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Give a Thing and Take a Thing, to Wear the Devil’s Golden Ring

They were just the two of them: Czech and Lech. They wandered the terrain along the Carpathian Mountain chain and eventually made a stop on a plain on both sides of the Moldau/Vltava River. There they settled and grew in numbers: two extended families, that of Czech, and that of Lech. With the passage of time, as they populated the new land, it turned out that there was little room for two families whose numbers were constantly rising. One of the brothers – Lech – decided to part with Czech and look for a new land to settle. His family moved north, crossing the Giant Mountains (Sudeten) and wended its way through primordial forests, till they spotted a big white eagle spreading its magnificent wings over an impressive nest. That’s the place we want to settle, said the forefather Lech, and so his extended family struck root in the country that later came to be known as Greater Poland. Centuries later it was here that a strong dynasty was established whose successive leaders managed to gradually join the neighbouring tribes – offshoots of the original Lech family – into one political entity, giving rise to what later was to be known as Poland. The white eagle became the country’s national emblem and has remained so till this day.

No wonder then that Order of the White Eagle is the name of the highest decoration that a Polish monarch or president can bestow. It traces its origin back to the year 1705, and its motto reads pro fide, lege et rege, or for faith, law and king.

Throughout its history the order has been given to a number of individuals, Polish and foreign. After Poland had been partitioned by Austria, Prussia and Russia, the Russian Empire adopted the order as its own and its monarch continued bestowing it. Russian emperors were simultaneously Polish kings during that time.

After World War Two, though the order was not officially abolished, it was not conferred by the so-called communist authorities. The Polish government in exile (representing the anti-communist political forces) continued to bestow it.

With the fall of communism in Eastern Europe (1989), the Polish authorities resumed the bestowal of the order, decorating both Polish citizens and foreign individuals. The order is conferred by Poland’s president who is aided in this task by a special Chapter of the Order of the White Eagle. Each Polish president is a recipient of this order ex officio.

Among the foreign recipients of the order is Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He received it in April 2023 when Andrzej Duda was Poland’s president. Why did he receive the order? Officially because Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a champion for freedom and democracy and the human rights and all that blah, blah, blah. In fact, he was given this decoration because he is the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army which fights against Russia, and there is nothing more pleasing to the majority of the Polish people than to reward anti-Russian political conduct.

But there is a big snag. Though Poland supports Ukraine in its fights against Russia with all its might, there are historical events that divide the two nations. During the Second World War the Ukrainian Insurgent Army UPA (Українська повстанська армія, УПА) and its ideological background – The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists OUN (Організація українських націоналістів, ОУН) – decided to ethnically cleanse the territories with mixed Polish-Ukrainian population. The year 1943 was an especially terrible year, which came down in history as the Volhynia Massacre, during which an estimated 100.000 Polish people were murdered and tortured. It was the time when the whole of pre-war Poland was under German occupation, the time when Ukrainian political leaders flirted with the Third Reich and provided Germany with Ukrainian auxiliary military units, the time when Ukrainian elites hoped for creating a Ukrainian state, free of national minorities. The Volhynia Massacre has become an iconic symbol of the events, but the ethnic cleansing continued for three years in between 1943 and 1945, spreading to East Galicia (today’s area around the city of Lvov) and today’s easternmost Poland.

Now the past is the past. The Volhynia Massacre is not the only one such event in human history. What makes it politically explosive is the fact that the Ukrainian political elites have not even attempted to condemn the event, nor have they decided to denounce the then political leaders and ideologues. To the contrary, Ukrainian nationalism is based on the veneration of the instigators and perpetrators of the massacres. Ukrainian cities and towns have monuments and commemorative plaques devoted to as well as streets or squares named after the same instigators and perpetrators. Though Kiev receives as much support from Poland as it is physically possible, Ukraine’s authorities show no willingness to apologise for the evil done to the Poles by Ukrainian past generations. When – to top it all – recently President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to name a military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA” (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), Polish President Karol Nawrocki said that enough is enough, and made a suggestion to strip the Ukrainian leader of the decoration of the White Eagle.

But why was Volodymyr Zelenskyy conferred this order in the first place? Did the Polish elites not know that their Ukrainian counterparts kept venerating the OUN/UPA leaders and ideologues? Did they not know that Ukrainian cities and towns are peppered with OUN/UPA memorabilia? Did the Polish elites not sense that Ukrainian politicians were reluctant to take any steps towards historical reconciliation? Was President Andrzej Duda, President Karol Nawrocki’s predecessor, not aware of all this when in April 2023 he was decorating President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the Order of the White Eagle? Of course, he knew everything and was aware of everything, and for all that he continued supporting Ukrainian chauvinists, thus marring the memory of the tens of thousands of his compatriots who had been maimed, tortured, dismembered, crucified, burnt alive, murdered, expelled from their homes, from their villages, and, and, and. President Andrzej Duda represented the same political faction as President Incumbent Karol Nawrocki. Now President Karol Nawrocki wants to strip Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the order. Well, it’s like having the right hand giving a gift and the left hand taking it back. In their total helplessness the Polish authorities are exposing themselves to ridicule.

Besides, why all this fuss over the bestowal of the said order? Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is by no means the only one recipient of the White Eagle unworthy of the honour. Let us survey the list of the recipients of this decoration. Who do we find there?

We have mentioned the partitions of Poland, the time when the Polish state as a political entity was annulled by the three neighbouring powers of Prussia, Austria and Russia. Poland – or to be accurate: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – collapsed also due to the high treason of some members of its nobility. Many of these traitors received the Order of the White Eagle prior to or after the act of treason. Did they deserve the order? During the time of Congress Poland – a semi-independent Polish state created on the lands of the Russian partition in 1815 – it was the Russian tsars who received the said decoration ex officio, as Polish heads of state. Among other recipients was General Ivan Paskevich, who suppressed the 1930-31 Polish national uprising, or Adam Wirtemberski, who while commanding Russian troops shelled the Puławy Palace, where Polish insurgents found refuge. Adam Wirtemberski had the palace bombed knowing full-well that among its residents was his own mother, Maria, a Polish patriot… Did he deserve the decoration?

Pre-war Poland awarded the Order of the White Eagle to August Hlond, Primate of Poland, who later (1939), when Germany attacked his country, fled abroad in a cowardly way, leaving the Polish Catholics alone face to face with the German occupiers.

Also today’s Poland has conferred this order to very many individuals, also foreigners, whose merits are – to put it mildly – doubtful. Who do we see among the recipients? We can see Valdas Adamkus or François Hollande or Helmut Kohl, whose only merit was that they were presidents or Prime Minister of, respectively, Lithuania, France, and Germany. (How does that relate to Poland and Poland’s interests?) Also, quite a few monarchs were recipients of the Order of the White Eagle: Queen Mathilde of Belgium, Queen Paola of Belgium, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Queen Sonja of Norway, Queen Sofía of Spain (what a propensity for queens!), or Emperor of Japan Akihito.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is by no means the only Ukrainian president who received this said order. The other recipients are President Leonid Kuchma (1997), President Viktor Yushchenko (2005), and President Petro Poroshenko (2014). Why did they get this decoration? It looks like they were awarded the order ex officio, just like their Polish counterparts (four Ukrainian presidents were decorated out of just six in total!).

Virtuti Militari (for Military Virtue) is Poland’s highest decoration for heroism and courage. Between the Second World War and the fall of communism (1945-1989) in Poland it was considered to be the highest order, since the Order of the White Eagle, though not abolished, was not granted any more. Now in the year 1974 the communist authorities conferred Virtuti Militari on Leonid Brezhnev, Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the leader of the USSR. That gesture on the part of the Polish authorities met with a widespread and strong disapproval among the Polish people. Why should a foreign leader, a leader of a country that was regarded as Poland’s overlord be decorated with Virtuti Militari? When communism collapsed, the bestowal of the cross was annulled in 1990. Leonid Brezhnev, the recipient, had been dead for eight years… The decision of stripping Leonid Brezhnev of Virtuti Militari was signed by the then President of Poland Wojciech Jaruzelski, a communist by conviction, Leonid Brezhnev’s erstwhile political friend… What a comedy!

They call stripping of such an order an act of historical justice, but such decisions are rather acts of childishness: it is giving a thing and taking a thing to wear the devil’s golden ring. One cannot erase the fact that unworthy recipients were considered worthy at the time of bestowal; you cannot undo history. Damnatio memoriae or condemnation of memory – because that’s what it is all about – has been practised in the past many times across cultures and continents. In some cases damnatio memoriae is somehow understandable, when representatives of a new political system want to undo, unsay, or offset what their predecessors have done. In the case of the revocation of the bestowal of the said Order of the White Eagle on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy we are facing ridicule pure: while Poland’s political system has not undergone a change, Poland’s current president wishes to undo what his predecessor did, a predecessor who belonged to the same political persuasion! What does that say about political leaders and political ruling elites?

Whether President Karol Nawrocki will be successful in stripping President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of his Order of the White Eagle remains to be seen. The decision to become effective needs to be countersigned by Poland’s prime minister, and he is a strong political opponent of the current head of state. He may choose not to oblige the president. The Prime Minister has already said that such the proposal on the part of the Polish president to strip Volodymyr Zelenskyy of his order plays into the hands of the Kremlin: a dispute between Warsaw and Kiev is precisely what Moscow is looking forward to. If (in a few days’ time) Poland’s Prime Minister blocks the president’s initiative, then Karol Nawrocki will suffer a dent on his political prestige. Why put forward a proposal that is not going to be pushed through?

The Treasure of the Appalachians

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has published a report that could have a significant impact on the geopolitical dynamics between the US and China. It turns out that the Appalachian Mountains contain 2.3 million tonnes of lithium oxide. To better understand the significance of this information, suffice it to say that such a quantity would meet the US’s demand for this rare metal for around 328 years. To date, the country has operated only one small mine, and more than 50% of its lithium is imported from Chile, Argentina and Australia, whilst the raw material itself is still sent to China for processing. Indeed, China processes 60% of all lithium, which serves as a means of exerting pressure on other countries, including the US. In recent years, Beijing has repeatedly introduced export controls on, among other things, lithium processing technology, the manufacture of LFP cathodes (which contain directly recycled lithium) and high-energy lithium-ion batteries. As a result, Beijing has a real influence on the cost, availability and delivery times of battery components worldwide.

The discovery by the US authorities now appears to mark a breakthrough, but the devil is in the detail. The first problem is the nature of the deposits found. These are so-called pegmatites, i.e. hard rocks, from which the extraction and processing of lithium is much more expensive and difficult than from brine. What matters, however, is that mining would be economically viable. The greatest hopes lie in the Kings Mountain region, where companies such as Albemarle and Piedmont Lithium are already developing their projects. The biggest problem, however, remains time. The construction of mines and the commissioning of lithium extraction and recycling plants is a process that will take at least 10 to 15 years. Consequently, the significance of this discovery remains moderate in the short term.

So where exactly do the real benefits for the US lie? First and foremost, we need to adopt a longer-term approach here in the context of competition with China. This competition will not end in two or three years. A new world order will emerge over the coming decades, and from that timeframe, the discovery of such vast lithium deposits is already significant. This is a milestone that completely transforms the US’s vision of raw material security in relation to lithium and offers real hope of weakening Chinese influence, even in the area of control over battery production. It is also a positive signal for American companies in this sector.

About South Africa, but not about long-haul travel

This is what life is like in what is supposedly Africa’s richest country. The figures speak for themselves:

The economy in perpetual stagnation. According to the OECD, GDP growth has averaged just 0.7 per cent over the last ten years.
Official unemployment stands at 4%!!! This is particularly true for young people (aged 15–34), 58% of whom are affected. They remain outside the labour market. This high unemployment rate contributes to crime. STATS SA reports that 64 murders per day were committed in the first quarter of 2025.
A large proportion of 10-year-olds cannot read with understanding; the same applies to more than 4 million adults. Although three-quarters of the population have access to the internet, most are unable to use it for more complex tasks.
Public debt is not only a financial challenge but also a social one, and is set to exceed 78 per cent of GDP by the end of 2025. The high cost of servicing this debt is limiting the government’s ability to fund social spending and public investment.
The energy shortage is another problem that is hampering economic activity and undermining the quality of life in the country. According to the OECD, power cuts reduced economic growth by 1.5% in 2023, when 289 days of outages were reported, compared with ‘only’ 69 days in 2024. The energy crisis is closely linked to the inefficiency of distribution management by the operator Eskom, which is effectively a monopoly in the field of energy supply in South Africa, where coal still accounts for almost 80 per cent of the mix. Eskom is constantly having to contend with criminals who vandalise distribution stations and steal transformers

Visit Kruger National Park, see Cape Town and Table Mountain, and be back in Europe in no time!

About Mexico, but not about football

Perhaps the United States of Mexico should split up, for, just like the states in America, they have less and less in common. California is the richest, and the Midwest or rust belt states like Pennsylvania are unlikely ever to catch up with this high-tech hub. Just as in Europe hardly anyone can compete with Switzerland, so the enclaves of economic growth in Mexico, such as the Bajío, are more the exception than the rule. Even if the government in the capital introduces reforms, the main obstacle to Mexico’s economic development in the less industrialised states remains the weak rule of law, which manifests itself in institutional inefficiency and a business-unfriendly environment, exacerbated by a lack of public safety. The reforms of the Mexican government, which is constantly running up excessive debt, are based on the fact that it collects tax aggressively and, in return, does not refund VAT, which forces companies participating in the IMMEX programme (Manufacturing, Maquiladora and Export Services Industry – the support programme for industry and exports) to retain capital reserves instead of investing free funds in development.

In social terms, Mexico’s opportunity lies in tackling crime. Given the level of corruption, this is hard to believe. The economic opportunity, on the other hand, lies in the automotive sector, which accounts for 25% of Mexican exports. It is capable of meeting the stricter production requirements, including those relating to wage conditions under the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement). In the past, such regulations have led to greater regional integration. The US’s aggressive stance on tariffs towards the rest of the world gives Mexico a relative advantage by continuing and capitalising on the USMCA trade agreement. In addition to the agreement, Mexican industry has other advantages: it is located close to the US, has low operating costs, is well-equipped and has a skilled workforce. In the Central American region, there is currently no alternative to the products manufactured in Mexico.

The World Cup is unlikely to be of much help to either the government or the Mexican economy. What matters is Mexico’s geopolitical balance between China, which is quietly investing in the country, and the US, the big brother from the north – a situation that applies, incidentally, to all developing countries.

Every gift discarded, every device rejected

Such is the final symbolic act of the American state visit to Beijing (13-15 May 2026). Nothing gifted by the Chinese diplomatic counterparts was allowed on board Air Force One. The measure of mistrust just cannot be higher. The ostentatiousness of the act boggles the mind. The symbolic failure of the gesture cannot be overestimated.

Gifts may be poisonous. No doubt about that. Think about the cell phones that Palestinian leaders purchased, the cell phones that were tampered with by the Israeli secret services, the cell phones that were detonated, killing or maiming the users of those cell phones.

Think about the notorious infected blankets that the European conquerors of North America presented to the Indians. The purpose was to do away with the indigenous peoples in a surreptitious and efficient way. Or, for that matter, think about the alcohol generously sold to the same Indians for the purpose of weakening their health and paralysing their will.

Why, think about China itself, about the opium that was forcibly sold to the Chinese in the 19th century. Two protracted wars were waged over the right of the Europeans to bless the indigenous people with this good!

Think about the Trojan Horse. Legend or no legend, the principle was known and well established in antiquity. Gifts may be dangerous, and oftentimes they are.

Hence an interesting development of the meaning of the German word Gift, whose initial sense overlapped with that of the English word gift, but with time came to denote… poison!

Think about drug dealers who gift or give freely the first few doses of a drug to hook the person on the substance, to make him addictive.

Also the English language has an expression showcasing the troublesomeness of receiving gifts. The expression is to receive a white elephant, i.e. to get a gift that costs a lot to maintain but provides no usefulness (white elephants were considered sacred, hence one could not use them for any kind of work, but one, obviously, needed to feed them).

So, who knows, the Chinese may have concealed spying malware or whatever malicious things in their gifts, down to biological material. The American delegation acted verbatim on the old maxim: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, which in our context would be: Timeo Sinae et dona ferentes, meaning: I fear the Chinese, even those bearing gifts (The Aeneid, Book II).

How should that act on the part of the American delegation be construed? A message of mistrust of the Chinese? Real, palpable fear of being threatened by Chinese technology? How was that gesture perceived by the managers of the Middle Kingdom?

Almost a century back the Chinese were American allies in Washington’s fight against Japan. After the war came a split: Americans backed Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of China’s nationalists, against Mao Zedong, the leader of China’s communists. Chiang Kai-shek lost to the communists and found refuge on the island of Taiwan. Americans recognized Taiwan as ‘China’ and tried to ignore mainland China in the hope of reversing the historical process. Nothing came out of it. Communist China, poor and backward as it was, showed no signs of disintegration, so much so as it was backed by the Soviet Union. But then the fate smiled at Americans: Nikita Khrushchev, the USSR’s leader, fell out with Mao Zedong, which later even culminated in border skirmishes. That was something that Americans had been waiting for. Washington reversed its political course and did its best to win Beijing over to its side against Moscow. Americans withdrew recognition for Taiwan and recognized mainland China as… China proper. Much later came the years of economic cooperation in that American businesses were for a large part outsourced to China. The fall of the Soviet Union – history’s another gift for the United States – seemed to seal the fate of the globe: the United States emerged as the only dominant power, Russia – the Soviet Union’s political heir – was assigned the role of the provider of resources, while the Middle Kingdom was supposed to happily accept the role of the world’s manufacturer.

Things may have stayed that way till this day but for America’s greed and arrogance. Gradual military encirclement of Russia in terms of expanding NATO and engineering unrest in the post-Soviet area (Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan) along with a simultaneous political assault against China as America’s most dangerous political and economic rival pushed Moscow and Beijing in their mutual embraces. Khrushchev’s political mistake has been corrected: Moscow and Beijing have begun to cooperate against the West, against the United States, though openly no such declaration has been issued.

The political sine wave for the United States could be traced something like this: from friendly China (Chiang Kai-shek) to unfriendly China (Mao Zedong), to friendly China again (Prime Minister Zhou Enlai), and again to a rather unfriendly China (Xi Jinping). The discarded gifts and the rejected devices merely illustrate the current state of affairs.

How to rule without ruling

One of the stories about the famous Battle of Cannae, 2 August 2016 BC, during which Hannibal, the Carthaginian chief general, routed the Roman army goes something like this. The famous outflanking and the ensuing encirclement of the Roman legions was not so much the result of the orders that Hannibal gave at the time of the struggle, but his ingenious arrangement of his troops. The Phoenician general placed weaker units at the centre and stronger units at the flanks and told them to simply fight. The Romans pressed against Carthaginians (and their allies) and naturally they began to push back the weaker centre. As the hours would pass the Romans would wedge deeper and deeper into the Carthaginian ranks, forgetting about their flanks. Meanwhile, the stronger Carthaginian flanks stood their ground. Without Hannibal issuing a single order, the Roman legions slowly but surely found themselves in a cauldron. A couple of hours more and the cauldron was closed: the Romans were encircled and killed to the last man. Consider it carefully: the resounding victory did not demand that Hannibal keep constant watch on the battlefield, nor did it demand that he give orders now and again. The particular arrangement of his troops – the weak at the centre, the strong at the flanks – did all the job automatically as it were. Hannibal’s ingenuity consisted in and was confined to the few initial decisions. All the ensuing events were the result of those few initial orders. Orders given at the time when the troops were in the fray would have been ineffective if only because they would not have reached their addressees due to the chaos and noise.

Such ingenious initial decisions are the tools with which the managers of the world rule the world. Who are the managers of the world? Yes, the very rich people, individuals whose fortunes are as large as budgets of many a small or medium-size state. Due to such enormous amounts of money, they obviously can influence the world’s politics, and they can shape the minds of hundreds of millions of human beings. How do they do it? They apply Hannibal’s strategy, which means that they set proper conditions and then let the events take their course. They may rest assured that the course that the events will take will be very much to their liking. An example.

A group of the managers of the world wishes to make people like, desire and – consequently – be influenced by a certain kind of art, type of movies, novels or whatever because these will shape the human minds the way the managers of the world wish them to be shaped. What do the managers of the world do to achieve that goal? Do they propagate the type of art, movies or novels with which they want to reshape the human minds? Nay. That would be suspicious to many, and we know that human psychology is such that it rebels against anything that is forcibly imposed. So, what do the managers of the world do? Say, they want you to admire and desire a work of art that you do not admire or desire. They organize an auction and buy that (kind of) work of art at a very, very high price. The impact it makes is enormous. All of a sudden, rich individuals who would have been otherwise uninterested in that kind of works of art begin to have second thoughts. If a work of art has been purchased for millions, it must be worth it. The nouveau riche businessmen, who rather do not have their own artistic taste, will flock to buy similar works of art. The events will take their due course: people will be oriented towards that particular type of art.

The same is true of novels or movies. Novels and especially movies shape the minds of hundreds of millions of people. If the managers of the world want to control those minds, they need to feed them on books and films that put across the views and ideas, beliefs and ideologies that the managers of the world profess. How to have millions of individuals select the right books and movies? That’s where awards come into play. People just love reading the books and watching the films that have been awarded prizes. The bigger the prize, the more attractive the novel or the motion picture is. The power of prizes is twofold: they not only attract readers and viewers but also guide book and screen writers. All aspiring creators follow the many contests and competitions, and they learn which book or movie – or, to put it better – which content has been awarded. The aspiring authors will necessarily follow suit and create such content that suits the managers of the world or else they will never gain national or international recognition. The right content in turn (especially if repeated and replicated in hundreds of popular books and movies) will shape the minds of the millions.

Just as you cannot hope to make a political career without having somebody’s powerful financial support, so you won’t make a career as a writer or a filmmaker without somebody’s powerful financial support. It’s as simple as that.

The managers of the world are even better than Phoenician General Hannibal: while both Romans and Carthaginians knew who set the military conditions for the victorious battle, present-day men and women have no idea who rules over them. Some (majority or minority?) even tend to think that they are ruled by presidents or prime ministers, and some think that their ballot paper decides all. Yes, it does, but the choice that a voter makes has been conditioned for years by the arrangement of social, cultural, political and economic balances and checks which in turn have been and continue to be set by present-day anonymous Hannibals.

The demographic crisis in China

The birth rate in China has reached a record low. The economy is already feeling the demographic pressure. Experts point out that this could lead to a significant slowdown and even a decline.

For decades, the Middle Kingdom was regarded as the world’s factory. The vast pool of cheap labour, low production costs and ease of transporting goods led to a situation where Western companies massively relocated their production lines to the country. Beijing benefited from this situation as GDP grew rapidly. A symbol of the developing nation was the massive investment in infrastructure, which aroused both admiration and envy in the West. It seemed as though nothing could stop the Chinese dragon.

Meanwhile, although the economy continues to grow at a pace that is unattainable for most Western countries, it faces a serious problem that could significantly weaken it. Birth rates are at an all-time low and, unless the situation changes radically, the demographic crisis will lead to rising labour costs and prices for manufactured goods.

In 2023, China lost its title as the world’s most populous country to India. In 2025, Beijing recorded its fastest annual population decline since the great famine of 1960, which took place during Mao Zedong’s rule. Falling birth rates and rising mortality rates have reduced the country’s population by 3.39 million. In 2023, the birth rate fell to 0.99, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. This means that there must be 2.1 children per woman for the country’s population to remain stable. In practice, this means that one in three women must give birth to at least three children.

According to statistics, the number of people of working age in China (aged 16–59) has been declining over the years. In 2025, people in this group accounted for around 60.6 per cent of the total population, whereas ten years ago this percentage stood at 70 per cent. The demographic situation in China is exacerbated by migration, as more and more citizens are leaving the country. This unfavourable trend, as the analysis shows, could significantly weaken economic growth in the long term and dash Beijing’s hopes of overtaking the US.

One-Child Policy

Many experts point out that the current demographic crisis is, to a certain extent, the result of the ‘one-child policy’ that has been in place for decades. Since 1949, the Chinese population has grown rapidly. This led to food shortages and a housing crisis. For this reason, the government introduced the policy, which remained in force from 1979 to 2016. Children born as the second or subsequent child in the family were denied a hukou, i.e. an official registration that grants access to social services and other benefits. Families with an “excessive” number of children were also persecuted by the state apparatus and fined. As a result of the one-child policy, sons were favoured in most Chinese families. For this reason, women were forced to terminate their pregnancies when it became clear they were carrying a girl. This led to a gender imbalance. Although the ratio has stabilised in recent years at around 104 boys for every 100 girls (by way of comparison: in 2000, there were 118 male births for every 100 female births), there is still a shortage of women of childbearing age in China.

Beijing is now attempting to reverse this unfavourable trend. In 2025, China’s first national childcare subsidy scheme came into force. Every family receives 3,600 yuan, or approximately 503 US dollars, per year from the state for each child aged up to three. A decision was also made to raise the retirement age. However, it remains to be seen what the results of these changes will be. Another decision designed to encourage the Chinese to start a family was a change in the law allowing them to marry anywhere in the country rather than being restricted to their place of residence. The initial results appear promising: in the third quarter of 2025, the number of marriages rose by 22.5 per cent. From 1 January 2026, Beijing has also removed contraceptive pills from the list of tax-exempt goods and services. The government is also calling for a reduction in the number of ‘medically unnecessary’ abortions. It should be noted, however, that after many years of practising forced abortions, Chinese society is currently the most tolerant in the world when it comes to this procedure.

One of the most significant factors driving this demographic decline, which is affecting the economy, is the loss of productivity. According to recent forecasts, the proportion of the Chinese population aged between 16 and 64 is set to fall from 69.33 per cent in 2024 to 59.14 per cent in 2050. Unless this can be offset by technological innovation, stagnation in the Chinese economy appears inevitable.

Another negative factor is the weakening of domestic demand. Young people and middle-aged people are the two groups with the highest levels of consumption. The smaller their numbers, the lower domestic demand. The decline in the birth rate leads to a situation described as ‘still poor and already old’. In this scenario, China could fall into a ‘middle-income trap’, which refers to a situation where a country that has reached a middle income (measured by GDP per capita) is unable to effectively transform and modernise its economy (for example, due to a lack of innovation, stagnant productivity or institutional rigidity), leading to long-term economic stagnation and making it impossible to advance unhindered into the ranks of high-income countries. According to the World Bank, China’s gross per capita income in 2023 stood at US$13,390, placing China among the group of middle-income countries. If the demographic crisis persists, it will be difficult for China to rise to the ranks of the wealthiest nations.

Spirit is running low

The fuel shortage is becoming increasingly serious. Lufthansa has already cancelled 20,000 flights. Air France has increased prices for economy class tickets by 50 euros per return journey, and the Dutch airline KLM has suspended more than 160 flights. At the same time, the International Energy Agency has announced that Europe will only have enough aircraft fuel reserves to last six weeks. However, the problem is already affecting industries across the globe. All major airlines are currently making massive cuts, particularly Turkish Airlines, which has cancelled nearly 20 routes. There are already companies that simply haven’t been able to cope with the situation. One such company is the US carrier Spirit Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy a few days ago. Although the name of this carrier may mean little to many readers, it is worth looking at the figures. Last year, the company operated more than 300,000 flights, carried 30 million passengers and held a 3.5% market share among US airlines. It is therefore not a small airline, but a national giant with more than 17,000 employees.

If we break down the cost of a typical passenger flight into its main categories, we can see that airlines are heavily dependent on the price of aviation fuel. On average, this accounts for 30% of the total cost.

And that is why Europe finds itself in a particularly difficult situation. This is because up to 70% of the crude oil that is subsequently processed into Jet A-1 aviation fuel comes from the Gulf region. This primarily includes Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. This makes the situation very dangerous, as any further blockade of the Strait of Hormuz will exacerbate these problems on a daily basis. Furthermore, it should be remembered that the availability of aviation fuel affects not only passenger traffic but also freight transport, which in practice is the first to feel the impact of disruptions. This is because, unlike passenger transport, where part of the costs can be passed on to customers gradually, any change in fuel prices for cargo is almost immediately reflected in the freight rates for every kilogram of cargo.

So here’s a handy tip: if you’re planning to fly on holiday, book a package with a price guarantee, as travel agencies such as TUI or DERTOUR are entitled to charge us a so-called fuel surcharge. These are additional costs, in accordance with the rules, which they can impose on the customer 20 days before departure if travel costs rise significantly.