Four years ago, Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), made a powerful case for phasing out paper money.

COVID-19 hit the Chinese economy hard in the first quarter of 2020, causing real gross domestic product (GDP) to contract by 6.8 percent year on year. But since the city of Wuhan emerged from lockdown in early April, the economy has gradually returned to normal, and grew by 3.2 percent in the second quarter. According to the consensus view, China’s current potential GDP growth rate is six percent.

Areas that eased their initial COVID-19 lockdowns and now have surging infection rates are a testament to all that has gone wrong in the pandemic. The lesson from day one still holds: until the virus is defeated, there can be no return to normal.The future of the world economy is becoming clearer. At the outset of the pandemic, there were lively disagreements over whether the lockdown and other measures were warranted, or whether the economic costs were too high.

As the world struggles to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, which first emerged in China, Chinese President Xi Jinping is pursuing his quest for regional dominance more aggressively than ever. From the Himalayas to Hong Kong and Tibet to the South and East China Seas, Xi seems to be picking up where Mao Zedong left off, with little fear of international retribution.The parallels between Xi and the despots of the past are obvious.

Until recently, China was unmistakably trying to be a hegemon in the image of the United States (US), increasingly complementing its growing hard power with soft power. But China seems to have missed its opportunity to build a serious rival to, or even supplant, the existing world economic order fashioned by the US following World War II.All the elements of success seemed to be falling into place for China.

The oft-repeated idea that COVID-19 is “the great equalizer” is a myth. There is no equality of suffering or equality of sacrifice during a pandemic that is disproportionately hurting the poorest and most vulnerable.And while the health emergency has disproportionately harmed the elderly poor, the unprecedented education crisis caused by the pandemic is now hurting the poorest children hardest and creating a generation that will lose out on learning.

The United Kingdom’s (UK) decision to ban Huawei from its 5G networks has dealt a painful blow to China. Until recently, China was still counting on the UK to stick to its earlier decision to allow the Chinese telecom giant to supply non-core equipment for the country’s 5G networks.But two recent developments made such a decision untenable. The first was the United States’ (US) escalation of its war on Huawei.

Every day, the COVID-19 pandemic costs the world thousands more lives and billions more dollars. The most efficient way to bring this crisis to an end – possibly as early as next year – is with a safe and effective vaccine, manufactured in large quantities and distributed globally.

The global toll of the COVID-19 pandemic is enormous: more than a half-million lives lost, hundreds of millions out of work, and trillions of dollars of wealth destroyed. And the disease has by no means run its course; hundreds of thousands more could well die from it.Not surprisingly, there is tremendous interest in the development of a vaccine, with more than a hundred efforts under way around the world.

Some of the Chinese government’s recent policies seem to make little practical sense, with its decision to impose a national-security law on Hong Kong being a prime example.