A quandary in Beijing, two lives remembered, and a very British row

China’s revealed its vision for a greener future at the UN biodiversity summit in Kunming last week. But with confirmation that Xi Jinping will not travel to the Cop26 summit in Glasgow at the end of the month, what does the president’s idea of an “ecological civilisation” really entail? It’s a notion that it seems will be hard to realise when coal still plays such a dominant role in the economy and when that economy is beset by fears that unpaid debts incurred by property behemoth Evergrande could halt its post-pandemic recovery.