As we enter into the last month of 2023, we are assessing some of the defining trends of this year which will undoubtedly shape 2024 as well. We begin with the status of the Chinese economy and its ongoing woes with its property sector which is leading to civil unrest. Next, we take another look at the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the uncertainty surrounding a future resolution. Then, we tackle one of tech’s hottest topics; the firing and subsequent return of Sam Altman at OpenAI and what it says about the future of AI. Finally, we’ve selected a few articles from the Economist’s The World Ahead 2024 edition.

China Continues to Suffer from Property Sector

Global investors shun Chinese stocks despite better data

Echo Wong, Nikkei Asia

China’s property crisis is stirring protests across the country

Kevin Slaten & Ming-tse Hung, Nikkei Asia

China Scrambles to Contain a Looming Shadow-Bank Meltdown

Rebecca Feng & Weilun Soon, The Wall Street Journal

Investors are still wary of the Chinese market despite improving economic data, pointing to anti-free market government policies and the property market crisis as reasons to be defensive. Consumer prices have risen, easing fears of deflation, and consumption and travel levels during China’s holidays led to a more encouraging outlook. Many investors, however, are waiting to see clear steps from Beijing to address the property market’s issues, a market that makes up over a quarter of the economy. For decades, Beijing invested heavily in property and infrastructure to bring revenue to local governments, which incentivized property firms to overborrow and encouraged citizens to put their savings into the sector. In recent months, however, investment, property sales, and home prices in most cities have fallen, while some of the country’s most prominent developers have defaulted on their debts. The property market has forward and backward linkages throughout the economy, making it a particularly vital sector. This downturn has sparked protests as suppliers, contractors, and construction workers have gone unpaid for months and unfinished projects have been left to rust. Around 50-70 demonstrations are occurring monthly and often involve campaigns in front of the offices of construction firms or local governments. The ruling Chinese Communist Party has long suppressed protest movements, seeing them as a threat to the party’s authority. Beijing will have to take serious steps to address the oncoming crisis to improve investor confidence and, more importantly, the confidence of the citizens it rules.

No Hopeful End in Sight for Israel-Palestine

Any swords into ploughshares? The challenge of the current conflict

Paul Salem, Middle East Institute

What happens to Gaza after the war?

The Economist

A midnight trip into northern Gaza reveals a shattered warscape

Steve Hendrix, The Washington Post

Northern Gaza is in ruins. Neighborhoods lie in rubble with thousands of bodies buried beneath. Hundreds of thousands have fled south, away from the carnage of the Israeli onslaught to root out Hamas. Israel’s declared aim is to destroy Hamas after the terrorist group killed over 1,000 Israelis in the October 10th attacks, but that conflicts with the goal of getting Hamas to return over 200 hostages. Destroying Hamas, if possible, would likely require a full reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, something that Israel would likely have difficulty achieving on both the military and political fronts. Even if the two parties – Israel and Hamas – are able to come to a broad prisoner-exchange agreement and a truce, it would not solve any of the underlying problems nor would it move the region closer to peace. Many countries, including the United States, talk about the need for a two-state solution. However, Hamas’ attack only pushed Israel’s extremist government further to the right, and Hamas itself has maximalist goals to eradicate Israel.

Even worse, there seems to be no plan for post-war Gaza. It will need vast amounts of external help to rebuild itself, but not one stakeholder wants to take responsibility. The United States has hoped that Arab countries would contribute troops to a post-war peacekeeping operation, something that many Arab countries have fiercely opposed – simply, they don’t want to police their fellow Arabs in occupied Gaza. The Palestinian Authority (PA), for its part, requires concrete, significant developments towards a two-state solution in order to once more take control of Gaza. Additionally, the PA has long been seen as stagnant and corrupt with little support from Palestinians themselves. It will take a radical reorientation towards peace from all stakeholders – Israel, Palestinians, the Arab world, and the United States – to provide any momentum away from a spiraling descent into greater violence.

The Firing of Sam Altman and the AI Dilemma

The Doomed Mission Behind Sam Altman’s Shock Ouster From OpenAI

Max Chafkin & Rachel Metz, Bloomberg

The Sam Altman drama points to a deeper split in the tech world

The Economist

The firing of Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, laid bare a conflict within the tech world over the development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The conflict is the result of two competing philosophical groups within the space: the doomers and boomers. The doomers regard AI much more skeptically and fear that AI could cause serious, if not extinction-level, harm to humanity. This group supports caution and increased regulation and oversight of AI to ensure the worst-case scenarios, such as the use of AI by terrorists to develop a weapon, do not come to pass. The boomers, on the other hand, view the risks of AI as manageable and seek to increase the speed of development under the assumption that the development of AI tools will be a boon for human development.

Sam Altman has consistently toed the line between the two groups, yet, concerns over his side projects and new tools within ChatGPT itself prompted OpenAI’s board of directors to fire him, as the board increasingly viewed Altman’s actions with concern. The move sparked such an intense backlash that the board ultimately rescinded the move as a mutiny brewed within the company and its main supporter, Microsoft, eyed an Altman startup to pick up where he left off in ChatGPT. While those tensions have been exposed, they remain unresolved, as governments play catch up in regulating the AI space, with some moves by the British and American governments heading increasingly in that direction.

The Economist’s World Ahead

Don’t count on a soft landing for the world economy

Henry Curr, The Economist

2024 is the biggest election year in history

The Economist

The world must try to break a vicious cycle of insecurity

Patrick Foulis, The Economist



Tom Standage’s ten trends to watch in 2024

Tom Standage, The Economist

The Economist looks at the world ahead in 2024 and analyzes potential trends for the year to come. Three major issues covered by the magazine are the economy, elections, and global security. On economics, the question remains as to whether the world will truly see a “soft landing,” as has seemed to be the case in 2023, or if recession is imminent in 2024. While America appears to have successfully batted down inflation and avoided a recession (for the time being), the Eurozone and much of the rest of the world may ultimately succumb to one as interest rates remain higher for longer to combat a relatively hot labor force and more expensive hydrocarbons. Trends such as fiscal deficits, which have helped propel America forward, and trade wars, may be set to exacerbate if Donald Trump is reelected in the US next year.

Beyond economics, elections are a second theme, with as many as 76 countries and over 4 billion people set to vote in 2024. Yet, voting does not necessarily equate to democracy. Some countries included in the assessment, like Russia, are considered authoritarian within the Economist’s metrics. Others, such as the US and India, are considered flawed democracies, though elections are still viewed as free and fair. Of the 76 countries, 43 are considered free and fair, with 27 of the EU states considered full democracies. Third and finally, security is set to be a major challenge in 2024. With wars ongoing in Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas, the world stage is set for growing multipolar disorder. That trend is further amplified by a range of countries that appear to have fallen outside the reach of global institutions, such as those in the Sahel and the Caucus Mountains. It remains to be seen whether the post-1945 system of global governance is headed for collapse – especially as Russia, China, and Iran set their eyes on subverting the system altogether – with the presidential election in the US expected to be a major factor in the global order that is to come.