More than Sheikh could stick at: Bangladesh’s PM resigns

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The Economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

And I'm Rosie Blore. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

If you want to get across a city and don't mind a walk at either end, you, you take a bus. If you want to go point to point, you hail a cab. So our correspondent was disappointed that a driverless taxi ride across a giant Chinese city was more like a bus ride.

And many children in the 1950s did drills in case of nuclear attack. That experience inspired one of them, Thomas Neff, to try and rid the world of at least some of those warheads. Our obituaries editor celebrates his life.

But first, That is the sound of the nearly certain end of a political career, even a political dynasty in Bangladesh. Over the skies of Dhaka, the capital, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina beat a retreat from her official residence yesterday. And not a moment too soon, protesters stormed the building. Hundreds ended up perched on the roof. Out the front door went well, everything from a ceiling fan to a live duck. Crowds filled the streets of Dhaka and began defacing symbols of the regime, including a statue of Sheikh Hasina's father, the first president of independent Bangladesh. This swift political demise of the world's longest serving female head of government had actually been a long time coming. In recent years, she'd tightened her grip on power, quashing political opposition, weakening Bangladesh's institutions, and paving an easy road for devotees of her party, the Avami League. It's that last bit that sparked weeks of deadly clashes between rioters and state police. On Sunday alone, at least 95 people, including 13 police officers, were killed as protesters called for her resignation.

Yesterday, they got seems like she misjudged public anger at her authoritarian style and her mismanagement of the country.

Lena Shipper is the Economist's South Asia bureau chief.

So the most immediate Reason was a crackdown by the government on student protests which started last month, which instead of calming the situation and convincing people to go home, just re energized them and turned a movement that was originally about something quite minor into a bigger movement demanding her resignation.

So let's wind back to what started the protests that in turn sparked the crackdown. What was that about?

Last month there was a reinstatement by a court of an old quota which allotted 30% of government jobs to descendants of freedom fighters in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971 when it split from Pakistan. And students regarded this as unmeritocratic. They said it was largely beneficial to adherents of the government of Sheikh Hazina's of Army League. And they wanted this reformed. And the government initially didn't respond to their demands with any sort of conciliatory note. They suppressed the protests extremely harshly. They instituted a nationwide curfew, instituted to kill orders. Hundreds of people were killed in clashes between students, police and the army and also pro government thugs. So Hazenas party has these student leagues that were basically just wandering around streets with sticks and beating people up. So that was the response by the government and initially that seemed to quell things a bit. And then as they realized the crackdown wasn't going to change anything, the Supreme Court withdrew the quota, said, okay guys, you're right, we're going to reform this. But by that point it was too late because the movement against the quota had morphed into a wider movement that just said, no, we need accountability from the government, we need ch to leave. As prime minister, why do you think.

A jobs quota which might not seem like such an incendiary issue has led to this?

I mean, I think the jobs quota protest was basically a case of the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. It tapped into already existing frustrations with Sheikh Azina and the political system that she stood for. The cronyism, the dynasticism, the very unequal economic development that left a lot of particularly students in a very precarious position. They didn't feel there were enough jobs for them. They didn't feel they really had a few future or say in the political system. And all of that has been bubbling for a very long time. You know, when I was in Dhaka in December, this frustration and that sort of anger was very clearly there, but people were just frightened of saying anything. And for some reason in these most recent protests, that fear had gone.

I mean, does that surprise you? We've been talking about this for absolutely years. And it seems like one of those things that could have been sort of quashed and then just become the next chapter in how things go in Bangladesh became like the end of it all. It all seemed to, you know, gradual at first and then quite sudden.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. I wouldn't have expected this to go so quickly. I would have expected her to be able to hang on probably for quite a long time in the sort of cycle of suppression and then letting go a little bit and then suppressing a bit more. But it just seems that we've reached this point where popular dissatisfaction and sort of solidarity with the people who dare go out on the streets has reached a level that was no longer containable. And I think the army, which previously was quite at least sort of tacitly supportive of Sheikh Hazina, just concluded that it was no longer tenable to support her. Which is also why we saw this development when people started marching on the Prime Minister's residence. And eventually the army and police just stopped trying to stop them. On Sunday, they were still shooting and firing rubber bullets and tear gas. And then on Monday, they just let people go.

So is that it then, to your mind, is that the end of Sheikh Hasina's political career?

Yeah, I think so. I don't think she's going to come back. It seems completely unfeasible for her to return to the country at this point. Then again, there's a bunch of people who've been outside of Bangladesh for years who are now considering coming back. But she's gone. So never say never. But her son, who's in the US has come out and given extensive comments on how she's not going to return to politics and she's just going to spend time with her grandchildren now, accompanied by how unfairly she's been treated. And she just wanted the best for the country. And there were all these thugs who chased her away. But if he says that, that's quite definite, I think seems very unlikely.

It wasn't just her, though. I mean, you said along the way that the student wing of the Iwami League, Sheikh Hasina's party, was also kind of acting as enforcer. This is still a powder keg of a situation. Or do you think that with her departure, things calm down now?

No, it's definitely still a powder keg of a situation. It's extremely fractious. Sheikh Hasina obviously has been in power for 20 of the last 28 years and has a record of behaving very autocratically. But the opposition has a similar record. When they were in power, they were autocratic. They suppressed the supporters of the Awami League. And there's been this sort of constant back and forth between the two dynasties in Bangladesh for decades, ever since basically the country was born in 1971. Her departure on its own hasn't solved anything. It's left this incredibly dangerous political vacuum. There's a danger resurgence of Islamist parties, which Sheikh Hasina kept a lid on throughout her rule by autocratic means. But she was initially very secular and there's just a lot of anger on all sides.

And so what do you see happening in the very near future, then? Is anyone holding the reins?

So for now, it looks as though the army is holding the reins. There was an announcement yesterday by the army chief that an interim government would be formed. Later in the evening, the president came out and said he would take charge of that and there would be discussions with all parties, excluding the Obama League of Sheikh Hazina. There's been some pretty good signs. The president also said the opposition leader would be released. He said the students who are currently in jail after the protests would be let out. And there's a reasonable sense, I think, of goodwill that they're serious about this interim government, about renewing the democratic process and having elections. Those are quite hopeful signs, I think, for the next few weeks.

Lena, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks very much for having me, Jason.

I recently decided to take a spin in a Chinese robo taxi in the city of Wuhan.

Don Weiland is the China Business and Finance editor of the Economist.

My vehicle took a bit of a detour when I arrived to get in the cab. There were riders coming out of the cab. And they had been dropped off in the wrong place. I found this to be the case as well. The taxi wasn't able to pick me up in the spot that I wanted it to, and it really couldn't drop me off where I wanted to be dropped off at. And that's because the technology that is being used for these robo taxis right now is just not good enough to navigate really tricky situations, places like parking garages or narrow spots on the road. And that's why you need to essentially walk to the destination that you're going to be picked up in. Once I got in, the ride was relatively smooth. It has a lot of trouble navigating spots where there are people on bikes and people crossing the road. So at one point we got stuck as people continuously crossed the road. In the end, because you have to walk to the pickup spot and then find a way away from the pickup spot. It felt a little bit more like a bus than a cab. Nevertheless, robo taxis are spreading across China very quickly.

Don, that sounds both terrifying and not very useful. Give me an idea of the scale of this. Just how many robo taxis are there in China.

So we don't actually know how many of these cars are on the road across China. We do know that There are about 400 of these cars on the streets of Wuhan and they should have 1,000 of them by the end of the year. The company that is doing this is called Baidu. They've been known for many years as the Google of China because they run China's biggest search engine. This program is called Lobo Kuipal in Chinese and in English it's called Apollo Go. It launched in Wuhan in 2022 and it's now in 10 other cities as well. They've carried out about 6 million rides nationwide so far. So that's quite a bit of data.

It sounds from the people that you met like yours wasn't the only ride that had quite a few glitches. So why are these cars so popular if they're dropping people off in the wrong place?

One thing that's getting people into these cars is just the novelty of being driven around without having a driver in the driver's seat. But another big appeal for this program is that the cabs are super cheap. I took an 11 minute ride and it cost about 10 yuan, so that's roughly A$35. The reason why they're so cheap right now is because Baidu is covering most of the cost. Obviously that's not sustainable for this company if costs were to remain the same. But costs are going down right now and Baidu thinks that it can break even by the end of the year, which is miraculous. And they want to turn a profit next year.

So where is the cost coming from if you're not paying for a driver?

Drivers account for about half of the cost in the ride hailing industry. So obviously when you get rid of the driver, it seems like, well, this should be a lot cheaper. But these cars cost a lot of money to produce. They have tons of sensors. They have lidar, which is a kind of laser that is used as a sensor. The software itself needs to be updated regularly. So all of this is very expensive. Baidu is trying to lower these costs. In May, they unveiled the latest version of their vehicles. It's half the cost of the previous model. It Plans to upgrade a lot of the fleet that it has in Wuhan by the end of the year.

And is China a market leader in this? What's the state of robo taxis elsewhere in the world?

Yes, China is a market leader and Wuhan is the capital of robo taxis for the world. Right now. It has more driverless taxis on the road than anywhere else on the planet. But there are other places that are trying to do this as well. Obviously, Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, has a robo taxi service called Waymo and it is in a commercial operation in San Francisco. But of course, there have been many problems with this industry in America as well. General Motors has a robo taxi service called Cruise that lost its license to operate in California after one of its cars injured a pedestrian. It wants to relaunch in other American cities. But this is a problem not just for regulators, but for the general public who might fear getting in one of these cars or being near one of these cars.

In the past, Chinese cabbies have had quite a lot of political power, or rather they've been feared by the government. A lot of them are veterans. Is there any resistance to using robo taxis rather than cars with drivers?

We're really seeing a lot of pushback from taxi drivers. So there's 10 million cabbies in China. 7 million of them are working for ride hailing companies and the rest work for traditional cab companies. When I was in Wuhan recently, if you ask a driver about these robo taxis, they're very, very passionate about all the things that are wrong with them. But in the grand scheme of things, Chinese leaders are very, very interested in rolling out new technologies and grabbing the economic spoils of new industries. And robo taxis are kind of at the forefront of that. So local officials basically compete to attract these types of pilots and these types of services to their cities. And Wuhan is kind of winning on this front right now. You can see the attraction not just for Chinese companies, but for other global companies as well. So Tesla is now testing its robo taxi service in Shanghai, where I'm based. I expect more companies will want to get on the roads of China and test out their services here, partially because the regulators have been so accommodating. Taxi drivers might be irritated with this, but I think over the next couple years, the future is more and more and more robo taxis on the streets of China.

Don, thank you so much for your time.

My pleasure.

It's been a little while since I last told you about Boom, our latest limited run subscriber only series about the generation that blew up American politics. The fifth episode is now out. Like every great drug, we'd still like you to have the first dose for free. Go have a listen to the first episode once you're hooked. Search for Economist podcasts plus to sign up for our cheap but habit forming audio subscription. Be sure and remember what Bert the Turtle just did, friends, because every one of us must remember to do the same thing.

Duck and cover all through grade school and all through high school, Thomas Neff had to do nuclear attack drills. These were common in American schools in the 1950s.

Ann Ro is the Economist's obituaries editor.

The siren would sound and children would have to duck under their desks. This was because America was still in dread of a Soviet attack. But as Thomas Neff cowered under his desk, he really wondered what good that sort of thing would do. And he found he was having similar thoughts when in October 1991, he found himself at his first really big important meeting with Russian officials in Washington, when the start of the arms control agreements, or the first of those, had just been signed and they've met to discuss the practicalities of how the warheads were going to be dismantled. He was also probably one of the most expert people in the world on nuclear energy. He'd written a book about the uranium market. He'd also drafted the legislation that had set up President Nixon's Energy department. So he was a man well in command of the facts. The Russians were complaining that they were completely bankrupt, and this was true. The economy was in free fall, the Soviet Union was collapsing, and they said they couldn't possibly afford to dismantle their warheads. On the other hand, America was terrified that because Russia couldn't pay the workers in the nuclear plants, some of those workers would go rogue and start selling nuclear material to regimes like Iran and North Korea. This was now the big American fear, rather than the fear that the Soviet Union would attack. It was worries about these rogue players on the world scene. So the two sides were really talking past each other. Neither side knew what to do. The Americans didn't know how to make these warheads safe and how to be sure it was being done properly. And the Russians didn't feel they could do it at all. But Thomas Neff had a better idea. He decided he should base it on economics, not on politics, on what each side really needed from the other. Russia obviously needed hard currency and America needed uranium to fire its civilian power plants and keep the lights burning. So to him, the obvious Answer was that America could give Russia trade credits for food and other essentials and therefore free up the budget to have enough money to dismantle the nuclear warhead. What the Russians had to do was to dilute the high enriched uranium in the warheads down to commercial uranium for the power stations, which was sort of 90% reduction in the radioactivity of the warheads. So this had to be done before it could be shipped to America and before it could be safe. And this was a plan that so pleased him in its simplicity that he was absolutely sure that it could work. And indeed, for two decades, from 1993 to 2013, it did work. There were 250 shipments of this low enriched uranium to the United States, 15,000 metric tons. The Russians, in exchange, got several 17 billion in trade credits for food and other essentials. What it achieved was the elimination of 20,000 nuclear warheads, which was about a third of all the warheads then in the world. He didn't work through the government officials. He met the American officials who were in charge of the meetings with the Russians. But instead he waylaid in a corridor the man he thought was most important, who was Viktor Mikhailov, the Deputy Minister of the Soviet Atomic Energy Ministry. He found Mykhailov standing there smoking and thought he would immediately try to sell his idea to him. So he said quite straightforwardly, have you got any uranium to sell? He was already full of the capitalist instincts that were surfacing when the Soviet Union collapsed. And he was only too pleased to be able to sell his uranium to someone, because then he would have money to do other things with the defense budget. So the two of them were really acting like free agents. Mykhailov was certainly an independent player who more or less ruled the Ministry of Atomic Energy Energy in Moscow. And Neff was also a free agent. He liked to work by himself. The problem being, however, that as the plan took root, it got into more and more of a tangle with people objecting to it on both sides. The Americans thinking it was crazy to help the Russians in this way. Some of the Russians feeling that the war warheads were their heritage and they shouldn't be dismantled. Generally speaking, though, Russia was in favor of it and the main problem was over in the offices in Washington all the time. Though he was a little bit wary of working in a great crowd, he realized he could get an awful lot done if he just worked as a free agent. After all, working alone, he'd managed to get rid of about a third of the nuclear weapons in the world. He thought it was possible to do such a thing if you took care not only to spot chances and things that needed fixing, but also to seize the moment. And just go ahead and do something, no matter what obstacles you found in your way.

Ann. Ro on. Thomas Neff, who's died aged 80. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.