The respite was short-lived: the drop in carbon emissions did not last long. China is revving up old polluting industries in a bid to kick-start the economic recovery. Air quality is deteriorating again. After “controlling for weather patterns, all pollutants exceeded last year’s levels after lockdowns lifted”.
There was some good news yesterday: the US administration approved the largest solar power project to date – a $1bn solar plus battery storage project in Nevada. The number of daily new cases for Covid 19 is also trending down in the US, albeit slowly. The total for active cases has climbed to a new high of 1.127m.
Regardless, the US stock market has continued its long recovery from the low of March 23rd. Ironically, Facebook and Amazon surged to all-time highs (up 6.0% and 2.0% yesterday).
Mark Zuckerberg unveiled ‘Facebook shops’ on Tuesday, positioned as a rival to Amazon and offering “a new ecommerce feature”. The spectre of one established retailer (Amazon) being challenged by an upstart (Facebook) would ordinarily have triggered a share price decline for the incumbent, but not in this case.
But the ascendency of US tech and Trump’s attacks on Huawei are unlikely to stymie China’s ambitions. Facial recognition, cloud computing, auto entertainment, fintech, EVs, ed-tech, short-video platforms, gaming and sports apps are just some of the areas where China has forged ahead during the Covid 19 ‘crisis’.
Summary
• US strength in tech a major advantage
• But China is holding its ground
• China pushes ahead, undeterred
