| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a meme-filled mimesis of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Deciding What's Chinese Enough for China | This week, I wrote a column about a meme that has influencers going on and on about the health benefits of tai chi, rice porridge, warm slippers and sipping hot water — all part of their "becoming Chinese." It's been around for about a year and still percolating, glomming onto lifestyle and fashion as well as wellness. It's an intriguing, if inchoate, response to China's growing power — both hard and soft — by netizens in the US and the West. Memes and web trends can often act as a kind of collective subconscious before they fade away from overuse. Memes can serve a similar purpose in China itself, exposing popular hopes and fears. "I've long looked to social platforms behind the Great Firewall for a live barometer of public mood," Catherine Thorbecke writes. "More than any whitepaper, the memes and viral moments ... can feel like the clearest window into cultural currents." In the People's Republic, however, memes can only go so far in trying to define Chinese-ness before falling afoul of censorship. The meteoric rise and fall of the "Are You Dead?" app — which Catherine wrote about a couple of weeks ago — is a case in point. Beijing follows memes as closely as social media influencers; and the government will move quickly to slow down, curtail or shut down trends and developments deemed unhealthy to national progress or offensive to official tastes. After a relatively long period of liberality in the 1990s, the leash has grown tighter under President Xi Jinping with "the state's expanding capacity to narrow reality." Says Catherine: "What regulators seek to erase — feminism, labor unrest, 'lying flat' — is a truer inventory of vulnerability than any Five-Year Plan." While technology can be used restrictively by governments, it can also be utilized subtly and provocatively by ordinary netizens. The founder of a Chinese feminist group applies the term "groundfire" to such incipient rebellion, which is embodied in jokes, code words and digital communities. "The lesson isn't that authoritarian censorship wins," says Catherine. "It's that creativity persists, and that people are always finding new ways to use technology instead of being used by it." Where the Cities Have No Votes | If India is so rich, why aren't its cities more livable? Mihir Sharma asks the question and comes up with a startling answer: Because they don't have enough democracy. That is shocking for a country that prides itself on being the biggest democracy in the world. The residents of Mumbai — India's richest city — "have lived for years with no say in how their city was being run. When it finally held local polls last month, it was after a gap of nearly a decade." Mihir also cites Bengaluru. The home address of world-beating tech companies, he says, "hasn't allowed people to vote for its leadership since 2015. It will hopefully happen later this year — only because the Supreme Court put its foot down last month." The crucial complication is that if a town doesn't hold municipal elections, it technically doesn't have legal representatives to receive government funding, which has theoretically increased. "Mumbai lost almost half a billion dollars because of this," says Mihir. "Vital lines of urban finance have been cut." This democratic vacuum serves the purposes of regional politicians who slot in unelected loyalists to hold forts and extend influence. Meantime, the cities languish. "Brawny currencies mean different things — circumstances matter. On the face of it, Xi has done something significant. In a 2024 speech republished recently, the Chinese president equated robust national finances with a 'powerful currency,' one used widely in international trade, investment and capital markets — and has the status of a reserve currency. There's opportunism at work here. Why else roll out dated remarks so soon after Trump jolted markets by likening the dollar to a yo-yo. But like the hallowed strong-dollar mantra, it may not be so simple. The bid for reserve status has been happening for a while … Yet it still packs a small punch relative to the dollar." — Daniel Moss in "A Strong Yuan Is in China's National Interest."  "The global gold rush into US-based AI companies is looking tired. Big Tech's capital spending spree, coupled with fears that the innovation could doom countless businesses, has prompted stock selloffs in recent days. This exhaustion is absent in South Korea, however. As global investors look to diversify from US assets, the 'squid game stock market'... needs to be on their radar. The key is retail participation, an increasingly important pillar of bull rallies. Whereas Americans are displaying signs of fatigue, Koreans are only firing up." — Shuli Ren in "There's No Tech Fatigue in the 'Squid Game Stock Market'." The world has less of the US in the future. — Scott Lincicome Chinese cars are coming to the US, like it or not. — Liam Denning Behold, the counterrevolution triumvirate. — Hal Brands Anthropic packs a wallop for Salesforce and Workday. — Parmy Olson Silver's surge is golden for solar. — David Fickling Google (and Alphabet Inc.) master bond market ABCs. — Marcus Ashworth The City of London is looking less British. — Chris Hughes Will Barclays overpromise and underdeliver? — Paul J. Davies Walk of the Town: Cold Love | The snow is still on the ground in New York City, more than two weeks after the Jan. 25 superstorm that ploughed into the city and swept as far west as Ohio. About 15 inches was recorded in Central Park. The remnants — canyons of iciness that mock Manhattan's canyons of concrete and steel — have the look of boulders or shards of stone. The natives have a word for the grimy detritus: snubble. The frozen waste has lasted this long because the temperatures have barely gone above freezing. And when they do, the sidewalks become a drippy, slippery mess. Altogether, an extended and frigid prelude to Valentine's Day, which is tomorrow. I remember another holiday-themed tempest: the Groundhog Day Nor'easter, whose three-day onslaught peaked on Feb. 2, 2021. That one dumped more than 17 inches, according to the Central Park records. I posted a photo of it a few weeks ago, while being nostalgic about blizzards (such winter storms are very rare in London). I remember the snubble lasting quite a long time then, too, and spending Valentine's Day 2021 at home alone, eating leftovers. But there was relatively little grumbling about snowed-in streets back in 2021: A lot of people were content being homebodies because it was the tail-end of the pandemic.  Central Park, frozen in winter. Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Still, New York can be beautiful in the snow, when its grunge is camouflaged by an illusory spotlessness — a Potemkin paradise of purity. That's because all the garbage is under ice, and it's too cold for all but the bravest of rodents to emerge from their dens (I did see one dash across a sidewalk, though). Still, I like watching the dross emerge as the snow drips away, revealing the city's hard-worn and hard-won soul. It's all part of New York's seductiveness. I've lived in London for eight years now, but I haven't fallen out of love with New York. It's appropriate I'm here through Valentine's Day. Like everything, the holiday has morphed. Parents have to fret not only about their own romantic dinners but also about catering their kids' Valentine's celebrations, as Abby McCloskey writes. I have planned ahead so I do have a solo restaurant seat on a difficult-to-book holiday. It'll be just me, good food and the city I still adore. Blind dates are the worst.  "Compatible? I see no resemblance between my hair and your arms." Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send hair-raising feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and find us on Bluesky, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads. | 
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