🌍 Former Taiwanese President to visit China

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🗺️ AROUND THE WORLD

1. 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: Voters went to the polls for snap legislative elections on Sunday, voting overwhelmingly for the ruling Amanat party. President Tokayev brought the elections forward as part of a series of governance reforms he says will usher in a “new Kazakhstan”.

2. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Pro-UK Unionists in Northern Ireland plan to vote against the Windsor Agreement this week. It’ll still likely pass, but PM Sunak had sought Unionist backing to cement the deal’s credibility and help resolve long-running issues in Northern Ireland.

3. 🇮🇳 India: Authorities have cut internet to more than 27 million people for three straight days as a manhunt for a Sikh separatist leader continues. Amritpal Singh seeks to establish an independent country in India’s Punjab state, where 58% of people are Sikh.

4. 🇭🇹 Haiti: Prime Minister Henry plans to activate the entire Haitian military in his government’s ongoing battle against criminal gangs in Port Au-Prince. The country currently has only 2,000 active duty soldiers.

5. 🇸🇩 Sudan: The ruling junta will begin the transition to a civilian government starting on 11 April. The junta derailed Sudan’s initial transition to democracy in 2021 when it toppled a Western-backed government.

🇹🇼 TAIWAN | POLITICS

Former President of Taiwan announces historic visit to China

Briefly: Former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou will visit China next week. He’ll be the first current or former Taiwanese leader to visit the mainland since his party lost the Chinese Civil War and retreated to found modern Taiwan in 1949.

A member of Taiwan’s more Beijing-friendly party (the Kuomintang or KMT), Ma oversaw a warming of ties with China during his 2008-16 rule. This culminated in an historic summit with Chinese President Xi in Singapore in 2015.

But Ma’s perceived closeness to Beijing also spooked many Taiwanese people, triggering the massive ‘sunflower movement’ protests of 2014. His KMT party went on to lose the next two elections to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which embraces a more Taiwanese identity for the island and its people.

Intrigue’s take: Taiwan exists (and thrives) in a fragile grey area:

• It functions like an independent country, but won’t formally declare independence.

• And the US functions like Taiwan’s ally, but won’t formally promise to defend it.

This ambiguity leaves China with just enough hope that ‘reunification’ negotiations with Taiwan are still worthwhile; and just enough fear that an attempted invasion of Taiwan would meet a US response.

And that leaves Taiwan’s two main parties essentially (if unwittingly) performing a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine for China: we’ll see the ‘good cop’ (Ma) visit China next week, while the ‘bad cop’ (President Tsai) will visit the US next month. As messy as it seems, these mixed signals help preserve Taiwan’s ‘grey area’ existence.

For China’s part, it responds to ‘good cop, bad cop’ with ‘carrots and sticks’. If the Beijing-friendly KMT wins January’s elections, China will be dusting off the carrots. If the DPP retains power, we can expect more sticks. 

Also worth noting:

• Taiwan’s 1947 constitution still claims all of China as its own, though in practice Taiwan’s leaders abandoned this claim as Taiwan democratised.

• 70-80% of the Taiwanese people consider themselves ‘Taiwanese’, a big jump from a decade ago when half still said they were ‘Chinese’.

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Today’s briefing is sponsored by Refind

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🇨🇭 SWITZERLAND | FINANCE

Credit Suisse finally goes under

Briefly: The Swiss government has brokered a deal for UBS to buy its smaller ailing rival, Credit Suisse. The 166 year old lender, Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, had lost 88% of its value in a year.

Some context: Trouble at Credit Suisse had been brewing for years, after a series of scandals, bad decisions and internal turmoil steadily eroded investor trust. Ultimately, it was a decision by the Saudi National Bank (Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder) not to offer further assistance that sealed the bank’s fate.

Swimming naked: One of Warren Buffett’s classic quotes is that “only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked.” And the world has long known Credit Suisse was skinny dipping. It somehow loaned (and lost) billions in some of the biggest recent financial scandals, including:

• Greensill Capital, founded by a former Australian watermelon farmer

• Archegos, run by an enigmatic billionaire who lost $20B in two days, and

• Luckin Coffee, China’s answer to Starbucks (but with more fraud).

Credit Suisse even got caught up in a Bond-esque spying scandal, replete with a car chase through Zurich. So yeah, its demise was always coming. 

Intrigue’s take: But panicked markets don’t really ‘do’ nuance or detail. And now that we’ve seen four banks collapse in 11 days, there’s speculation we could be approaching a ‘Minsky moment’: spooked borrowers rushing for the exits and triggering a broader collapse.

At least authorities are responding more quickly than in 2008: six key central banks have already announced coordinated measures to try and calm markets. Still, something tells us there are more naked swimmers out there.

Also worth noting:

• The combined assets of UBS and Credit Suisse are now worth around twice Switzerland’s GDP.

• UBS described the deal as an “acquisition”, while Credit Suisse called it a “merger” (which some likened to the Titanic announcing a “merger” with an iceberg).

👀 EXTRA INTRIGUE

We’re very online, so you don’t have to be.

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• Singapore and Hong Kong vie to be the Caymans of Asia

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💬 QUOTE OF THE DAY

Gilad Kariv, who serves in Israel’s Knesset (parliament), told Intrigue Outloud he worries how Israel’s proposed judicial reforms will impact its economy and its relations with the West. Hear more on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yesterday’s poll: Who do you think is right in France?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🏰 President Macron: France’s generous pension system is going broke, and something needs to be done (74%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✊ The protestors: sure, fix the pension system, but don’t send the bill to the workers (24%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)

Your two cents:

• 🏰 G.M: “People are living longer, the French population is aging and the French retirement age is below OECD average. This is a time bomb and someone is finally addressing it.”

•  ✊ C.C: “The pension system needs reform, but this solution doesn’t really focus on the real problem–less babies.”