hello and welcome to dateline london. i'm carrie gracie. this week: is yours a v, an l, a w or an entire new alphabet? we talk economic recoveries in the time of coronavirus. and them or us? how business is navigating the threat of a zero sum game between the us and china. my guests... on socially distanced screens, stephanie baker of bloomberg news, isabel hilton of the website china dialogue and here in the studio at a safe distance is the bbc‘s business editor, simonjack. welcome to you all. stephanie, let's take

this to you first. everyone has dealt with the global sudden stop of the virus and now we have the restart and planning of the future. we had the uk chancellor setting out his plans this past week, what did you make of them? yes, rishi sunak, he really does love his branding. he came out with a series of catchy programmes. i think the remarkable thing is, he announced £30 billion of new spending, which sounded small, and that is only because already 160 billion has been spent supporting the economy through the crisis. look, some of his policies were really positive. the kick—starter scheme in particular, to support employment of young people in private companies for six months. i think that is going to be potentially hard to roll out in the middle of the crisis when you still have a lot of private

companies operating remotely. his meal deal, the eat out to help out scheme, was kind of criticised as being gimmicky. i understand what he is trying to do here, which is to sort of push people out the door and restore confidence with the idea being that if you eat out on his dime on a monday, you might do a little retail therapy along the way and feel more confident about eating out later in the week. i think the part of his plan announced that will perhaps look at like a wasted opportunity in hindsight is the bonus for bringing back a load of workers, potentially at a cost of 9 billion, £1,000 per worker brought back.

it is criticised as being dead weight that many companies would be doing that regardless and is £1000 really going to make a difference to those that were on the edge? that is unclear and wouldn't that money have then been better spent in a more targeted way? there was not much about manufacturing, there was not anything targeted towards the car industry or aerospace, both of which are hurting. finally, i think the thing that was a bit underwhelming was his green initiatives. he announced i think 2 billion for modernising homes to make them more energy efficient and 1 billion to reduce emissions by public sector buildings like schools and hospitals. that sounds like a lot, but if you compare it to say france or germany, it is really not that much. in a way, it is a missed opportunity. with all this money being shovelled out the door, it could be in a much more targeted way. isabel, what about the fact that he still is i suppose spending, rather than saying, "austerity, austerity, " as happened

with the financial crisis ten years ago, which raises the question, how does he plan to pay for it? i am not sure that mr sunak himself plans to pay for this at all, notjust because he personally would not, but because this will all take an awful lot of time. i am sure he would say that it will be paid for by growth in the economy over time, but we are talking a very long time. again, it is quite interesting to compare the uk response to other oecd countries and although it is a lot of money and there are a lot of uncertainties over the uk economy, what with brexit and all the other things that are going on, as a percentage of gdp however, the uk package is on the smaller side. the country way out in front is japan with 21% plus and japan is already one of the world's most heavily indebted countries in terms of debt to gdp ratios.

so, the uk is still in a relatively cautious position i would say. simon, your view on this comparison between different developed economies and how they are treating this? yes, it is true that usually a one off, some statement of £30 billion would be jaw—droppingly big, but by comparison it is very small. what i would say about that is the treasury said do not forget we had a very big budget back in march of 170 billion and we are glad we got the spending out the door then and there is going to be more to come later in the autumn when he comes back again. but i do agree that the fundamental question for him was how many of the 9.4 million furloughed workers will still have a job at the end of the year or the end of january? that is the key economic question and i would agree that the £1000

bonus will be seen as a windfall for those who are going to bring back workers anyway, and will probably not make much of a difference to smaller companies who simply cannot afford to hang on to those workers for the next six months. let's look at the long—term impact of all of this. stephanie, you mentioned the question of the green agenda, but put it in a wider context. when you are spending all this money, how can and how effectively is the uk and other countries doing it in a way that makes the best of the crisis? that pushes it into a future that they needed to head to anyway? right, obviously, this extraordinary spending is designed to prevent the economy from collapsing and heading off long—term damage. it will take years to recover from it and as isabel mentioned, the real question is how do you pay for it down the line? given the fact that you have central banks funding this through essentially printing money, will that eventually lead to inflation?

i think many economists believe that, at least not in the short—term, inflation is not as a real risk and remember back during the 2008 financial crisis where central banks embarked on their quantitative easing and flooded the markets with cash, many thought it would have resulted in inflation then. if you look at againjapan, they have been able to do this for 20 years without sparking inflation. in fact, they are trying to get inflation up. so i think long—term, it is a matter of can we avoid inflation? can we avoid potentially stagflation, where you have got a mix of inflation and high unemployment? and is the rush to shovel money out the door as quickly as possible? in the process of doing that, are we missing an opportunity to try to restructure our economies away from this consumption

heavy demand to more sort of higher skilled, higher paid jobs and shift the economy away from dependency on carbon with really much more bolder initiatives to steer the economy in another direction? and isabel, that is obviously a big focus of yours, the environment and climate change. do you see countries where they are shovelling the money, as stephanie describes it, in a direction that accelerates the shift towards a sustainable growing future? i very much agree with stephanie that the uk has been extremely timid on this front. the conservative party promised 9 billion in its manifesto for climate change and green shift and we have seen barely a third of that. it is welcome, but the other parts of the government's package, including road—building, completely negate the good that insulating houses and making them

more energy—efficient would do. so it is confused and the uk has very good legislation on climate, we were the first to have a climate change act, we have a target of net zero by 2050, we have quite a strict target by 2030, but what we do not have is the road map and the policies that will enable us to get there. so we have declared our intention, but we have not actually put in place the road map. and if you contrast that to your question with the european union's green package, that is very large, pretty comprehensive and includes milestones and road maps and all the things that you need to deliver on the promise. if you go to the biggest emitters, china is obviously the world's biggest emitter, it has a headline proposition of a move to a low carbon and green economy as its next phase of strategic development. again, delivery is a little bit mixed there, but their stimulus package is low on traditional

infrastructure and high on what they call new infrastructure, so that is things like electric cars, those networks, ai, all the future technologies that china seeks to dominate, being facilitated and stimulated as part of the recovery package. so it is a mixed picture, but not many countries have taken this opportunity of a real strategic direction and i think it is a tremendously missed opportunity at a time when people are really reassessing how we live. people have changed their habits profoundly in the last three or four months and they have expressed a willingness to change them further and what we have not seen is a policy response from very many governments. the european union being an exception, to this moment. can ijust... yes, because i am interested

in your response to that, but also whether you think businesses picking up and doing that creative thinking in a way in which perhaps governments are so overwhelmed that they have not got to get? i think that is a really good point, i businesses are not waiting for governments, you have certainly seen that in the us where they are ignoring the administration. i think this question about will we rebuild in a different way, are we going to miss this opportunity? it is going to be very interesting to see, because the political imperative in some countries will be to get as many people back into theirjobs as quickly as possible come what may and if that means using a cheap oil for example as an accelerant for economic recovery, politically, that is going to be quite hard to resist. so, this is a very crucial moment. some people describe this as a last chance saloon if you like to reset

we rebuild from this. so that will be fascinating to watch, but it has accelerated a number of trends that we have also seen, the move towards e—commerce etc. what emerges from this... everyone is saying everything is going to change, but i'm reminded of the great fire of london in 1666, which basically was credited with stamping out the black death, we have had pandemics before, and there was this huge new plan for sir christopher wren to rebuild london on a very sensible gridlike structure and in fact, they waited too long, everyone built back their timber—framed houses just the way they were, and within 12 months that opportunity was missed. will we do the same this time? what is your answer then? you asked the question, you can answer it. i think what was being said there was right, that the europeans have got their ducks in a row when it comes to some of the big green initiatives. what we have seen so far has been a relatively small beer and remember the uk is 1% of global emissions, so in a way, there is a sense we need to show some moral leadership, because we started the industrial revolution, so maybe we need to start the green revolution. how much difference it'll make, what the uk does, is a very big question. stephanie, that idea of getting people back to work,

the us is due to stop its support for employment, federal support, at the end of this month. but they have still got huge spikes in coronavirus and all kinds of problems going on in terms of reopening the economy. do you think they are in a position to stop employment assistance and what will happen economically when they do? what is coming to an end is the top up that was passed as part of the cares act, the act to respond to the pandemic, which was an extra 600 a week, so of course it is going to have a huge impact. there are i think as many as 20 million americans receiving unemployment benefits and as you say, cases in the us are surging in several states, california, texas, florida, arizona and they are going to have to reverse their efforts to reopen

and impose lockdown downs again and we have seen that impacting jobs. i will say that, in some cases, a lot of people receiving those benefits, because they were so generous, some people were actually receiving more than their normal take home pay. having said that, the end to that is going to have an effect and i think there are lawmakers looking at possibly extending that. there has been a proposal, but it is not clear on whether or not the republicans would support that. another idea that has been floated is to provide again a bonus for people to get back to work before the end ofjuly. when congress returns at the end ofjuly, i expect some of those proposals to be taken up. simon, just on the question of this difficult dilemma between what is and what is not a zombie job at a time when the economy is or is not shifting as you were discussing. all governments face the challenge, they need to transition, you cannot keep these jobs on life support for ever, but it is hard to know what is the right

moment to get tough. the uk has said there are three phases to this. the first phase was, if you like, if you remember the old nuclear protect and survive stage of it, the second stage we saw last week was that let's have a look at how we can start creating jobs of the future and there will be more to come in the autumn. i think there will be a couple of sectors that will never be the same and the virus has accelerated this trend. retail will never be the same. retail is not going to be the same and our city centres will never be designed the same. there are a lot of chief executives of investment banks walking around midtown manhattan or wall street or canary wharf in london saying, "do i really need a building with 10,000 people in it?" so i think all of those things are going to change. but what the jobs of the future will be — i think going back to what we said about the green revolution, the uk has been an absolute leader in offshore and onshore wind

and so there is plenty of mileage in developing those skills, but those things do not happen overnight. we have had this incredible economic shock, waves ofjob losses are now crashing in to our manufacturers, airlines and high streets and it is not going to be easy to re—task, re—purpose 9.4 million people, 2 million of whom are probably unemployed but do not know it yet. isabel, i wanted to come back to china, which you mentioned a moment ago, as shovelling the money towards the strategic future as they see it in green energy. china is the only big economy that is forecast to grow this year, also expected to show the strongest rebound, according to the imf, next year. is that good economic management? well, i guess the first thing i would say is treat chinese economic figures with caution. it is partly a reflection that you have a government that is highly proactive in economic management, so it has a lot of levers it can pull. also, china was the first into the lockdown and the first out, so it has had a little more

time to recover. that said, the latest figures suggest that the recovery is slower than it might have been and there are many, many uncertainties, including the position of china's economic partners. after the financial crisis, china was very cash rich. it threw an enormous amount of money at a very traditional recovery package, pouring concrete. it is not going to do that again because that left it with a lot of debt and quite a few bridges to nowhere, but it also went on a shopping spree, because assets were cheap, so it was acquiring ip and high—technology companies as fast as it could. it will try to do that again, but the political atmosphere has rather moved against that, so i think that what we will see is a scaling back of some of the global ambitions on belton road, which is already in some trouble, and we will see a consolidation of chinese influence

in the region. so in east asia, southeast asia, trying to build a very solid economic sphere there, facilitated in part by donald trump having pulled out of the us effort to do exactly this and that has allowed the space for china to build its own trade blocks and networks and i think that is probably what we will see. ijust wanted to respond to something simon said and the question of zombie jobs and good investments. there are zombie investments too. the worst investment in terms of returns in the last four or five years has been in fossil fuels, in coal, we have seen value being destroyed in big oil. these are not sound investments and the sounder investments and the ones which have been growing and yielding the bigger reward and the greater number ofjobs frankly have been in renewables and in green technology. so it might be tempting to think that the old fashioned remedies

are the ones that are effective, but i'm afraid that recent experience tells us that it is good money after bad. we are running short of time. we need to get to the other big part of our discussion which really takes on from the point of the us china rivalry in the region and talks about globally and how it affects business. isabel, the fault lines between us and china, last year we had a trade war and this year there are huge fault lines on tech and hong kong. it has been another astonishing week in hong kong — i know you watch it closely. tell us briefly what has been most striking for you over the past few days for you. gosh — so many things to choose from. i think the harshness of the law and the complete lack of disguise, no concession to the idea of one country, two systems. i was very struck by the opening ceremony.

the chinese security services have commandeered a four star hotel near to victoria park, the park in which, since 1989, people in hong kong have gathered to commemorate the dead in tiananmen, and this is no coincidence. an opening ceremony conducted at seven in the morning with no press allowed, in which carrie lam made a speech in rather good mandarin. if she wants to talk to hong kong, she speaks in cantonese. this was entirely staged to please beijing. i think the second thing i would point to is the degree of vagueness and uncertainty around the law. what are these crimes and who defines them? that kind of uncertainty and vagueness is characteristic of mainland laws, because it leaves the power of definition entirely in hands of the prosecuting authorities and you can see the nervousness for example of foreign companies and of foreign residents as to where they are going to end up between the united states and china, as well as all the uncertainties

that hang over the people of hong kong as to what is a crime now. is waving a blank placard a crime? what does desecrating the flag mean? all of these things are left to the imagination for now and that is a very difficult place to be. stephanie, there are very clear problems for businesses. hong kong is a huge global business and banking hub. the rest of the world marshaling its response, and congress has passed an autonomy act just awaiting the president's signature. it will threaten us sanctions against individuals and companies who materially contribute to a decrease in hong kong's autonomy, but will it force businesses to make the hard choices between the us and china that isabel is talking about or is its bark worse than its bite? i think it will be... it will have a bite. i think a lot of companies are really walking the tightrope when it comes to trying to comply with the national security law as well as comply with possible us sanctions

that trump is likely to sign and i think it is the banks that are most at risk from the sanctions law in particular. you see many of them poring through their client list to make sure that they do not have clients that might run afoul of these sanctions. they have huge exposure and ambitious expansion plans and i think there is a risk that they could be targeted if china does decide to retaliate in a tit—for—tat sanctions move. i think it is unlikely. some people think it is unlikely that the us will really go hard on these sanctions for fear of really disrupting trade links, particularly right before the november us election. others think that it will really force banks to choose whether or not they want to do business with the us or china. obviously, i think that expats

will probably leave hong kong, but i think that businesses will try to figure out a way to muddle on through, because the stakes are so high. and simon, we're talking about banks, as stephanie is, and we have seen british banks face exactly this challenge and some coming out in support of the national—security legislation, because perhaps they feel they have no choice, but i want to ask you, because we're so short of time now on the programme, more about the other thing that i mentioned, the otherfault line, the tech fault line, because this is one the uk faces, as well as the hong kong fault line, this week. warnings from china on the use of any reversal on huawei as a 5g supplierfor the uk. huawei for my money is the most interesting company in the world right now, because it's a microcosm, it is a crucible in which all these massive issues are burning at an intensive volume. we are essentially in a cold economic war at the moment and countries are having to choose

whether they go team america or team china and for countries like the uk, this is incredibly difficult. they were finding a way of creeping along, then hong kong made that so much more difficult because rightly or wrongly they feel like they have a special responsibility where that is concerned. the other thing is that we are up to our neck in huawei kit already, they have been here since the mid—2000s, our 36 and ag network are stuffed full of huawei equipment. if we say we use this as a chip to admonish china, then it is going to take years. any 56 network roll—out will take much longer and it will cost the companies involved billions and billions of pounds. that is the moment and i think it is again the virus could be this moment where we see the world split between countries in which you can sell huawei gear and countries where you cannot. the interesting thing on the us thing and the banking thing, the us has the nuclear option — they control the access to dollar funding. everything in the world

is paid for pretty much with dollars and we have seen what can happen before. if the us decides to do that then that is the nuclear option and then you really could see and look back on this moment as a moment where the world decided — we are split in two and the dollar's global primacy began to fade. thanks for that warning. very briefly, coming back to the huawei point, you gave the arguments as to why it is hard for the uk to renounce huawei and renounce huawei into the 5g network, so why would it do it, having said that is was going to have huawei — why reverse now? well, they've got a trade deal which they have to land with the us, so that is one part of it. there are a group of rebel mps that are big enough to be a nuisance to basically say this is a real national security risk. i have to leave it there. isabel, stephanie and simon, thank you so much and that is it for dateline london for this week. back next week, same place, same time. goodbye.

hello there. well, after the disappointment of recent weekends when low pressure was in charge — we had wet, windy, and cloudy weather — actually, we have got off to a decent start this weekend. a sunny morning, a bit of cloud built up during saturday afternoon, but saturday evening time, that cloud began to fragment and we had clear spells that started to develop, and they are continuing to develop actually, right now, with those skies continuing to clear underneath this area of high pressure, but the eagle—eyed amongst you might notice this approaching weather front. yes, that will bring some rain to the far north—west as we head through sunday. still, over the next few hours, it is clear skies that we've got.

northern ireland, scotland, england and wales and underneath those clear skies in the countryside, it is quite chilly, temperatures getting down to about six or seven as we start off sunday morning. a bit more cloud, though, for the far north of scotland. a few showers in shetland. for most of us, though, it is a fine and sunny start to the day with almost clear blue skies first thing in the morning, but mid—morning, the cloud will bubble up across eastern areas of england, eastern scotland, so becoming quite cloudy into the early afternoon fora time, but the thickest cloud is in northern ireland and here we will start to see some rain getting in through afternoon and, eventually, that will arrive for western scotland. for most of us, though, a fine afternoon, temperatures a little bit higher than they were on saturday, highs up to 2a celsius. the weather is set fair in southampton where the test match between england and the west indies should stay fine and sunny, not too much in the way of cloud. temperatures into the low 20s with a sea breeze developing through the late morning. now high pressure slips away by monday, low pressure starts to take charge, but the centre of the low is quite a way to the north of the uk

and that means the weather systems are going to be quite weak as they push south—eastwards, so patchy outbreaks of rain across northern and western areas, not much in the way of rain for south—east scotland down the eastern side of england, probably for the midlands and central and southern england it should stay largely dry, but there will be a little bit more cloud around and temperatures will be easing across the north—west. through tuesday and wednesday, further low pressure systems track in from the north—west again. these look pretty weak so i think we can expect quite a bit of cloud, really, in the week ahead. there will be some patches of rain around at times, particularly across north—western areas, but there probably won't be too much in the way of rain reaching the south—east, with temperatures continuing to run into the low 20s for the most part here. that is your weather.

welcome to bbc news, i'm james reynolds. our top stories: president trump wears a face mask for the first time during a visit to a military hospital, as the us hits yet another daily record in coronavirus cases. india suffers a sharp rise in the number of coronavirus cases, as the total climbs to over 800,000, and complaints grow about a lack of testing. one of bollywood's biggest stars, amitabh bachchan, tests positive for coronavirus. the film icon is in a stable condition in hospital. and, tributes pour in forjack charlton, who played in england's world cup winning football team and managed the republic of ireland.