1. Fact of the day on Ayushman Bharat
Nearly 750,000 beneficiaries of the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) are registered under a single mobile number – 9999999999, The Indian Express reported, citing the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). A performance audit report on the Centre's flagship scheme for health insurance for poor people was placed in the Lok Sabha on Monday. The report showed that linking 749,820 beneficiaries to a single mobile number was not an isolated anomaly. More than 139,000 beneficiaries have been linked to the number 8888888888, while over 96,000 have been linked to 9000000000. At least 20 other mobile numbers have 10,000 to 50,000 beneficiaries linked to them, the CAG report stated.
This points to the absence of even very basic internal controls in the software deployed to manage the Ayushman Bharat applications and their processing.
2. More on the difficulties of doing business in China - Denton's, one of the leading global law firms, has decoupled its operations from its Chinese affiliate Dacheng and its employees have left China. FT captures the irony.
The firm had been the flag bearer for Chinese integration when it merged with Dacheng in 2015, proclaiming to be “uniting East and West” and even incorporating Chinese characters into its new combined logo. "They are being forced to unwind one of the most historic law firm mergers,” said Kent Zimmermann of Zeughauser Group, a consultancy that advises some of the legal sector’s biggest players. “They didn’t really have a choice.” At issue for Dentons was the recent broadening of Beijing’s anti-spying rules. In April, China said the regulations would now cover any “documents, data, materials or items related to national security and interests”. As a result, people familiar with Dentons’ decision told the FT, the firm was unable to share information freely between Chinese and non-China based partners, rendering it incapable of performing basic conflict of interest checks or of carrying out due diligence on China-related deals.
This follows increased frequency of raids on foreign advisory firms like Mintz Group and Bain.
This comes even as President Biden signed into law that would come into force next year a ban on some US investment into China's quantum computing, advanced chips and artificial intelligence sectors. It will also require the companies to notify the US government of other investments in these three sectors.
3. More troubles in the Chinese property market as a leading developer Country Garden, with $200 bn in debts, defaulted on two of its international bond payments. Property sales have fallen sharply with the drop being very steep among private developers.
Staying with China, Times has a summary of all the problems
First came word that China’s economy had slowed substantially in the spring, extinguishing hopes of a robust expansion after the lifting of extreme Covid restrictions. This week brought data showing that China’s exports have declined for three months in a row, while imports have dropped for five consecutive months — another indicator of flagging prospects. Then came news that prices have fallen on a range of goods, from food to apartments, raising the specter that China could be on the brink of so-called deflation, or sustained drops in prices, a harbinger of anemic commercial activity. And in a sign of deepening distress in China’s housing market — the intersection of finance, construction and household wealth — a major real estate developer, Country Garden, missed payments on its bonds and estimated it lost up to $7.6 billion in the first half of the year.
All this does not also bode well for the world economy since China has been the source of more than 40% of the global economic growth over the past decade, compared to 22% from the US and 9% from the Eurozone.
4. NYT has more on the several questionable private deals of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The article tells the story of the used Prevost Marathon RV that Justice Thomas purchased in 1999 with a loan from Anthony Welters, a close friend who made his fortune in the healthcare industry. Atleast parts of the loan may have been forgiven or gifted by Welters. Justice Thomas has often told friends how he scrimped and saved to afford the RV.
There are also question marks on the price of the RV since the million-dollar luxury coach had logged only just above 90000 miles, too low to depreciate to the $267,230 price that Justice Thomas paid. The Times article writes,
Wealthy benefactors have bestowed an array of benefits on Justice Thomas and his wife, Virginia Thomas: helping to pay for his great-nephew’s tuition, steering business to Mrs. Thomas’s consulting firm, buying and renovating the house where his mother lives and inviting the Thomases on trips both domestic and foreign that included travel aboard private jets and a yacht. Justice Thomas has pointed to interpretations of the disclosure rules to defend his failure to report much of the largess he has received. He has said he was advised that the trips fell under an exemption for gifts involving “personal hospitality” from close friends, for instance, and a lawyer close to the Thomases contended in a statement that the justice did not need to disclose the tuition because it was a gift to his great-nephew, over whom he had legal custody, rather than to him. The Thomases’ known benefactors include wealthy men like the Dallas real estate developer Harlan Crow, the conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo and several members of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, which honors people who succeed despite adversity. Among them: the longtime Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga, who flew the justice around on his jet.
Chinese local governments create revenue from land through two channels: selling land usage rights and collecting land and property-related taxes. The first channel allows local governments to “rent” out land to buyers who have the right to use and benefit from it while the government still retains ownership... The share of land sale revenue in total local government revenue increased from 20 percent in 2012 (2.7 trillion yuan) to 30 percent in 2021 (8.7 trillion yuan). Revenue from property-related taxes generated about 19 percent of total local government General Public Budget revenue in 2021, which pays for social programs. Combined, revenue from selling land use rights and collecting land-related taxes accounted for 37 percent of total fiscal revenue for all local governments in China in 2021. In 2022, tightening restrictions on developers led to a record number of debt defaults and triggered the most serious housing slump in China since 1998... Government land-related income decreased from 37 percent of total local government revenue in 2021 to 31 percent in 2022.
Across most of its 20 former African colonies, intellectuals and street protesters alike share a hatred of France, an easy scapegoat for all their problems... With the fall of Niger’s civilian government, its “ally of last resort”, France’s rout in the Sahel is almost complete. The days of its base in Niamey — and 1,500 soldiers, drones and fighter jets — look numbered... France’s loss has been Russia’s gain. When French soldiers failed to put down a simmering rebellion in CAR, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, the president, turned to Wagner mercenaries. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s men in balaclavas now run everything from gold mines to Touadéra’s schedule. The generals in Mali also sought help from Wagner after expelling what its prime minister called the “French junta”. If France’s slow-boil humiliation is good for Russia, groups linked with Isis and al-Qaeda may also be rubbing their hands. France has had limited success in fighting terrorist groups. Islamist ideology has traction in desperately poor countries with ethnic grievances, lousy governments and no tax revenue. But military regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso, with or without Wagner’s help, have fared no better. As they lose control of swaths of territory, an Islamist caliphate in the Sahel draws closer... Military governments, some with Russian leanings and all with an insurgency problem, now stretch 3,500 miles across the Sahel in a bayonet-straight line from coast to coast.
7. The demonisation of Sweden in Arab countries, arising from the burning of Koran by a Iraqi refugee in Stockholm on June 28, is a teachable moment.
“The volume of disinformation against Sweden really escalated after that incident,” said Marcus Berg, deputy head of the operations at Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency (MPF), which monitors disinformation from overseas. “Government-linked actors in Muslim countries began communicating about it very quickly, and so did Russian media.” Their key message — that the Swedish government endorsed Koran burnings — was simply incorrect: Swedish protest permits are not issued by the government but by local police authorities, who cannot turn down a protest application on ideological grounds. But those intent on whipping up anti-Swedish anger were not worried about accuracy.Immediately after the incident, the volume of Russian-language false information about Sweden rose by several hundred per cent, according to the MPF, as did Arabic-language information about the events. Ordinary social-media users, in turn, amplified the information without checking its accuracy. In Iraq, citizens were so enraged that they attacked Swedish diplomats. And the reputation of Sweden — which has welcomed tens of thousands of Muslim refugees over the past two decades — has been scorched. The campaign was designed to look like popular outrage but was actually co-ordinated by groups and individuals trying to undermine a liberal nation.
Clearly, the Swedes, like others in liberal democracies, believe that "tolerance begets more tolerance". But here it has backfired. The challenge is to find the balance - how much tolerance is enough? Where do we draw the line on "your liberty to swing your fist ends where my nose begins"?
8. Interesting graphic from Peterson Institute on tariff reductions, which point to most reductions coming from unilateral efforts.
The weighted average applied tariff among developing economies fell from 29.9 percent in 1983 to 11.3 percent in 2003. Two-thirds of the reduction came from unilateral actions undertaken voluntarily, a quarter came from multilateral trade negotiations, and around a tenth came from regional trade agreement negotiations.
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