China

For Beijing, the tens of thousands of protestors choking the centre of Hong Kong are such a dangerous outrage that mainland media cannot report on them. The real outrage is this: China agreed to hold free elections in 2017, but now a Beijing-appointed committee will determine whether candidates for chief executive can be relied on to toe Beijing’s line. On 6 September, a Chinese embassy official wrote to the Times that in 2017 there would be a one-man one-vote election in Hong Kong. He omitted to mention that Beijing has selected the committee that will approve the candidates.

Is international conflict really just a fight over oil? It sometimes seems that way. In Syria and Iraq, the militants of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ sell captured oil while battling to establish a puritanical Sunni theo-cracy. From Central Asia to Ukraine, Russia is contesting attempts (backed by the US) to minimise Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ allows the US to threaten the choke points through which most of China’s oil imports must pass. Conspiracy-mongering petrodeterminists who try to reduce world politics to nothing but a clash for oil are too crude (pun intended). No shadowy cabal of oil company executives pulls the strings of world politics.

In an era of Russian revanchism, the cracks in the US German relations are particularly concerning. Angela Merkel’s decision to announce the expulsion of the CIA’s Berlin station chief over the US’s recruitment of a German intelligence officer shows just how bad things have got. It is not just German elite opinion that is turning against the US. The Financial Times today reports that polling shows that Germans would prefer to increase ties with China than the US. Now, given that Beijing is an authoritarian government that would have no qualms about spying on anyone, this is not an entirely rational response. But it does reveal the poor state of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Look: Alex Salmond's indulgent appraisal of Vladimir Putin's record was foolish and naive and all too revealing but let's not lose the heid. Scotland, even an independent Scotland, is not going to be run by  McKGB and Mr Salmond's fondness for wealthy businessmen is not really comparable to the kleptocracy that's run Russia this century. Still, it is a news story and a legitimate one. Tinfoil Nationalists were very upset yesterday. Salmond was being "smeared" by, er, being quoted. GQ, clearly part of the pan-Unionist BritNat propaganda media machine, had "leaked" excerpts of their interview with the First Minister to undermine, eclipse or otherwise divert attention from a speech Mr Salmond was giving in Belgium. Because, obviously.

Dividends paid by listed companies around the world passed $1 trillion for the first time last year, we learn from a report by Henderson Global Investors. The total is 43 per cent higher than it was in 2009, and a breakdown shows that US companies account for about a third of all dividends paid, while European companies have been relatively poor providers of investment income. The UK, representing about a tenth of the global total, offered 39 per cent dividend growth over the period. So what, you might ask: why is a bigger bundle of global dividends a good thing? In Britain, the whole notion of dividend income for those wealthy enough to hold shares has had a bum rap during the downturn.

I am a banana. In Singapore, where I used to live, this needs no explanation — it means I’m yellow on the outside but white on the inside, someone who looks ethnically Chinese but whose way of thinking is ‘western’. There are bananas all over Asia, and I daresay the world. We are better versed in Shakespeare than Confucius, our Mandarin is appalling, and we often have pretentious Anglo or American accents. Then there are people who are ‘ching-chong’, a reference to anyone who enjoys the kitschy bling of stereotypically Chinese things, sans irony — they like paving their entire garden with cement, for example, or driving a huge Mercedes, or placing two garish stone lions on either side of a wrought-iron gate.