that reshaped a major social platform and free-speech debates.
Landmark historical event with legacy essay: death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader who ended the Cold War and presided over the USSR's collapse.
Landmark historical event: death of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest-reigning monarch, ending an era.
Durable obituary essay assessing Queen Elizabeth II's 70-year reign and her historical standing alongside Elizabeth I and Victoria.
Records Musk closing the $44B Twitter acquisition — a defining tech/media event whose consequences (X rebrand, platform overhaul) still matter.
Rupert Murdoch stepping down as chairman of Fox and News Corp marks the end of an era in global media — a landmark succession event.
Death of Pope Francis at 88 — a landmark world event marking the end of a consequential papacy.
3 tier-5 · 5 tier-4
The standout corporate stories and trade-architecture deals: blockbuster M&A (Shell-BG, Bayer-Monsanto, SoftBank-ARM, the Alphabet restructuring), the accounting frauds (Wirecard, Hanergy, 1MDB), Boeing's 737 MAX crisis, Big Tech antitrust actions, and the major multilateral trade and tax pacts (RCEP, CPTPP, the EU-China investment agreement).
FT's forensic investigation showing Hanergy shares mysteriously spiked in the final 10 minutes of trading across 800k+ trades — landmark reporting that foreshadowed the collapse two months later.
The day Hanergy Thin Film Power crashed 47% then halted — the collapse of one of the era's biggest China stock-fraud stories, wiping out founder Li Hejun's paper fortune.
FT's award-winning investigation into Hanergy Thin Film (汉能薄膜/HK:566) — landmark investigative reporting that preceded the stock's collapse and trading halt.
Analysis of how Apple's China-demand revenue warning chilled global equity markets — durable record of a marquee market-shock moment.
Signing of RCEP, the world's largest free-trade agreement — a durable milestone in Asia-Pacific trade architecture.
Analysis of the great-power dynamics behind the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), a historically significant deal later frozen by the European Parliament.
130 countries sign the OECD/G20 global minimum corporate tax (15%) agreement — a landmark rewrite of international tax rules that still structures cross-border taxation years later.
China's formal application to join the CPTPP — a durable milestone in trade geopolitics following US withdrawal from the pact's predecessor.
2 tier-5 · 3 tier-4
Milestones in science and the technology of catastrophe response: China's lunar firsts (Chang'e-4's far-side landing, Chang'e-5's sample return) and the Tiangong space station; CRISPR's clinical arrival; the vaccine race (Pfizer/BioNTech's efficacy result, the Chinese-vaccine credibility debates); the Fukushima wastewater discharge; and the passing of Stephen Hawking.
The Pfizer/BioNTech 90%-efficacy announcement — the first COVID vaccine efficacy result, a turning point of the pandemic.
Successful launch of the Tianhe core module — the start of China's Tiangong space station construction, a lasting milestone in China's space program.
Global confirmed COVID-19 deaths pass 5 million — a durable milestone in the pandemic's death toll.
Marks China's effective abandonment of zero-COVID — a landmark policy reversal that reshaped the post-pandemic economy and society.
Japan's start of Fukushima treated-wastewater discharge is a landmark, multi-year-significant event that triggered regional diplomatic and trade fallout.
1 tier-5 · 3 tier-4
The policy and science of decarbonization: the Paris Agreement and Trump's withdrawal from it, China's national carbon market launch, the IPCC's 'code red' 1.5°C assessment, Chai Jing's 'Under the Dome,' Nordhaus's climate-economics Nobel, and the G7's coal-phaseout pledge.
FT analysis of Chai Jing's 'Under the Dome' (《穹顶之下》) documentary — a landmark cultural-political moment in China's environmental awakening that briefly broke through censorship before being suppressed.
Trump announces US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement — a defining event in global climate politics and the EU-China green realignment that followed.
China launches its national carbon trading system (later the world's largest carbon market) and the US Senate passes Trump's landmark 2017 tax cut — two durable policy milestones.
First G7 collective commitment to phase out coal power by 2035 — a landmark in global energy-transition policy.