2025-09-08
21 分钟The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Jason Palmer.
And I'm Rosie Blore.
Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
China's citizens are serious savers, and that's a problem when it comes to consumption.
One way around that would be reforming the famously stingy pension system.
It would be good stimulus and good social policy if the government dared to do it.
And I really hope that I sound completely normal to you right now, and not like Donald Duck,
because apparently a lot of you listen to podcasts at double speed.
Our correspondent asks if I'm being precious by minding about this, and how your listening experience might suffer.
But first, When France's president Emmanuel Macron dissolved the country's parliament in June of last year,
it was entirely unexpected, a gamble.
He had hoped to recoup the political majority he'd lost in 2022.
But his minority got even more minor.
As support has shifted both to the left and to the hard right, getting anything through parliament has proved impossible.
Even existential for one prime minister after another.
And voters are tired of the chaos.
As a protest vote builds in parliament, actual protests are planned for the streets.
France looks almost certain to lose another government this evening.