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The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Rosie Blore.

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

Two astronauts who've been stuck on the International Space Station for the past nine months are finally on their way home. But in the time they've been up there, there's been an awful lot of change in the space industry.

And in China's cinemas, the blockbusters have long been big, loud, patriotic action flicks. Not anymore. We examined the most successful animated film ever with a cutesy protagonist from folklore that's nevertheless Communist Party approved.

First up, though, For months there's been an uneasy truce in Gaza. In the first phase of a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, hostages and prisoners were exchanged, Gazans returned to broken homes, and much needed aid flowed. Many hoped for further negotiations, a second step on the road to lasting peace. But overnight, war returned. Israel broke the stalemate with volley after volley of missiles into Gaza. Hundreds are reported to have been killed. So has the chance of peace in Gaza just disappeared?

There have been dozens of Israeli airstrikes since 2am local time. And as we're recording now, it's eight hours later and there still are strikes ongoing.

Angel Pfeffer is our Israel correspondent.

There so far hasn't been any movement on the ground. It's been almost entirely airstrikes. Some of the attacks have been carried out by artillery. And when our listeners hear this, things may have changed. But eight hours into this, Hamas have yet to respond.

And do you know how many people were killed?

We have the reports from Hamas authorities, which is over 300 people killed. We know that this includes many civilians, families, children, but we don't have a clear idea how accurate that number is. And what is the ratio here between Hamas members and civilians who have been killed?

And what has Israel said about why it launched These strikes.

So the official reason given in a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is that Hamas has rejected all the various offers of extending the ceasefire and holding exchanges of Israeli hostages who are still held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners. Now, that is true. In the last few weeks, there have been talks broken by the Americans and the Qataris on a possible extension of a ceasefire. What Netanyahu's statement doesn't mention is the fact that there was supposed to be already a ceasefire as part of the agreement signed by Israel and Hamas over two months ago. And after the first six weeks, the ceasefire was supposed to transition into a second phase where more Israeli hostages were to be released and Israel was to leave the last bits of Gaza where its soldiers are still stationed. That was supposed to have happened over the last few weeks. At the same time, there was also supposed to have been the talks on the phase two and how to finally end the war, and Israel didn't engage in those talks. So, yes, it's true that Hamas rejected various Israeli and American proposals, but at the same time, Israel is in breach of the agreement that it signed two months ago.

And Israel said that it was targeting terror targets belonging to Hamas, is that right?

Well, the main targets that Israel claims to have hit in these airstrikes are mid level commanders and also political leaders of Hamas and headquarters of the movement. We've seen reports from within Gaza of at least four or five known figures in the Hamas hierarchy who have been killed. Beyond that, it's very hard at this point to assess how accurate Israel's choice of targets has been and how accurate those strikes were. Now, if indeed they have killed these Hamas leaders and commanders, it would seem that they kill them in their homes in two, 3am in the morning, which is probably also why we're seeing a significant number of civilians also killed and wounded in these airstrikes.

And what has Hamas said about the strikes so far?

Hamas has basically said Israel has broken the ceasefire and that they expect the mediators to hold Israel responsible. Beyond that, we're not really hearing anything new from Hamas.

Anshal Trump said recently that all hell would break out in Gaza if the hostages weren't released. Do we know if the US Was involved in these strikes from Israel?

Well, the US Wasn't involved, but the US Was informed in advance. The US has approved this. As far as Israel needed American approval. We've also heard from a White House press secretary saying that they fully support Israel. And it's very important to note that this is happening after a number of nights in which American fighter jets have been bombing the Houthis in Yemen. And there is a clear connection here. Israel and the US Are now engaged in different airstrikes which are being coordinated here in the region. And this is partly a signal to Iran to show that their proxies are under fire and that they should come immediately to the negotiating table over their nuclear program, which is something that Trump has suggested to the supreme leader of Iran, been rejected. So there is very much that connection. And as you said, Trump has threatened Hamas with opening the gates of hell if they don't accept his envoy's proposals. We're now seeing those threats being acted upon.

What happens next?

Well, that's a great question, because we could be back within days or weeks to another ceasefire. It depends whether Hamas is open to having more talks and whether the Americans and the Qataris, who are the mediators in these talks, think that there is a chance of some kind of deal, whether an interim deal or a deal which will bridge between this period and the next phase of the wider agreement. And if that is the case, then there will probably be pressure from the Americans on Israel to accept another ceasefire, as there was two months ago. I mean, the original ceasefire was signed by Israel under duress. Trump wasn't yet in office, but Steve Witkoff, his envoy, was already deeply involved with members of the previous Biden administration in the negotiations. And there was a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to accept, and he finally did. Now, that probably is the best case scenario, that this round of airstrikes will force Hamas back to the table, and there's some kind of flexibility in the negotiations. But it's just as likely that Hamas will say, well, we're not going to come under pressure back to negotiations. We're not going to accept a different kind of deal. And there are already preparations by the Israeli army to launch also a ground offensive, something much bigger, to reoccupy large parts of Gaza and to continue this fight against Hamas. Israel has an overall war objective of destroying Hamas's military capabilities and its governance in Gaza that wasn't achieved in the 15 months of the war which ended in January with the ceasefire. And there are still Israeli officials and generals who believe that it can be achieved in another operation.

And where does Netanyahu stand in all this?

We shouldn't ignore also the political timing of this Israeli operation. For Netanyahu, this is a very tense moment on the domestic scene. He has to pass in the next two weeks an annual state budget. If he doesn't do that, then early elections are triggered and his coalition was starting to come apart. And by launching this operation in Gaza, he is bringing back into the fold his far right coalition partners, some of whom were threatening to not vote for the budget or to do other things that could have brought the government down. By doing this, he's giving them cover to come back into the coalition and to make sure that he has the majority that he needs both to pass the budget and to survive in power for the next months or year at least.

Anchelle, thank you for talking to me.

Thanks for having me.

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For the past nine months, two astronauts have been stuck on the International Space Station. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were stranded after Boeing's Starliner spacecraft malfunctioned.

All hooks open.

All hooks are open.

Today they're returning with a rescue mission facilitated by a different company, SpaceX and Undocking confirmed.

Freedom is free of its moorings. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore begin their belated trip home. Separation confirmed.

The pair have seen thousands of sunrises and thousands of sunsets check during their time on the station. But in the months they'd been away, the space industry has been through a.

Lot of change since the two astronauts found themselves on the space station without access to the ride they'd been intending to take back home. Space in general has seen quite a lot of development.

Oliver Morton is our planetary Affairs Editor.

We've seen an American company launch a new heavy booster, the new Glenn from Blue origin. We've seen SpaceX remarkably succeed in recovering one of its super heavy boosters caught almost gently on that vast gantry in Texas. We've also seen SpaceX lose a couple of its starship spacecraft. We've seen the first private spacewalk. We've seen three American private companies get to the moon. One of them has had two, I think it would say partially successful landings and also a much more successful landing by Firefly airspace of their Blue Ghost Lander, which produced easily the best space image of this year so far.

Ollie, before we get to the other events and the amazing developments, just remind me how long those two astronauts were supposed to be up there and why they've been there so long.

They were supposed to be up there about a week, and they were the first crew to go up to the space stat in a spacecraft called Starliner, which has been developed by Boeing. A while back, NASA decided it would be better all round if it bought tickets to take people to and from the space station from private companies. And it helped two private companies get into a position to sell such tickets. And one of those private companies was SpaceX, which made what appears to be a really spiffy space capsule called the Dragon or Dragon 2, and that works very well. And Boeing made, let's say it's a rather duff space capsule called Starliner. And there were enough anomalies with Starliner that NASA didn't want to put the astronauts in it on the way back. And so although there's always a capacity at the space station to get everyone off if need be, that meant that they didn't want to use up that capacity. So the space station had a couple of extra astronauts on it for nine months or so.

So Boeing's embarrassment has presumably been Elon Musk's boost. It's been good for his business.

It's certainly true that when it comes to building these spacecraft, SpaceX knocked it out of the park and Boeing singularly didn't. And so the general narrative that SpaceX can get things done, whereas the what some people call old space or the legacy providers such as Boeing and Lockheed can't so much, that narrative stands up quite well. The worry with that narrative is, of course, that eventually SpaceX becomes the only company that can do things. And that's why it's certainly heartening that Jeff Bezos company Blue Origin managed to launch at last its new Glenn launcher. Having a choice of billionaire providers of spaceflight is probably better than having a monopoly billionaire provider of spaceflight.

And with that choice of billionaire providers of spaceflights, what happens to NASA? What's its role?

That is a really interesting question. And you have to bear in mind that NASA has a number of roles. NASA has a role as the projector of an American presence in space. It has a role as a funder of science, both looking out into space and looking back at the earth. And subject to Senate approval, it's now got a new head, Jared Isaacman. Isaacman's a billionaire who isn't in this story, who is also the person who did the first private spacewalk last year. And he's not yet said anything very public about what he intends for NASA. And I think that's because we have to assume that there's a lot of of behind the scenes struggling about NASA. One thing we've seen is that NASA has fired its chief scientist. We know that Mr. Musk is more interested in sending starships to Mars than to the moon. But at the moment, the starships are part of the existing plan for NASA to go back to the moon. This so called Artemis mission to the moon was invented in Mr. Trump's previous administration. One of the things about Artemis that I think is quite striking is that in Trump 2 terms it looks disturbingly DEI because it explicitly said that the purpose was to get an American woman and a person of color onto the moon. And that's something that this administration tends to abhor.

So to date, how far are private sector companies actually motivating the changes in lunar missions and space exploration, with the exception of SpaceX?

And you have to make the exception here because SpaceX has become a space program of its own, of quite remarkable capacity. In general, NASA has tried to provide incentives for private companies to do things and it is getting a flotilla of various private companies trying to land robotic things on the moon. Of course, if NASA becomes less interested in science, then a lot of these projects become a little bit pointless because one of the things that they're buying is the ability to take experiments to the moon. Mr. Musk has talked about deorbiting the International Space Station early. There are a number of other companies which are talking about building private space stations. NASA has contracts to rent services from private space station providers, as it rents things from private launch providers. So you're definitely seeing a change in the way the Americans do things and you're not seeing the same thing. Yet in Europe. In Europe, people are quite happy that although their new Ariane 6 rocket is quite expensive and not reusable, they do at least have it. So they have a degree of strategic independence from the United States when it comes to space based assets. And elsewhere people are taking a similar sort of approach.

So if the role of science in space exploration is declining, what about money? How far is space becoming commercially important?

Well, space is commercially important if you want to have pictures of the Earth, or if you want to have communications on the Earth, or if you want to get money from someone who wants to take you off the Earth. The idea that there's actual value on the moon to be generated on the moon is one of the big uncertainties of what's going on at the moment. Mr. Musk is talking about going to Mars. Mr. Trump has talked about sending missions to Mars. I think the idea of sending human missions to Mars in a Trump presidency that lasted the constitutionally established four years would be on the edges of impossible. But people may well try. And so we may get back to the stage where in the early parts of space exploration there was a huge amount of stress based on going places with people. And worth remembering that this is 60 years to the day. I think since Alexei Leonov, the great cosmonaut, was the first person to ever do a spacewalk, the experience that Mr. Isaacman basically recreated at his own cost. I think we shouldn't forget that that will be a driver of the space economy, maybe quite a significant one over the next couple of decades, because people are going to want to go into space. If I was going to invest in a commercial space opportunity other than communications and Earth sensing, I think that might be the one I'd go for.

And are you planning a trip?

I'm not, no. I might take one, but I would have some concerns. I mean, you're basically signing up to be in a falling elevator with a bunch of strangers, but a good view. I'd also. I'm not the responsible consumer in the world, but I would like my space flight to be ethically sourced.

Thank you, Ollie, great to talk to you.

Nice to talk to you too, Rosie.

Filmmakers in China have long tried to make movies that wow audiences and and also please the Communist Party.

Sarah Wu is a China correspondent for the Economist and is based in Beijing.

The epics that have evolved are called Zu Shen Lu or Main Melody films because they're in tune with the party line. But their heavy doses of patriotism have now fallen out of favor. Instead, one Beijing studio has struck gold with no Za, A cartoon reimagining of a demon child from a 16th century novel. And I really think its success reflects a changing mood in China.

So, first of all, what is this movie all about?

This movie is a sequel to no Zat, which first came out in 2019. This demon child battles monsters and immortals on this quest to save his friend and protect his family's fortress. The film has taken in more than $2 billion. That makes it the most successful animated film ever made anywhere. It's recently overtaken Affinity War as the sixth highest grossing film ever.

And you said its success for you reflects a changing cultural mood. What do you mean by that?

About a decade ago, Chinese filmmakers were really nailing the patriotic blockbusters. So that includes films like Wolf warriors one. And. These films often involve Chinese soldiers defeating foreigners. But these triumphant narratives of national strength are starting to feel further and further away from the lived experiences of Chinese people today who are facing slower economic growth. One 20 year old woman in Hangzhou told us that this film really resonated with her because it's not so heavy handed. It isn't trying to force feed patriotism like the Wolf warrior films from 2015 and 2017.

So you think the enormous popularity of this film is simply because it's not doing that force fed patriotism?

I think there's more to it in that Neo Zi is familiar to Chinese people. He comes from Chinese folklore. The film is also quite funny. It's something that you would bring your kids to. And I think between all the battle scenes there are also these powerful messages. It's following this character who is defying his own fate and trying to find his own way. And this resonates with young people in China today because many are adjusting to a slower economy in which they have fewer job opportunities. And they're also trying to figure out how to define their own paths. One of the viewers we spoke to has already seen it three times. And more than that, I think Chinese people have felt a sense of pride in seeing a domestic animation studio make a first rate animation. They're used to watching Marvel and Pixar studio films. And Neo Za has really pitched Chinese animation studios as serious competitors to their Hollywood counterparts.

So it resonates well with the people. But the key question we've learned from the previous patriotic era of Chinese film is that the state has to approve. What does the Communist Party make of this change in sentiment, if not in.

Output, before even getting into the content of the film? The Party is thrilled to see so many people going to the theaters. China is really trying hard to boost domestic consumption right now. And so it gave out a lot of vouchers during the New Year holiday. And once Chinese people saw Neozi climbing in the ranks and started to break records, they really came out in force. The film's striking success over the Chinese New Year holiday then led a lot of people to engage in chart topping campaigns. They wanted to see Ne Za become one of China's most successful films and to see international success. And so you had schools taking students to see no Za. You had companies halting production so that their employees could go. So many companies gave out tickets to employees and their relatives. So this film both resonated with Chinese people, and it also encouraged a more organic sense of nationalism than the patriotic films ever did.

Sarah, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

That's it for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastsconomist.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.