2023
April
13
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

April 13, 2023
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As a business reporter in Beijing, I met plenty of entrepreneurs who had a good story to tell. But the only one who really lit up a room was Jack Ma.

Jack, as everyone calls him, is a former English teacher who created Alibaba, an e-commerce site that became one of the world’s largest marketplaces. In 2012, I went to Hangzhou to see Jack give a talk to hundreds of suppliers and traders.

To them, Jack was an idol who had graduated from an “average university,” as he put it, and through hard work made his mark on China and the world. He poked fun at himself and at China’s politicians, but didn’t overstep. At least, not at that time. Two years later, Alibaba went public in New York in what was then the largest ever initial public offering.

The fall came in 2020. Just days before Alibaba was to list a new finance arm, regulators blocked the initial public offering. The company was later hit with a $2.8 billion antitrust fine. And Jack abruptly dropped out of sight. He became the latest high-profile entrepreneur to fall out of favor with Beijing’s rulers as part of a tightening of political control on the economy.

Now Jack is back. He’s been spotted in China and around the world, pursuing his personal interest in sustainable fishing and agriculture. He no longer runs Alibaba. But his return to China has been taken by some as a sign that Xi Jinping’s administration may be rethinking how it treats its entrepreneurs as it tries to build a more advanced economy.

As Eswar Prasad, a China specialist at Cornell University, told the Wall Street Journal, “Beijing seems eager to show that prominent entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, once hailed as visionaries and then vilified by the government, are now welcome back in China.”


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Today's stories

And why we wrote them

Photo Courtesy of Cassie Fambro/Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
Kyra Porter, an eighth grade math teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, asks questions that prompt discussion, March 15, 2023. One way her district is using federal pandemic funds is on math support and instruction.

U.S. schools have billions in federal pandemic funding to spend. But how much are they putting toward specific academic needs, such as boosting math skills?

Patterns

Tracing global connections

China could give Russia new weapons or persuade the Kremlin to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. Beijing’s actions will reflect its key goal – to ensure Russia does not lose and thus hand victory to the West.

With electric vehicles accounting for only about 6% of current new car sales in the United States, a Biden target of about two-thirds by 2032 may sound unrealistic. But experts don’t see it as an impossible reach.

Commentary

Hannah Mattix/The Clarion-Ledger/ AP
Mayor Chokwe Lumumba speaks during a city council meeting at City Hall in Jackson, Mississippi, on April 10, 2023.

In the conversation about racial justice, the need for self-determination – the freedom of Black Americans to shape their own destinies – is sometimes overshadowed. But news in Tennessee and Mississippi has brought it to the fore.   

Podcast

‘The world is watching’: French protests showcase collective will

Most people cherish stability. Many are willing to endure disruption to affect change. In this week’s podcast, our Paris-based writer takes the measure of current French protests and puts this robust season of clashes in context. 

Voices From the Street

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Points of Progress

What's going right

Our progress roundup this week is an appreciation of extremes. Plots of growing food are surrounded by skyscrapers, Albania keeps a river wild, and populations of a lynx unique to Spain and Portugal are rebounding.


The Monitor's View

The persistence of mass shootings in the United States has forced many towns and cities to be prepared to react when one occurs. Yet a new study provides an alternative response, one that is proactive. Based on data from 3,253 secondary schools across California between 2001 to 2019, a report by the University of California, Los Angeles found “significant and substantial” reductions in every category of violence – from verbal abuse to confrontations involving weapons.

Overall, said Ron Avi-Astor, a social welfare professor and co-author of the study, “on a day-to-day basis for most students, American schools are safer than they’ve been for many decades.”

The California study notes a correlation between empathy and safety – a “norm shift,” as the authors call it, reflecting a “massive social investment” in measures ranging from emergency preparedness to mental health care. For instance, the study found that 89% of students surveyed felt “there is a teacher or adult who truly cares about me,” or “who tells me when I do a good job,” or “who notices when I’m not there.” Other questions measured high levels of “belongingness” (79%) and being able to “make a difference” (76%).

At the same time, it found a 70% reduction in reports of guns carried onto school grounds and a 59% reduction in threats involving weapons. Those declines in victimization were largest among Black and Latino students.

The study, which found consistent reductions in data tracking school safety nationwide, comes at a time when society more broadly is rethinking violence prevention. Mayors aren’t waiting for national gun reforms. Instead they are trying and sharing a wide range of ideas that draw their communities together with empathy, compassion, and inclusivity.

A Politico survey of 50 mayors found that 70% want more social workers to handle more policing calls involving nonviolent or mental health incidents. More than half said that if given new funding to prevent violence, they would build more affordable housing and better public parks. That regard for quality of life runs in another direction, too. Nearly all said reducing violence also requires better caring for police officers and their families.

The important lesson in the California study may be that empathy begets empathy. That point has special resonance for Jose Sanchez, a high school civics teacher in Monterey Park, California. Two days after a shooter killed 11 people and wounded nine others in his community in January, he sat in his classroom helping his students grapple with the tragedy.

As he wrapped up a class, Mr. Sanchez told Politico last week, “a student patted me on the shoulder and asked if I was OK. It’s not that often that my students ask me how I’m doing.” They knew that two days later he was due to be sworn in as mayor. That caring and compassion can serve as a form of armor against violence.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Knowing our inherent goodness and completeness as God’s children brings healing to our lives.


Viewfinder

Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters
A boy and a tourist play with water as they celebrate during the Songkran holiday, which marks the Thai New Year, in Bangkok, Thailand, on Thursday.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte and Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Please come back tomorrow, when we’ll look at reverberations from the leak of classified U.S. intelligence documents.

More issues

2023
April
13
Thursday

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