This week’s covers | Aug 12th 2023 Edition

We had two covers this week. One, tied to America’s latest investment restrictions, looks at how Joe Biden’s China policy is going wrong. The other looks at Saudi Arabia’s splurge of investment in sports.

Mr Biden’s new rules, announced on August 9th, will police investment in the most sensitive technologies in China. It is the latest such curb by what used to be the world’s most important champion of open markets.

American officials want to protect national security, by limiting China’s access to cutting-edge technology that could enhance its military might, and to build alternative supply chains in areas where China maintains a vice-like grip. They have pledged to keep restrictions narrow. Our cover in America and Asia argues that this approach is not working.

On the face of it, everything is going according to plan. In 2018 two-thirds of American imports from a group of “low-cost” Asian countries came from China; last year just over half did. Instead, America has turned towards India, Mexico and South-East Asia.

Investment flows are adjusting, too. In 2016 Chinese firms invested $48bn in America; six years on, the figure had shrunk to a mere $3.1bn. For the best part of two decades, China claimed the lion’s share of new foreign-investment projects in Asia. Last year it received less than India or Vietnam.

One mind-bending image of two shipping containers—one symbolising China, the other America—showed that the real story is more complicated than that. Seen from one angle it looked like a solid win for American policy, seen from another the winner is China. The design was clever, but we wondered whether the cover was the best place to advertise that our theme is hard to grasp. Readers want us to make our arguments intelligible, not to revel in their complexity.