ITK Daily | October 23

Happy Sunday.

To be ITK, know this:

Bloomberg: Xi allies fill China’s top jobs in move toward one-man rule

+ Shanghai boss Li Qiang, former Xi aide, set to become premier

+ Clean break from collective leadership of recent decades

"Team of Loyalists"

The CCP doesn't care about social pressure to improve diversity among their director ranks and has little interest in addressing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.

Welcome to Xi's "Chinese Dream."

China's Xi stacks new inner circle with loyalists for third term: Shanghai party boss Li Qiang clinches No. 2 spot; Vice Premier Hu Chunhua demoted. Nikkei

+ For the first time in a quarter century, there will be no women in the Politburo after the retirement of its sole female member Sun Chunlan, a vice premier and China's top pandemic handler.

+ Analysts had predicted that Xi would surround himself with loyalists in a bid to crush the party factionalism and infighting that marked the tenures of his predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin.

+ "The appointments of Xi's associates to the highest positions of power in China indicates that Xi's vision for China will be rigidly executed in the next decade," said Valarie Tan, an analyst at the Germany-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.

The seven men who will lead China into Xi’s third term Bloomberg

+ Chinese leader installs a top leadership body of loyalists

+ Li Qiang gets No. 2 seat despite chaotic Shanghai lockdown

Here are the officials who will run China, in the order they appeared:

Xi Jinping, 69

Li Qiang, 63 | Likely post: Premier when Li Keqiang steps down in March.

Zhao Leji, 65 | Likely post: Head of the National People Congress.

Wang Huning, 67 | Likely post: Head of the advisory Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Cai Qi, 66 | New post: Head of the Central Secretariat, overseeing ideology and day-to-day party affairs.

Ding Xuexiang, 60 | Likely post: Executive vice premier.

Li Xi, 66 | New post: Chief of the anti-corruption body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Xi Jinping promotes loyal Shanghai chief to upper echelons of power: Li Qiang becomes the party’s second-highest ranking official after presiding over disruptive COVID lockdowns. FT

+ In the run-up to the party congress, Shanghai took no chances. In a model example of the zero-COVID constraints that Xi last week applauded, authorities took a hard line approach to new infections, cordoning off neighborhoods and quarantining close contacts for 7-10 days.

+ Li, who has no central government experience, is now in line to replace Premier Li Keqiang, a rival for China’s top role in 2012, and a figure who has been largely sidelined since.

+ “Putting aside events in the past year, he’s basically had a good reputation in Shanghai among the business community. So he’s simultaneously a Xi protégé and someone who doesn’t look ‘anti-business’ to investors,” said Andrew Gilholm, head of China analysis at Control Risks, a consultancy.

Bloomberg: Prioritizing Italy Inc. is Meloni’s plan as new prime minister

+ Italy’s first woman premier formally takes over from Draghi

+ Brothers of Italy leader has made assurances on foreign policy

+ Giorgia Meloni plans to uphold Italy’s pro-Ukraine and pro-NATO stance, but her government is set to shift internal policy to provide a greater shield for the country’s companies and industry.

+ Italy’s agriculture minister will take on the additional label of “food sovereignty,” while the former post of economic development minister will be rebranded as “companies and Made in Italy.”

Is the tide going out on Boris Johnson’s comeback? The inside account of the fall of Liz Truss, Johnson’s new bid for power, and why Rishi Sunak’s got a spring in his step. The Times

+ Sunak appears to be in the box seat, with more than 120 MP supporters publicly declared, well over the threshold of 100 required to get on the ballot paper.

+ Sunak's goal is to get to about 180, half the parliamentary party, giving him a huge moral advantage he did not have last time if the decision goes to the membership.

+ Truss was concerned she had lost every national newspaper with the exception of the Daily Express, whose readers liked the confirmation of the pensions triple lock. “That one front page cost us ￡5 billion,” said one senior Tory. “It would have been cheaper to just buy the newspaper.”

+ “Politics is a blood sport,” a quote made famous by Labour’s Aneurin Bevan. Those standing close to the prime minister heard her, sotto voce, add: “And I’m the fox.”

+ Whatever the outcome, it will make a very good film. Perhaps the premier should be at BAFTA.

How the markets broke ‘Trussonomics’: A visual journey through the collapse of Liz Truss’s ill-fated economic project. FT

+ Her ideological “mini” Budget contained ￡45bn of unfunded tax cuts — the biggest tax cuts for 50 years.

Canadian minister in Washington: We need to decouple from China: CBC reports federal minister Fran?ois-Philippe Champagne pitches for US investment in Canadian mineral projects to lessen reliance on Beijing.

+ Canada's industry minister was in Washington making a pitch for projects north of the border to access US federal funding for critical minerals.

Office workers embrace hybrid working as post-pandemic norm: People across the world’s largest economies have not gone back to pre-Covid commuting patterns, data shows. FT

+ By mid-October trips to workplaces in the world’s seven largest economies were still well below their levels before the coronavirus took hold in early 2020, according to a Financial Times analysis of phone-tracking movements published by Google.

+ In Japan, footfall was 7 percent below pre-pandemic levels while in the UK it was down 24 percent. Across major advanced economies office trips are more popular on the middle days of the week, while Monday and Friday tend to show large drops in attendance.

+ “Working from home will ultimately stick,” said Cevat Giray Aksoy, an economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development who has researched the trend. “Workplace-related mobility levels will remain lower than the pre-pandemic levels.”

Remote work is here to stay. Lean in, employers. Jessica Grose

+ A recent report from Future Forum, which describes itself as “a quarterly survey of more than 10,000 knowledge workers in the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK,” found that “83 percent of working moms now want location flexibility,” while 60 percent of working moms and 50 percent of working dads “want to work remotely 3 to 5 days a week.”

‘Green hushing’ on the rise as companies keep climate plans from scrutiny: A quarter of 1,200 companies surveyed say they would not publicize their science-based net zero emissions targets. FT

+ “There is a high degree of scrutiny now around anything to do with professing your sustainability,” said Michael Wilkins, head of Imperial College London’s Centre for Climate Finance and Investment. “Together with the ESG backlash, I think it is scaring a lot of companies.”

Why Twitter still rules (seriously): Despite low points, the site can still be a platform for beautiful mind. Simon Kuper

+ It gets a terrible press. Even “the platform’s most prolific users often refer to it as ‘this hellsite’”, notes Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times.

+ But as the author Sarah Jackson argues, technologies aren’t inherently good or evil. They are just tools. To condemn Twitter because of trolls is like condemning the printing press because of Mein Kampf. The trick is to filter out the rubbish.

+ My policy on Twitter is to follow beautiful minds, specialists or both. Whereas Facebook and Instagram confront you with horrifying images of your friends’ perfect kids and perfect breakfasts, Twitter has zones of substance.

+ Twitter is surely the most equal version to date of what German philosopher Jürgen Habermas dubbed “the public sphere.”

Is this the end of Facebook? It used to rule the world but Mark Zuckerberg’s social network is being overtaken by rivals — while he disappears into a virtual reality. The Times

+ Every morning Mark Zuckerberg gets up and checks his emails. The news is, without fail, dreadful. It’s like getting “punched in the stomach”, he told the podcaster Joe Rogan recently.

+ His company Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is used by 3.6 billion people every month; just over half the global population outside China, where Meta’s apps are blocked. By the numbers, it is the largest empire in history.

+ For the first time in its history, Meta sales revenues fell this summer. The company has begun quietly laying people off, shutting departments, and freezing most hiring as it also grapples with a post-COVID hangover

+ Its share price has imploded, crashing 60 percent in a year.

+ “Facebook is for old people. I can’t even tell you the main functions of Facebook anymore. Is it photos or just words?”

+ Apple’s ad business could become “Facebook big”. Indeed, the investment bank Evercore predicted it could pull in as much as $30 billion a year by 2026 — a sum similar to the annual ad income of the global newspaper industry — up from less than $1 billion in 2018.

+ Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat all rely on one’s “social graph”, the network of people, brands and interest groups one follows, to shape the content people see.

+ TikTok takes a different, and perhaps even more worrying, approach. It has no interest in your friends. Instead, it has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based recommendation engine that divines your desires by interpreting the most subtle of clues.

+ TikTok is not really a social media app. Rather, it is like television on steroids, streaming a billion-plus hyper-personalized channels to its ever-growing army of (mostly young) users.

+ Zuckerberg is not leaving this fight to his engineers alone. He has also drawn in Meta’s Washington influence operation. Once an outpost of a few dozen people, today it is America’s biggest corporate lobbying operation, employing more than 1,000 people worldwide. Last year it spent $20 million, more than any company in America, according to Open Secrets, a group that tracks political funding.

Walgreens hopes robots will help ease pharmacist shortage WSJ

"I’ve fallen in love with an electric pick-up truck": He hates battery-powered vehicles. So how did the Ford F-150 Lightning win him over? Jeremy Clarkson

+ "...someone buys an F-150 about every 30 seconds, and no ordinary car gets close to that. Let me put it this way. If Ford made only the F-150, it would still generate more revenue than Starbucks, McDonald’s or Coca-Cola. It’s a phenomenon, this thing."

Red Bull says it sold nearly 10 billion cans of its caffeine and taurine-based drink in 172 countries worldwide last year.

1 Mayfair, Robert AM Stern’s stylistic extravaganza: The New York architect brings characteristic eclecticism to what is expected to be London’s most expensive residential building yet. FT

+ It is expected to be London’s most expensive ever residential building, at an eye-watering ￡2bn.

+ With prices set for the super-rich (though the exact figures have not been released), the designs look, perhaps surprisingly, restrained. The development includes 29 homes, apartments, and townhouses.

ESPN, Formula One reach new broadcast agreement: WSJ reports the deal will keep F1 on the ESPN networks and ABC through 2025.

Yahoo Sports: Red Bull co-founder and CEO Dietrich Mateschitz, whose sports empire spanned continents, dies at 78

Red Bull's sports holdings now include the following:

Racing

Red Bull Racing (Formula 1)

Scuderia AlphaTauri (Formula 1)

Soccer

RB Leipzig (German Bundersliga)

FC Red Bull Salzburg (Austrian Bundesliga) and its reserve team

New York Red Bulls (Major League Soccer) and its reserve teams

Red Bull Bragantino (Brazilian Série A) and its reserve team

Ice hockey

EC Red Bull Salzburg (Austrian ICE Hockey League)

EHC Red Bull München (German Deutsche Eishockey Liga)

Motorcycle racing

Ten Kate Racing

Red Bull KTM Factory Racing

Esports

OG (various video games)

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

Caracal produces ITK Daily.

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