The horse has bolted

China, India, Malaysia, Israel, Iran, and the US.

Four horses, Xu Beihong, 1943, ink on paper, private collection.

Hello,

Here are the five things you need to know today:

• CHINA. Xi's economy is leading the world, and stuck in a rut.

• INDIA. Delhi and friends play catch-up, but from a distance.

• MALAYSIA. Sultan Ibrahim puts the government on notice.

• ISRAEL. IRAN. On the eve of talks, the hotheads start shouting.

• UNITED STATES. Washington’s sewer crisis imitates life.

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CHINA. Fire on some cylinders

Xi's economy is leading the world, and stuck in a rut.

Kung fu robots took centre stage Monday in Beijing’s annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, China's most-watched television program. Alibaba released a new agentic AI model, which claimed to beat OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 and Anthropic’s Opus 4.5.

INTELLIGENCE. Xi Jinping will hope 2026’s festival, ushering in the year of the Fire Horse, will unleash the consumer animal spirits lacking since a brief post-Covid rebound. China clocked in growth of 5% last year, and plans for 4.5% this year, but much of this will rely on an export binge that is leading to as many imbalances as China’s previous fixed-asset-driven growth model. Amid falling birthrates and “involution”, Xi will hope new technology can take the load.

FOR BUSINESS. As China hits consecutive economic limits on demographics, infrastructure, consumption, and now exports, technology may produce the next leg. Helpfully, China has now overtaken the US in many fields, though technological leadership could still hit up against market realities. Dancing robots are impressive, but as Japan, the world’s previous technological star, discovered over several lost decades, invention is not the mother of necessity.

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INDIA. Impact craters

Delhi and friends play catch-up, but from a distance.

Delhi opened the 2026 edition of the AI Impact Summit Monday to long queues and organisation chaos. Emmanuel Macron, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Sundar Pichai were listed among the speakers scheduled to join Narendra Modi.

INTELLIGENCE. Previous summits, in Bletchley Park, Seoul and Paris, have been