The Washington Post comments, "A Chinese newspaper on Monday lashed out at Australia, saying the country exists 'at the fringes of civilization' and even getting in a jab about its infamous past as a British penal colony. The op-ed, which ran in the Global Times, a state-linked newspaper, came after an Australian swimmer, Mack Horton, referred to a Chinese competitor, Sun Yang, as a 'drug cheat' before the men's 400-meter freestyle final — and Chinese netizens freaked....Sun, in turn, accused Horton of trying to spook him. 'On the Olympics' competition stage, every athlete deserves to be respected and there's no need to use these cheap tricks to affect each other,' the Chinese swimmer said, according to state media reports....Over the weekend, Horton's social media accounts were flooded with comments and abuse. By Monday, the Horton-Sun feud was one of the Chinese web's most-discussed topics."
The New York Times reports: "China's efforts to expand its nuclear power sector suffered a backlash in one eastern seaboard city over the weekend, as thousands of residents took to the streets to oppose any decision to build a reprocessing plant in the area for spent nuclear fuel. The government of Lianyungang, a city in Jiangsu Province, tried to calm residents on Sunday, a day after thousands of people defied police warnings and gathered near the city center, chanting slogans, according to Chinese news reports and photographs of the protests shared online....Residents used WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging service, to share video footage showing downtown Lianyungang at night crowded with hundreds of people, many of them middle-aged, walking down a broad street in waves and chanting loudly, 'Oppose nuclear waste, defend our home.' The city government responded with the mix of reassurances and warnings that Chinese officials often use in the face of protests over pollution and environmental concerns."
Bloomberg View comments, "For a long time, there was a recurring stereotype about China's economy: If growth started to slow significantly, the argument went, prudent technocrats in Beijing could always prop it up with fiscal stimulus and keep the country's financial institutions afloat....Yet now reality is intervening harshly. China's public finances are in worse shape than is commonly understood. And as debt levels rise and the economy remains sluggish, the government's ability to boost growth looks increasingly precarious....There are a number of steps Beijing could take to address this mess. Deleveraging should be first. Restrictions on what local governments can borrow simply encourage new and creative ways to hide their debt, which actually makes them more difficult to rein in. More effective -- if less politically appealing -- would be allowing zombie firms to collapse, slowing the rate of investment and accepting slower GDP growth. Instead, Beijing seems to be praying to the Keynesian multiplier, hoping that with yet more stimulus it can grow its way out of its problems, much as it did a decade ago....The government must accept that history is unlikely to repeat itself."