Good morning. We’re covering signs of normalcy in China’s “Golden Week” holidays, much quieter Hong Kong protests for this year’s National Day and what it means for Rio de Janeiro to cancel Carnival. | |  By Melina Delkic and Dani Blum | | | Tourists waiting to enter the Forbidden City in Beijing on Thursday, the first day of a weeklong holiday that may offer the clearest measure yet of China’s recovery from the pandemic. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images | | | China has kicked off Golden Week, the annual spree of shopping and travel built around the Oct. 1 National Day celebrations, and the first major holiday since the country brought its coronavirus outbreak more or less under control. | | | Each year, the weeklong holiday is a closely watched barometer of China’s economic health, and that’s even truer this year. Early signs seem to confirm two trends: The country has returned to normalcy far more than others around the world, and yet the ripple effects of the pandemic are hard to shake off. | | | Hotels are full and tickets to tourist attraction are sold out. Most years, millions of Chinese people go overseas, but this year they will mostly travel domestically. China’s official tourism research institute predicts that 550 million domestic trips will be made, less than last year but a significant number. “The energy has been pent-up for too long,” said Lisa Li, a manager at a Shanghai travel agency. | | ■ Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has been isolating in a virus-free bubble, taking far more intense protective measures than many of his foreign counterparts. His government has largely declared the virus vanquished. ■ Israel is imposing an even tighter lockdown, in an attempt to curb one of the world’s worst outbreaks of the virus. Starting Friday, everyone except essential workers must stay home from work. ■ Despite a surge in cases, India is taking more steps toward reopening. The country will allow cinemas and entertainment parks to open with limited capacity, and states may be allowed to open schools. ■ Italy’s prime minister will seek to extend the country’s state of emergency until at least the end of January. | | | Officers unfurled blue banners warning against unauthorized gatherings, and purple banners warning of violation of the new security law. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times | | | One year ago, China’s National Day was a day of protest and turmoil in Hong Kong. Demonstrators set fires and blockaded streets. The police responded with tear gas and pepper spray. One officer shot a young demonstrator with a live bullet. | | | This year, police quickly silenced dissent. The small turnout of protesters was smothered by thousands of police officers. The officers corralled and searched dozens of people at a time. | | | The stark contrast shows how the authorities have used social distancing rules, an overwhelming police presence and a sweeping national security law to silence pro-democracy rallies. | | | The scene: Some demonstrations looked like performance art. Instead of seas of people chanting, people held up copies of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper, as though they were reading them. A teenage boy played popular protest tunes on a recorder at an intersection and some sang along. | | | The U.S. clampdown on Chinese tech companies like SMIC puts Taiwan’s chip industry in a tough spot. Alex Plavevski/EPA, via Shutterstock | | | As China and the U.S. vie for tech dominance, Taiwan’s chip companies are feeling the heat. They are forced to heed American tech policy, but many of their customers — and their customers’ customers — are in China. | | | Last month, the Trump administration effectively forced chip makers in Taiwan to stop taking orders from the 5G giant Huawei. And the U.S. last week told American companies that they would need permission to export to China’s most advanced chip producer. | | | In the high-stakes fight, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a leader in the industry, can no longer be a friend to both sides. And China has been promoting its own chip industry — and trying to hire experts from Taiwan. | | | Bigger picture: The Trump administration’s stranglehold on Huawei shows that despite China’s economic progress, the U.S. has maintained a final say over the technologies without which the modern world could not run. | | | Dado Galdieri for The New York Times | | | Wars, disease and political turmoil have never prevented Rio de Janeiro from putting on its famous carnival — but the pandemic has. It’s unclear when, and how pared back, Carnival will be next year. | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM CAMPAIGN MONITOR | | TEST: Email Marketing 101: Never Sacrifice Beauty for Simplicity | | A drag-and-drop email builder, a gallery of templates and turnkey designs, personalized customer journeys, and engagement segments. It's everything you need to create stunning, results-driven email campaigns in minutes. And with Campaign Monitor, you have access to it all, along with award-winning support around the clock. It's beautiful email marketing done simply. | | | Learn More | | | | New Zealand: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a debate that she had used cannabis, and most New Zealanders shrugged. But she stopped short of saying she backed legalization of marijuana, which people will vote on in a referendum with the national election on Oct. 17. | | | Tokyo Stock Exchange: The exchange’s operator said it planned to resume trading on Friday after a technical problem left investors unable to place orders and shut it down on Thursday. The episode could shake investors’ faith. | | | Katmai National Park and Preserve | | | Snapshot: Above, Beadnose the bear in Katmai National Park and Preserve. Each fall, the park in southern Alaska celebrates its 2,200 brown bears with Fat Bear Week (which Beadnose won in 2018). The online competition brings levity and raises awareness about the preserve. You can vote for your choice of the fatter of two bears each day through Oct. 6. | | | What we’re reading: This Atlantic article about the career costs of our new offices. “This thoughtful piece got right to the heart of why endless working from home can leave one feeling so adrift,” writes Natasha Frost, on the Briefings team. | | | David Malosh for The New York Times | | | Read: We’ve compiled a list of 17 new books to watch for in October. New biographies shed light on Malcolm X, Sylvia Plath and the Beatles, and there’s new fiction from Tana French, Martin Amis, Sayaka Murata and others. | | | Our Moscow correspondent Andrew E. Kramer has covered the simmering conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan for years. We drew on his current and past reporting, and other Times articles, to help explain the dispute. | | | Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian separatist enclave in a remote mountain area of Azerbaijan, is threatening to pull in two major powers in the region, Russia and Turkey. | | | Stepanakert is the capital of the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The New York Times | | | In 1988, the enclave’s governing body petitioned President Mikhail Gorbachev to unite it with Armenia. Instead, he sent Soviet troops to try to force out its ethnic Armenian population, and Azeri forces encircled the enclave with a punishing military siege. | | | Then, starting in 1992, ethnic Armenian troops pressed the offensive, creating a land corridor to Armenia and pushing outward to occupy nearly one-fifth of Azerbaijan. Open war had broken out as the Soviet Union fell, and the clashes claimed 20,000 lives. A cease-fire was declared in 1994, but there was no final settlement, and periodic border skirmishes have broken out ever since. | | | The fighting that began last weekend stands out for two reasons. First, it is on a much larger scale than prior clashes. Dozens of people have been killed as the two sides launched missile strikes. Second, Turkey is openly backing Azerbaijan, a fellow Muslim and Turkic-speaking country. | | | Turkey supplies weapons and training to Azerbaijan, and there are signs that it is actively engaged in the fighting, which Ankara has denied. If Turkish involvement is confirmed, even in a supporting role, it would be just one of several areas where Mr. Erdogan has deployed troops, ships and aircraft with increasing readiness this year. | | | Armenia has a mutual defense treaty with Russia, but so far has not asked that it be activated. | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Melina and Dani | | Thank you
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the news and Andrea Kannapell, the Briefings editor, for the Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
