Our cover this week is about President Joe Biden’s China doctrine. Between them, Mr Biden and Donald Trump have engineered the most dramatic break in American foreign policy in the five decades since Richard Nixon went to China. Optimists long hoped that welcoming China into the global economy would make it a “responsible stakeholder”, and perhaps bring about political reform. Today Mr Biden foresees a struggle that pits America against China—a struggle that he says can have only one winner. The administration believes that America must blunt China’s ambitions, by building up its strength at home and working with allies abroad. Much about Mr Biden’s new doctrine makes sense, but the details contain a lot to be worried about—not least the fact that it is unlikely to work.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets all over Cuba. They have a long list of complaints, from the communist dictatorship’s inept handling of covid-19 to empty supermarket shelves and power cuts. Miguel Díaz-Canel, the president, decried the protests, the largest sign of popular revolt in six decades, and deployed riot police. Nearly 150 people have gone missing. Many of these are thought to have been arrested.

The European Union unveiled ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 55% by 2030 (compared with 1990 levels) and to reach net zero by 2050. The plan sets out a range of policies to help meet the targets, but the main thrust is an expansion of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, in which companies pay to pollute. It would also introduce a Carbon Border-Adjustment Mechanism, in effect a tariff on goods from outside the EU that are not green-friendly. The announcement came days before China was expected to announce an emissions-trading scheme that will create the world’s largest carbon market.