>Western (US / EU) demand is what drives China's growth.
China's exports are not as much of an influence on it's GDP as you would think. The difference between China and the US is less than 10% of GDP.
China's middle class has grown very wealthy which has undoubtedly reduced China's reliance on exports and stabilized its economy against outside interference.
I agree in priciple but it's only by having money through success that we're able to enjoy those more meaningful aspects of life.
The only group of people that have the luxury of prioritizing those more meaningful things are those with enough assets that they can do whatever they want. Everyone else has to try to keep up.
Because people admire their courage in being so transparent about failing publicly. That's undoubtedly helped in building their audience over the last decade not because they want to see SpaceX fail, far from it but because it reminds us that they too are only human and failing is normal no matter how much others try to hide or gloss over their failures.
Urban tree planting is great but there must be a better way of planting trees along pavements.
Everywhere they have been planted the roots have torn up the pavements sometimes causing them to mound over the roots which looks really unsightly and is often a trip hazard. Also on some pavements the trees cause bottlenecks because its too narrow for two people to pass eachother.
Is this not just the world we live in? Personally I agree with you but then I also consider how there are a handful of billionaires with more wealth than a huge portion of the global population and big pharma/ insurance companies charge so much that people are dying because they can't afford medication like Insulin.
If that's the way the world is then why should anyone be expected to behave any differently? It's not right to vilify these people while we give a free pass to everyone else doing equally unethical things.
The issue with that approach though is how do you effectively prevent reinfection of the region when all counter measures are suspended? Another carrier could reinfect the region again and all that previous work came to nothing.
The french state holds a 15% stake in Renault according to Wikipedia so I doubt it's any coincidence.
The government likely wants to give local manufacturers an advantage even if it means not playing fair. I don't know if it's right but I understand why they do it (jobs & tax revenue).