China’s New Leaders Are No Threat to President Xi

China’s New Leaders Are No Threat to President Xi

China’s new roster of top leaders have shuffled into their places on the red carpet for their curtain call, the procession leaving no question as to who is in charge. President Xi Jinping has been reappointed to head the Communist Party, with no one waiting in the wings as his nominated heir.

What’s more, not one of the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s cabinet, is under the age of 60, meaning none of them is likely to succeed Xi when and if he stands down at the end of his second term in 2022.

It’s a highly unusual move, unprecedented in recent years, leaving Xi to continue his push for reform and fight against corruption unquestioned. Critics worry that Xi’s “rule” has evolved into a dictatorship, the president eliminating rivals who question his positions and squelching stories about his family’s amassed wealth.

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Fukushima Operator TEPCO Approved to Re-Start World’s Largest Nuclear Plant

Fukushima Operator TEPCO Approved to Re-Start World’s Largest Nuclear Plant

The word “nuclear” has a lot more power in Japan than it does elsewhere.

Tokyo Electric Power, or TEPCO as it is better known, has just won approval to re-start two reactors at the world’s largest nuclear power plant. Its shares got a jolt of 3% at that announcement.

Nuclear-linked stocks will be worth watching as the company pushes on with that attempt. TEPCO is, after all, the company that responded so badly to the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant in 2011.

The only country to have been hit by an atom bomb nevertheless embraced the technology behind nuclear power. Around one-fifth of all electricity is intended to be produced that way.

Then came the disaster at Fukushima. The March 2011 earthquake unleashed a tidal wave that ultimately killed 15,894 people, causing ¥21.5 trillion ($191 billion) in damage. Only the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine was worse.

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