Korean Central News Agency/AP

In this photo distributed by the North Korean government, leader Kim Jong Un speaks at a ruling party conference in Pyongyang Dec. 23, 2017. The Korean language logo reads "KCNA," for Korean Central News Agency.

Could a war of words spiral into a war of nukes? That’s what some critics fear as President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un continue to insult each other with unusually harsh rhetorical slaps.

The “nuclear button” exchange was the latest such incident. On Monday, Mr. Kim said in his New Year’s speech that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal was now essentially complete and the launch button was “always on the desk in my office.” Mr. Trump replied in veiled personal terms, tweeting on Tuesday night that “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than [Kim’s], and my Button works!”

Such words push the envelope on geopolitical discourse for the nuclear age. National leaders – particularly American presidents – typically speak with restraint about their atomic arsenals. That’s in recognition of the terrible destructive force the weapons embody.

Critics of Trump’s approach to taunting Kim say they are concerned that an injection of anger and emotionalism into the nuclear balance could be destabilizing.

But in this case it may be that structural factors such as the relative strength of conventional military forces and the geographical vulnerability of North and South Korea – all of which make the horrible price of conflict abundantly clear to both sides – are much more important than words.

Leaders matter in foreign policy, but only to a point, says Elizabeth N. Saunders, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University who studies that issue.

“Preemptive wars are very rare. Miscalculation is very rare. It doesn’t mean those things don’t happen. But again, we have to keep perspective,” says Dr. Saunders.

Reagan on radio

The degree to which US leaders speak softly about nukes can be seen in a previous exception to this tradition. In August 1984, then-President Ronald Reagan indulged in a bit of black humor while doing a sound check for his weekly radio program. “I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia forever,” he said into the microphone. “We begin bombing in five minutes.”

CNN had tape of the incident, but the network’s president decided not to release it. Eventually word leaked out, with predictable reactions. US allies in Europe were aghast. “President’s Nuclear Joke Misfires” read the headline on Britain’s Evening Standard the next day. Soviet leaders professed outrage. The official USSR news agency TASS condemned what it called behavior “incompatible with the great responsibility borne by heads of nuclear states.”

The root of critical reaction perhaps lay in the contrast between the flippancy of Reagan’s words and the powerful consequences of nuclear weapons. Millions would have died in a 1980s superpower nuclear exchange. Similarly, today a nuclear explosion on the Korean peninsula would be an historic catastrophe.

That’s why US presidents have tended to speak obliquely about the US nuclear deterrent, referring to the “full force of American might,” for instance. Trump, however, has amped up this rhetoric, talking about the “fire and fury” of a possible US response to North Korean aggression. In that context, the personal nature of his jibes at “rocket man” Kim, and the comparison of button sizes, is but a step up the ladder of inflammatory phrases.

A leader's intent

“Normally, it would be shocking for the president of the United States to turn fighting a nuclear war into a punch-line, but under President Trump this is our new normal,” Jonathan Mercer, a University of Washington political science professor who specializes in international security and political psychology, says in an email.

Nevertheless, critics wonder, will Kim believe that Trump’s words mean the US is increasingly likely to launch a preventive nuclear attack? If so, does he need to strike first rather than lose his small nuclear arsenal? Is the US in turn worried about such worries?

Or perhaps it is the US president who might become increasingly unstable if the taunting progresses, say other analysts.

“Spoken like a petulant ten year old. But one with nuclear weapons – for real – at his disposal,” tweeted Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and former State Department counselor, in response to Trump’s “button” tweet.

Trump himself seems to believe that his approach has proved its worth. On Thursday he took credit for North Korea’s offer to open talks with South Korea about possible participation in the upcoming Winter Olympics, and other issues. Trump tweeted that such an offer would not have occurred if he had not been “firm, and strong.”

Powerful constraints

But it is possible that both sides here are overstating the effect of tweets and rhetorical exchanges.

The decisions of individual leaders can certainly increase (or decrease) the risk of conflict, says Saunders of George Washington. However, her research indicates that structural factors outside the personalities involved can matter more. And in this case, the structural factors may reduce the likelihood of war.

“These tweets are not happening in a vacuum. They are happening under powerful structural constraints that would have faced any US president,” she says.

Take geography. South Korea’s capital and largest city, Seoul, is so close to the border that North Korean artillery and short-range missiles could inflict massive damage in minutes under virtually any circumstances of conflict. That is a powerful incentive for the US, South Korea, and other regional allies to act with restraint against Pyongyang.

Both sides have formidable conventional military capabilities. Both know that any conflict will be protracted, difficult, and potentially catastrophic – for both sides.

North Korea knows that general war of any sort would mean the end of their regime. The Pentagon has studied a Korean war for decades, and has no illusions about how many casualties might result.

These things do not mean it is impossible for a war spiral to take hold – look at the onset of World War I for an example. What they do mean is that there are lots of reasons why such a spiral might halt before shooting actually starts.

It was President Trump’s first real national security scare.

North Korea had just tested a ballistic missile, and Mr. Trump was dining outside at his Florida resort with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. Aides hovered around them; one shined the light of his cellphone on documents the two leaders were reviewing. A Mar-a-Lago Club member sitting nearby snapped pictures and posted them on Facebook.

“Wow.....,” Richard DeAgazio wrote, “the center of the action!!!” 

The Mar-a-Lago terrace had, in effect, become an open-air White House Situation Room, but without the high-level security of the West Wing basement room where the president and top aides usually meet to address world crises. At that moment, just 24 days into Trump’s presidency, some Americans’ fears of having a novice to government serving in the top job crystallized.

Would Trump accidentally reveal classified information in public? Would he respond prudently to North Korea’s provocation? Was he really ready to do the job he had won, defying expectations, just a few months earlier? 

A year into Trump’s presidency, North Korea remains a top security threat – and Trump’s freewheeling, norm-busting approach to the presidency is the new normal. The dizzying turnover of top staff and breathless media reports of palace intrigue – as evidenced by the recent brouhaha over the new tell-all book on Trump’s first year, “Fire and Fury” – have only enhanced the sense of reality-TV-style drama. So has the investigation into possible Russian collaboration with Trump associates in the 2016 campaign. Ditto the women accusing Trump of past sexual misdeeds.

KCNA/Reuters

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un inspects artillery launchers. He and President Trump have been locked in a war of words over North Korea’s testing of missiles that may one day be able to reach the US tipped with a nuclear warhead.

The explosions around “Fire and Fury” are only the latest disruptions – from former top Trump aide Steve Bannon’s reported assertion of “treasonous” behavior by Trump family members, to Trump’s break with Mr. Bannon and threats of legal action against him.

In countless other ways, from his provocative use of Twitter to his aggressive use of executive power to his attacks on the news media, Trump has disrupted American life, the American presidency, American politics, and America’s place in the world.

“As Winston Churchill once said of an American cabinet member, ‘He’s a bull who carries his own china shop with him,’ ” says Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. 

To Trump supporters, that’s exactly the point: They voted for someone who would “fight back” and shake up a Washington power structure – “the swamp” – that they believe stopped serving the people a long time ago. And they say he is delivering. Trump’s war on government regulation has rolled back scores of policies on the environment, education, law enforcement, energy, and the internet. 

To critics, Trump represents the sum of all fears: a populist demagogue who preys on voter anger, stokes racism, enacts self-enriching policies, and fans the flames of class division and partisan polarization that have been growing for decades. Some House Democrats are already pushing for impeachment, and held a symbolic vote in December, despite opposition from Democratic leaders. 

In truth, the Trump disruption so far hasn’t proved to be as, well, disruptive as it could have been. Trump is not a dictator – far from it. Respect for the Constitution remains deeply embedded in the American psyche. The two-party system remains vibrant, as seen last month in Doug Jones’s stunning upset in the Alabama special Senate election – a rare Democratic victory in a deeply Republican state. 

“It looks so far like our system is more resilient than a lot of people thought it was,” says Gene Healy, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute and author of the book “The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.” “The courts and to some extent Congress have pushed back.”

‘I alone can fix it’

In July 2016, Trump presented himself at the Republican National Convention as a savior who could solve the nation’s ills all on his own, from poverty and violence at home to war and destruction abroad.

“I alone can fix it,” he boomed.

Mary Altafer/AP/File

GOP candidate Donald Trump appears with vice presidential candidate Mike Pence in Cleveland.

Trump’s grand rhetoric brought conventiongoers to their feet, and on the political left, sowed fears of an authoritarian-in-the-making. One year into his tenure, experts on presidential power see a man who has, in some ways, pulled the levers of power with singular abandon – both formally and informally – even as he discovers the limits of that authority. 

“It’s a fascinating case study,” says Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University in Washington. “As controversial as many of the statements and actions of President Trump are, he has not pushed the envelope of executive privilege as much as President Obama did during his presidency.” 

Indeed, Trump’s use of executive power so far has centered on undoing Barack Obama’s legacy, many elements of which Obama had bypassed Congress to carry out. Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the Paris climate accord, decertified the Iran nuclear pact, and in perhaps his most explosive decision, announced the end of DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which protects some 800,000 young unauthorized immigrants from deportation. 

Obama himself foresaw the risk of relying on executive authority – and even warned President-elect Trump to be careful about going down that path.

“Going through the legislative process is always better, in part because it’s harder to undo,” Obama told NPR a month before leaving office. 

It wasn’t until the third year of Obama’s presidency, after the Democrats had lost control of the House, that he began to rely on executive power to enact major policy shifts. So comparing one year of Trump with eight years of Obama isn’t quite fair. 

Trump, like Obama, began his presidency with both houses of Congress under his party’s control, and so going the legislative route to enact major policy change made sense. Besides, matters involving the federal budget and taxation must go through Congress. Initially, Trump struggled to learn the art of the legislative deal – failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” before passing tax reform. It was the only major piece of legislation he got through Congress in his first year. 

The true test of Trump’s approach to executive power may come a year from now – after the November 2018 midterm elections – if the Republicans lose control of one or both houses of Congress. 

Jim Urquhart/Reuters/File

Steam rises from the stacks of a coal-fired power plant near Point of the Rocks, Wy. The president has taken numerous steps to boost the coal industry in his first year in office, though employment among coal companies, because of market forces, has rebounded very little.

“If one of the houses does flip, there will be a lot of pressure on Trump to act as Obama did in the face of legislative opposition,” says Mr. Turley. 

And if Trump does move toward more aggressive use of executive authority, he will be following a certain tradition. Obama was dubbed an “imperial president,” just as he had accused his predecessor, George W. Bush, of being. Presidents Richard Nixon, Harry Truman, and Franklin Roosevelt were all parties to landmark Supreme Court cases challenging their aggressive uses of executive power. 

A larger question may be whether Congress can find its way back to its rightful place as a vehicle for bipartisanship and compromise. Scholars on the left and right speak of how polarization and other factors have made the legislative branch increasingly dysfunctional. 

“I think the greatest challenge facing the Trump administration – or actually, any administration – these days is that Congress is broken,” says Daniel Bonevac, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He blames budgeting procedures put in place after Watergate that had the unintentional effect of making compromise more difficult. 

“I don’t think President Trump is responsible, in short, for the change in norms,” says Mr. Bonevac. “I think he’s a response to the change in norms.” 

A controversial travel ban

In his inaugural address, on Jan. 20, 2017, Trump painted a bleak picture of “forgotten men and women” and “American carnage.” 

Evan Vucci/AP

Mr. Trump dances with first lady Melania Trump at an inaugural ball in Washington.

“Now arrives the hour of action,” the new president pledged. 

A week later, Trump announced a “travel ban,” temporarily barring entry into the US by nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries. It was Trump’s first major executive order, and it suggested that the billionaire businessman used to issuing commands and seeing them carried out would try the same approach from the Oval Office. 

The checks and balances limiting the power of American presidents, as enshrined in the Constitution, were in for a test.

The answer came quickly. Within days, amid protests at American airports, a federal judge blocked the measure nationwide. Legal experts slammed the order as sloppily drafted. Trump responded with decidedly unpresidential rhetoric, lashing out on Twitter at “this so-called judge” – an echo of his 2015 slur against the Mexican-American judge handling the lawsuit against Trump University. 

But the government agencies implementing the ban backed down, following the judge’s order. A revised travel ban was also blocked, and in December, the Supreme Court allowed a third version to proceed in full while lower courts review the merits. 

That decision suggests the Supreme Court could uphold the ban, in keeping with the principle that presidents have broad authority to control who may enter the country. And so, in the end, Trump may well prove victorious on this issue. But the path to fulfillment has been bumpy. 

Despite Trump’s desire to present himself as the biggest and the best, his use of executive orders has not been unusual. Obama issued an average of 35 per year, President Ronald Reagan 47, and President Jimmy Carter 80. Trump is on track to issue 59 in his first year (he had signed 55 through the end of 2017). But it’s not about numbers; it’s about what the orders do.

The Twitter effect

Most journalists covering the White House have the same routine: Wake up, grab phone, check @realDonaldTrump to see what’s on POTUS’s mind. 

Trump’s early-morning tweets can set the day’s agenda. At times, they merely let people know what he was watching that morning – often Fox News. They can be witty or pungent, controversial or straightforward. Some contain falsehoods.

Sometimes Trump’s tweets push the bounds of good taste, as when he called North Korean President Kim Jong-un “short and fat.” But over the course of a day, Trump’s Twitter feed is rarely dull. And it is arguably the most revolutionary aspect of his presidency. With this simple tool, Trump has changed the tone of an office that is usually dignified, often a force for national unity, and turned it on its head. Internationally, Trump tweets have stoked diplomatic riffs. In the US, political polarization has deepened. 

But Twitter is Trump’s way of communicating directly with his base, and his supporters appreciate that. 

“I follow him because I want to see what he’s saying myself and not have someone interpret it for me,” says Annie Anthony, a 50-something Trump voter who runs a volunteer center in Wilmington, N.C. 

But she calls Trump’s language “unprofessional” – a common complaint, even among Trump supporters. “He uses words like ‘sad’ and ‘bad.’ That’s first-grade language,” says Ms. Anthony, speaking at a recent focus group organized by pollster Peter Hart. “We’re an intelligent population who elected you. Represent us!”

Trump’s Twitter feed, in fact, isn’t just about the president and his phone. It’s an entire enterprise, with input from social media director Dan Scavino and other advisers. 

A Trump White House insider identifies three types of Trump tweets. “There’s one kind where he’s sitting there at 5 in the morning in his pajamas, tweeting,” he says. “These are the kinds of things that make his staff scream into pillows.”

The next kind of tweet involves Trump saying, “Hey, Dan, get in here,” referring to Mr. Scavino. Trump says what he wants tweeted, then Scavino composes the words and puts it out. “I’ve been in the Oval Office and seen this,” says the source. 

Then there’s the third kind of tweet that never crosses Trump’s desk. Most are anodyne, and come from senior aides – Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, the White House counsel’s office, says the Trump insider. Occasionally, there are slip-ups – such as the recent tweet about former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn that called into question what Trump knew when he fired him. Trump lawyer John Dowd took the blame for composing that tweet.

“I think that was one of these categories where Trump really never saw the darn thing,” says the Trump insider. 

Presidential historians are struck, perhaps above all else, by how Trump’s use of Twitter has shaped his presidency. “Imagine if Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy had had a hot mic in the Oval Office, and that every time they had a thought, it would go out over the airwaves,” says Ms. Perry of the University of Virginia. 

She notes that Roosevelt did just 30 radio “fireside chats” over 12 years, and President Kennedy held an average of two TV news conferences a month. 

“They had a sense that they didn’t want to be overexposed,” says Perry. “Now, it’s fascinating there’s someone in the Oval who doesn’t worry about overexposure.”

Presidential scholar Matthew Dickinson says that beneath all the “surface churning,” it’s too soon to say if the Trump presidency has brought more fundamental shifts in the relative power of the president vis-à-vis Congress and the courts. 

“But I do see a president who has transformed our expectations on a daily basis about what a president can do in social media, in public relations,” says Mr. Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. 

Overturning regulations

Ever the showman, Trump had props ready when he walked into the White House’s Roosevelt Room on Dec. 14 to talk deregulation: piles of paper representing regulations in 1960 (20,000 pages, he said) and today (185,000 pages, standing 6 feet tall). 

A big red ribbon stretched across the higher pile, and with oversized scissors, Trump cut through the “red tape” – a bit of theater meant to symbolize his aggressive efforts to roll back regulations. 

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

President Trump cuts a red tape while touting deregulation at the White House. The piles represent the number of regulations in 1960 vs. today.

“We’re just getting started,” Trump said, speaking of a major deregulation effort that goes to one of his campaign mantras: “Drain the swamp.”

In Trump’s lexicon, the term “swamp” can be interpreted broadly – the party “establishments,” the lawyers, the lobbyists, the media, and the bureaucrats of “permanent Washington” who hinder economic growth, he says, with needless rules and regulations. 

Trump has spent his short political career trying to lay waste to all those forces. Many key positions at government agencies remain unfilled, some even lacking a nominee. This may seem to be a swamp-draining exercise, though it also hinders Trump’s ability to carry out his policies. 

On the regulatory front, Trump’s first year has been momentous – and highly controversial. In January, one of his first executive orders required that two regulations be eliminated for every new one. By December, Trump claimed a ratio of 22 to 1, including two eliminated through congressional action that reportedly saved the government more than $480 million. 

The Treasury Department has targeted some 90 banking and financial regulations. The Department of Education has rescinded Obama-era rules on sexual assault on campus and regulations on for-profit colleges. “Net neutrality” – the principle of equal access to internet content – is gone. 

But the poster child of Trump-era deregulation has to be Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environment Protection Agency. Among the scores of actions taken, Mr. Pruitt’s EPA has moved to rescind Obama’s Clean Power Plan, aimed at combating global warming; eliminated rules blocking construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines; and moved to open up off-shore drilling in most US waters, including areas currently protected. 

Scott G. Winterton/The Deseret News/AP

US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke rides in the Bears Ears National Monument, a federally protected expanse in southeastern Utah that the Trump administration has dramatically shrunk in size.

“Like it or not, [deregulation] seems to be one area where he’s doing what he said he would do,” says Susan Dudley, director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center.

Many business leaders believe Trump’s deregulation effort has fueled the booming stock market. True or not, it has at least forced a rebalancing of power in Washington. “The bureaucracy, scarcely mentioned in the Constitution, is a huge branch of government now,” says Dickinson. “It’s not the sexiest topic, but increasingly it’s where the action is. It’s where all these competing powers are vying for influence.”

Trump’s attention to the “administrative state” is a welcome development, at least from a constitutional standpoint, says Turley. “I don’t happen to agree with his priorities; for one thing I’m sort of a tree-hugger,” says Turley. “But there was a need to rebalance power, particularly between Congress and the agencies. We’re seeing a real effort now in Congress to find ways of reinforcing congressional oversight.”

Soon after taking office, top aides to Trump and the congressional leadership met to deploy a little-used law called the Congressional Review Act to eliminate Obama’s final regulatory actions. In all, 14 regulations were overturned in short order. 

It was a quiet but significant effort – and a reminder that Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, has more power than it often chooses to use. And it enabled Trump to add to his tally of promises kept. 

Promises kept

Prototypes for Trump’s promised wall on the US-Mexican border went up in October. His “travel ban” is in effect. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, bucking decades of US policy and sparking an uproar. He took action against “sanctuary cities,” though a federal judge blocked the order. He passed the first major tax reform in 30 years. 

Julie Watson/AP

People pass graffiti on a border barrier in Tijuana, Mexico. President Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation’s immigration controls shortly after taking office, including signing an executive order to jumpstart construction of his promised United States-Mexico border wall.

Though Trump failed to repeal Obamacare, he used tax reform to kill off a key component – the individual mandate to buy health insurance. A record number of appeals court judges were confirmed in Trump’s first year, as was conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. 

“Probably more than any president in my lifetime, he’s kept his promises,” says Turley. 

This, despite the dark shadow hanging over the Trump presidency from the start – the Russia investigation, led by special counsel Robert Mueller since May. Inside the White House, there’s no doubt the probe has been a distraction, especially after the indictments and plea deals of former Trump advisers. But checking off agenda items has been a salve.

The jury is out on whether Trump is governing as a populist. Big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans belie that label. And his promises of reduced engagement abroad have yet to materialize. 

But through it all, Trump has held onto his core supporters – albeit with historically low job approval for a first-year president, at 39 percent on average through the end of 2017, according to Gallup. 

Still firmly in his camp are the Trumpettes, a group of wealthy women who began pushing Trump to run for president back in 2015. On Jan. 18, 2018, at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., they will host a $300-a-ticket bash to celebrate his first year in office. 

For Trump, the Jan. 20 anniversary will be a chance to tout accomplishments, and for Democrats, a day to redouble their resolve to fight – and look forward to the November midterms. Both the House and even the Senate are “in play,” analysts say, especially after the Democratic sweep in Virginia and New Jersey last November, and Senator Jones’s improbable victory last month in Alabama. Women are turning out to vote and running for office in large numbers, ready to do battle against the Trump agenda. A big blue wave appears to be forming. 

Trump himself plans to campaign heavily for Republicans ahead of the midterms, to which Democrats say, “Bring it on.” A high-profile Trump is their best motivator. 

The top legislative agenda items for 2018 are welfare reform and infrastructure. But with the Republican majority in the Senate now down to 51-49, passing anything significant will be that much more difficult – particularly if Trump loses either house of Congress in the midterms. “On the homefront, there’s been a lot of bluster, though I think he’s learning that the government domestically doesn’t run like a reality show or a business,” says Mr. Healy of the Cato Institute. But overseas, he adds, “the executive branch seems as unrestrained as ever.”

Trump’s ability to act unilaterally abroad has sparked particular concern over nuclear-armed North Korea. In November, fears over whether Trump can be trusted with US nuclear weapons – whose use he can authorize on his own – spurred the first hearings in Congress in 41 years to examine who should control the arsenal.

No further action has been taken, though on another matter – Trump’s ability to remove economic sanctions against Russia – Congress did vote to constrain the president. The larger questions over how Trump handles the powers of the presidency, both formal and informal, hang in the balance. The Trump Show, Year 2, has just begun.

On a recent morning in this city in northeastern China, about 20 children take turns sliding heavy granite stones across a sheet of ice toward a red, white, and blue bull's-eye. Their parents look on in eager anticipation, snapping photographs from behind a plexiglass barrier.

After each child has a final turn, an instructor calls them over for a group photo on the ice before they depart. For many, it was their first attempt at curling, but Zheng Jiabin, the co-founder of the Trans Curling Club, is hopeful that it won’t be their last.

“Curling is low risk and easy to learn,” he says. “It only takes 15 minutes for us to teach a person how to play. If they play three times, they’ll be addicted.”

Curling may be one of the more obscure winter sports – it is the only one that requires brooms – but its popularity speaks to China's broader embrace of activities involving ice and snow. While much of the world is preparing for the Winter Olympics that start Feb. 9 in South Korea, China is already looking ahead to its turn.

Last November, the Chinese government announced plans to get 300 million people involved in winter sports by the time Beijing and the nearby city of Zhangjiakou host the games in 2022. Hundreds of new ice rinks and ski resorts are being built to accommodate millions of first-time skiers, hockey players, and yes, even curlers. 

“There’s no doubt that because of the Winter Olympics, we are going to promote winter sports in China to a new level,” says Tan Jianxiang, a professor of sports sociology at South China Normal University in Guangzhou. And as the living standard of millions of Chinese continues to improve, Dr. Tan adds, “our love for winter sports will last well beyond the Olympics.”

An economic dividend

China’s winter tourism industry is on track to more than double in size by 2022, according to a new report by the China Tourism Academy.  The report estimates that the number of winter tourists will increase from 170 million to 340 million over the next four years, and that the industry’s revenues will rise from 270 billion yuan ($41 billion) to 670 billion yuan ($102 billion).

Such an expansion would help China's transition from an economy that depends on credit-fueled investment and government spending in heavy industries to one anchored by consumer spending. The country’s gross domestic product grew 6.7 percent in 2016, a 26-year low, before accelerating to 6.9 percent in the three months to Sept. 30. 

China’s growth is expected to slow further, which means a greater reliance on service industries like tourism, including winter sports, to pick up the slack. 

Last December, the National Development and Reform Commission, the government agency that helps oversee economic planning, announced plans to invest 2 trillion yuan in tourism by 2020 by attracting more private investment into the industry. The commission’s goal is for tourism to contribute more than 10 percent of annual economic growth by then.

A large chunk of that growth is expected to come from China’s newfound interest in winter sports, especially among those in the country’s growing middle class. The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that China had 116 million middle-class and afluent households last year, up from 2 million in 2000. Eager for new ways to spend their disposable income, many have adopted winter pastimes such as ice skating and skiing.

“It’s increasingly obvious that industries like sports, medicine, health, and culture are the next growth points in China’s economy,” says Zhao Xijun, a finance professor at Renmin University in Beijing. “More and more middle-class people have time and money to spend on their favorite sports.”

To meet the rising demand for winter sports – and prepare for the Olympics – China announced in November 2016 that it planned to build 300 new ski resorts and 500 new ice rinks by 2022. In Beijing alone, the municipal sports bureau plans to build 66 new indoor rinks. The city now has about 30. 

Hockey slides into view

As more rinks open and excitement builds for the 2022 Games, sports like hockey have started to take off. In September, the North American-based National Hockey League played its first ever game in the country: an exhibition match between the Los Angeles Kings and the Vancouver Canucks in Shanghai.

Meanwhile, Song Andong, the first NHL player born in China, has become a national star. The New York Islanders drafted Mr. Song in 2015, tuning him into an idol for thousands of players in youth leagues across the country.

In Harbin, a city famous for its annual ice sculpture festival, Mr. Zheng estimates that close to 10,000 people have participated in lessons and other activities at the Trans Curling Club since it opened in late June. The club is located in a massive shopping center that includes an indoor ice rink and, as its centerpiece, the world’s largest indoor ski resort. The resort has six ski runs and covers more than 64,000 square feet.

Few, if any, winter sports have received as much attention in China as skiing, which is popular among the newly rich and young urbanites. Developers have been pouring money into resorts across the country, and the government has announced that it wants 1,500 miles of new ski trails built before the 2022 Games.

With peak ski season approaching, Ren Jianjun, the founder of an outdoor adventure company in Beijing, doesn’t want to miss out. Last year, more than 2.6 million skiers visited the area of Chongli, the planned site for freestyle skiing and snowboarding events in 2022. Even more are expected to go this year.

“In big cities like Beijing, the effect of the Winter Olympics has been huge,” says Mr. Ren, whose company has organized weekend ski trips since 2013. During its first winter, only about a dozen people signed up for each trip, compared to 100 people last winter.

Ren’s biggest concern this season is the competition from new, like-minded companies. As skiing and other winter sports become more popular in China, he’s not the only one looking to cash in.

Xie Yujuan contributed to this report.

The mosque loudspeaker crackles to life, just as it does five times a day, every day, in this quiet village just outside the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

But instead of the typical melodious call to prayer, the voice booming from the minaret is all business.

“If you are interested in learning about your family-planning options, please come to the health center immediately,” he begins in Wolof, the local language. “The program will begin shortly.” 

Religion announces itself loudly in Senegal, which is more than 90 percent Muslim. Paintings of marabouts – leaders of the country’s popular Muslim brotherhoods – stare down from above grocery store tills and dangle from the rear-view mirror of yellow taxis. Cars rapides, the wheezing, colorful mini-buses that serve as public transportation here, are often scrawled with alhamdulillah (“Praise be to God”) – along their sides and on their flaking bumpers. And the word inshallah, or “God willing,” passes as an affirmative answer to almost any question here, from “Will it rain today?” to “Do you have potato chips in stock?” 

So when public health officials and international nongovernmental organizations began pushing to expand access to birth control here, it made sense that they would begin at the mosque.

Ryan Lenora Brown/The Christian Science Monitor

The local clinic in the village of Beer, near Senegal's capital Dakar, hosts regular visits from Marie Stopes International, a family-planning NGO that provides contraceptives to local women.

“Any time we come to a town, the first thing we do is go to a religious leader to explain what we are doing, so that they can become our link with the population,” says Michèle Diop Niang, the Senegal program director for Marie Stopes International Senegal, a family planning NGO. “It’s very important because where we work, if people don’t have the support of a religious leader, they won’t use family planning at all.”

In much of the world, including the United States, such an alliance between reproductive health advocates and conservative religious leaders might seem well, unholy.

But in Senegal, it was a natural choice. And advocates say that since imams started getting involved, birth control is beginning to enjoy far wider social acceptance here. Since 2011, the number of married Senegalese women using modern contraceptives has doubled from 12 percent to about 23 percent, according to the Senegalese statistics and demography agency.

“Of course it’s not the only factor, but religious leaders have been an integral part of the strategy, and one that’s showing results,” says Pape Amadou Gaye, a Senegalese public health expert and the president and chief executive of Intrahealth International, a nonprofit that works in Senegal. 

Modern means, old message?

About 50 women and a smattering of men have gathered in the courtyard of Beer’s poste de santé, or clinic, whose low-slung buildings are the same color as the sand whipping up all around them. A few minutes later, Médoune Giss, the bespectacled local chief and imam, saunters in wearing an immaculately pressed sky-blue boubou robe, clutching his smartphone, and the program begins. 

“Look, our objective is not to tell you ‘Don’t have kids,’ but we want to advise you on how to do it in a way that’s good for your health,” says Coumba Dieng, who leads the informational presentation that begins each one of Marie Stopes’ “mobile clinics,” which travel around the country giving family planning advice and contraceptives to women in remote areas. (Last year, the organization’s 11 mobile teams reached about 67,000 women countrywide, according to the organization’s internal figures).

That idea, Ms. Dieng says, is crucial to winning over the Senegalese, who value big families and often see childbearing as a religious duty. She dangles a condom in front of her audience and explains that contraceptives can can help women space out their children so they can be stronger, less exhausted mothers. 

“My dad was an imam and he was the one who taught me about how the Quran tells us to space out our children,” says Dieng, who wears patchwork parachute pants and a tight blue head wrap with her white Marie Stopes T-shirt. “I learned from my father to see work for health as a devotion to God.”

This idea – that modern contraception is an extension of traditional Islamic practices – has been key to winning over both imams and the general population here. It’s based on passages from the Quran that instruct women to breastfeed for at least two years, a natural (if imperfect) form of birth control.

“Family planning is just a new word for what we have always done according to Islam,” says Seyni Cisse, an imam in the southern city of Ziguinchor. “It’s a modern means to do an old thing.”

Making it personal

Of course, not everyone agrees. Rates of contraceptive use in Senegal and other West African countries still rank among the lowest in the world, and only about half the women who want to be using birth control are. Contraceptives remain hard to access, especially in remote areas, and knowledge of how to use them scant. Many religious leaders, meanwhile, remain opposed to contraceptives, and even those who do support them are careful to say Islam only sanctions birth control for married women in monogamous relationships. 

But the situations that bring religious leaders around to birth control here are often far more personal than Quranic doctrine, says Aminata Mané, a women’s rights activist in Ziguinchor. For decades, she says, she and other feminist activists here fought to get local women greater access to birth control – often with little success.

“It was hard to talk about in Muslim communities,” she says.

Then, about five years ago, an influential local imam got a call from a local hospital – one of his wives was in labor, and it wasn’t going well. When he reached her side, the midwife on duty gave them an ultimatum – stop having children, or you could die. 

“That was a turning point,” Ms. Mané says. “Since then in his preaching he speaks about family planning, and he’s brought many other imams with him.” 

Efforts to expand access to family planning in Senegal are bolstered by the Ouagadougou Partnership, an alliance of nine Francophone West African countries and several international aide groups set up in 2011 to rapidly expand access to family planning in the region.

But to really accelerate that process in Senegal, the country now needs to discuss contraception in a broader way, says Mr. Gaye, of Intrahealth. 

“I hope in coming years people can be a little more courageous and talk about the non-health benefits too,” he says.

Backat the clinic in Beer, Dieng finishes her presentation and looks up at the crowd. “We’ll start consultations now,” she says. “But first, a prayer.”

Almost in unison, 60 heads drop. Imam Giss stands up.

“You know, the most important thing in your life is your health. You can be a millionaire but if you don’t have your health you have nothing,” he begins. “Marie Stopes, may God bless you for bringing health to us. He will bless you.”

Maguette Gueye contributed reporting from Ziguinchor, and Thomas Faye contributed reporting from Beer. Ryan Lenora Brown’s reporting in Senegal was supported by the International Reporting Project. 

Tuntematon sotilas

A Finnish officer leads his men as they retreat under fire across a river in Finnish Karelia during the 1941-44 Continuation War with Russia, in a scene from 'The Unknown Soldier,' directed by Aku Louhimies.

In a Russian city overrun by Finnish forces, a beautiful Russian girl surprises her conquerors by bursting into dance, then proceeds to seduce one of the Finns.

A flotilla of Finnish assault boats, guns blazing, move in perfect unison across a Karelian river as Russian artillery bursts around them.

A Finnish sergeant, at the end of his tether after three years of combat, methodically mows down an entire company of Russian ski soldiers with his machine gun, eyes ablaze.

These are some of the scenes which have alternately beguiled, angered, and mesmerized the hundreds of thousands of Finns who have flocked to the latest film version of “The Unknown Soldier,” a classic 1954 novel by Väinö Linna about the experiences of a Finnish rifle company during World War II. Some say this version, written and directed by veteran Finnish director Aku Louhimies, is the best.

Whether or not that is the case, the new film, appearing at a moment when Russia is reasserting her military power, has clearly struck a nerve with Finns, both because of the film’s inherent artistic qualities, as well as its geopolitical currency.

“I tried to go a little deeper than the other versions,” says Mr. Louhimies, who says he got the idea for the film when he was in the army himself 30 years ago. Assisting him was his friend, actor Eero Aho, whose performance as the alternately possessed and sentimental Antero Rokka, the aforementioned sergeant and central character of the film has also drawn praise.

“I wanted to give a three-dimensional picture of war,” says Louhimies, “without glorifying it or condemning it, but showing it like it is, including the toll it takes on the men.”

War and introspection

Since “Tuntematon sotilas” opened in October, more than 940,000 Finns – over 17 percent of the population – have seen it, making it the most successful Finnish film in recent history. “A national sensation” is how Ilta-Sanomat, one of the main newspapers, describes it.

Undoubtedly one of the reasons for the popularity of the film – which is set during the so-called 1941-44 Continuation War, which Finland initiated in order to gain back the territory it had lost to the Soviet Union after the 1939-40 Winter War – is the sheer scale of the production. The three-hour film cost 7 million euros ($8.5 million) to make, a Finnish record. All told, Louhimies employed more than 3,000 extras in the movie, which is particularly clear in epic battle scenes that recall such classics of the war film genre as “Paths of Glory” and “Apocalypse Now.”

In one Helsinki theater showing the film, one could sense the sense the awe and pride of the viewers as they watched hundreds of their forefathers march into battle with “the hereditary enemy from the East,” as Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, the commander-in-chief of Finnish forces during World War II, described Russia – as well as their horror when their on-screen kinsmen were strafed and blown up by the Soviet Air Forces.

However, as gripping as the combat scenes in the film are, they are not the only reason for the film’s extraordinary appeal, or what differentiates it from the prior versions, observers suggest.

“Some of the most moving scenes in the film have nothing to do with combat,” says Michael Franck, a noted Finnish documentarian. “I was particularly struck by the scenes of Rokka, when he is on home leave on his farm, and I think audiences were too.”

Another aspect of the film which has drawn high marks was Louhimies’ decision to use a number of Russian actors to humanize the “hereditary enemy,” particularly Diana Pozharskaya, who plays the part of Vera, the girl from Petrozavodsk who seduces one of her conquerors.

“It was a great honor for me to participate in ‘Unknown Soldier,’ says Ms. Pozharskaya, who comes close to stealing the film. Pozharskaya, who is based in Moscow, says she read the original novel as part of her preparation for the role, which Louhimies created for her.

“I learned a lot I didn’t know before about the history of our two countries’ relations,” she says. “I knew that we had fought a long war with Finland,” she said, referring to the two back-to-back wars which the two countries fought during WWII. “But I didn’t know that Russia started the cycle.”

The fact that the film appears at a time when tensions in the Baltic region are on the rise may also explain its appeal.

“I saw the film with a friend,” says Alec Neihum, a student at Helsinki University who recently completed his compulsory military service. “Afterwards we found ourselves talking about the situation in Ukraine. I don’t think that was an accident.”

‘I want Finns to think about their history’

Another reason for the widespread interest in the film seems to be a new willingness on the part of Finns to confront the less pleasant aspects of their history. Unlike the Winter War, which most Finns consider their finest hour, they generally find little about the Continuation War, in which 75,000 Finns died, to be proud of.

For one, the Finns were the aggressors. Also, after achieving their original objective of regaining their lost territory, the rapacious Finns went on to annex part of Russia before ultimately being thrown back.

As Vera reminds her Finnish lover, “You invaded us.”

Also, the Finns entered the war as a co-belligerent with Nazi Germany, an uncomfortable truth which Louhimies does not gloss over. During the war, in June 1942, Adolf Hitler flew to Finland in arguably the most infamous moment in Finnish history to help celebrate Mannerheim’s 75th birthday. Louhimies includes a portion of the original newsreel of Hitler’s visit in the movie.

“I think that it is good and necessary for Finns, especially young Finns, to learn about their history, and the film indeed does that” says Lasse Laaksonen, a noted Finnish military historian.

“I want to make Finns think about their history,” says Louhimies. “But above all, I wanted to make a great film, and one that did complete justice to the novel.”

Yoan Valat/Pool/Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his New Year wishes to members of the diplomatic corps at the Elysee Palace in Paris Jan. 4. Mr. Macron has promised to crack down on 'fake news' in 2018.

In an annual Marist Poll, released in December, “fake news” ranked as the second-most annoying phrase Americans hear (“Whatever” is the perpetual winner).

But however overused or misused the term has become, fake news isn’t likely to go away soon. Instead the questions “How do we spot it?” and “What can we do about it?” are likely to loom even larger in 2018.

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are pledging to police themselves more vigorously. France and Germany, with strong concerns about the attempts of “fake news” to influence recent elections, are taking legislative action.

Beginning Jan. 1, online posts on major German social media sites (Facebook, etc.) deemed to contain “obviously illegal” material, such as hate speech or fake news, risk fines of as much as €50 million ($60.4 million). Individual citizens can report content they think qualifies.

Earlier this week French President Emmanuel Macron proposed new legislation that he said would “evolve our legal system to protect our democracy from fake news.” The law would make more transparent the sources of online content, and would have the power to block or remove anything determined to be “fake.” 

“If we want to protect liberal democracies,” Mr. Macron said, “we have to be strong and have clear rules.” The French leader has claimed that Russian sources spread misinformation about his 2017 election campaign.

The European Commission has also set out guidelines for social media sites, prodding them to act faster to identify and delete hate speech online.

Both countries need to proceed cautiously. Government-based efforts, however well intentioned, run the risk of impinging on citizens’ rights of free speech. 

More desirable would be an empowered citizenry, alert to detecting, and rejecting, fake news when they see it. 

Several US states have begun to fight fake news by ramping up the teaching of news media literacy in schools.  

“I don’t think it’s a partisan issue to appreciate the importance of good information and the teaching of tools for navigating” news online, said Hans Zeiger, a Republican state senator in Washington State who cosponsored a bill on the topic last year. “There is such a thing as an objective source versus other kinds of sources,” he told The Associated Press, “and that’s an appropriate thing for schools to be teaching.”

Media literacy is being encouraged to be part of courses on subjects from civics to language arts. The prevalence of fake news during the 2016 US presidential campaign seems to be driving at least some of these efforts. 

Students from middle school to college can be “easily duped” by sites they visit online, and they need to be better equipped to use their reasoning ability to sort truth from fiction and detect bias, concluded a study published by researchers at Stanford University.

Students should be able to not only cite sources for material they present in their schoolwork but also be able to explain why the sources are credible.

To be responsible citizens, adults need to take on this same task of winnowing the tares from the wheat as they go about the important job of learning what’s happening in the world. 

As Sgt. Joe Friday used to tell witnesses on the classic TV police drama “Dragnet,” “All we want are the facts, ma’am.” 

He rejected "fake news." Informed citizens are able to do that too.