COVER STORY This issue: Out of the crucible: an inclusive, sustainable economy. The year is 2023. The COVID-19 pandemic has come to an end, and the global economy is on the path of recovery. How did we get there? How did the economy and society evolve to overcome the greatest crisis of our age? Let’s begin in the summer of 2020, when the unabated spread of disease was heralding an increasingly dire outlook for economies and societies. The pandemic had exposed critical vulnerabilities around the world-underpaid essential workers, an unregulated financial sector and major corporations neglecting investment…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

Despite strong recovery, China faces a world of trouble. You might think 2020 had been a pretty good year for China, at least when compared with the West. Through COVID-19 began its global march there, China’s recovery has been remarkable. The government’s unprecedented capacity for surveillance, large-scale testing, contact tracing and quarantine helped contain the outbreak inside China within two months. That success allowed for the restart of supply chains and enabled a state investment-led rebound. China could be the world’s only large economy to grow this year. Life is nearly back to normal…

We can still save democracy from conspiracies. A year ago, I spoke out publicly for the first time in my own voice because I feared that our pluralistic democracies were at risk of being destroyed by a flood of hate, lies and conspiracies spewed by demagogues and spread by social media. Since then, this toxic brew has exploded into the open and -with just weeks until the election-these conspiracies threaten to kill democracy as we know it…