Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

College students pack the train station in Hefei, Anhui province, China, after universities let them return home more than a month before the normal holiday period, to ensure they were not stuck at school amid a major wave of COVID-19, Dec. 10, 2022.

As a sandstorm and frigid winds swept Beijing this week, parents bundling infants in blankets and leading small children by the hand lined up outside a fever clinic. Down the block, other lines formed outside pharmacies, where people made quick purchases and hurried away, gripping bags of herbal medicine.

Scenes like this are playing out across China’s capital in an atmosphere more subdued than celebratory as a COVID-19 outbreak runs rampant following the lifting on Dec. 7 of many of the nation’s strict controls. Restaurants, tea shops, malls, and movie theaters have reopened for business, only to sit deserted. 

The unfolding health crisis in the capital underscores how China’s abrupt abandonment of its “zero-COVID” strategy risks creating significant short-term social and economic disruptions, as the country is unprepared for a wave of cases that local experts estimate will impact 840 million people. Indeed, just as the intrusive COVID-19 lockdowns curtailed economic growth and sparked large-scale protests, China’s reopening is causing its own setbacks, as staff absences halt businesses and many people hunker down at home.

Still, experts predict brighter days await the country later next year. China’s reopening offers opportunities to rekindle economic growth, revitalize society, and reintegrate with the world after three years of extreme internal controls and isolation. But how China grapples with the next three to six months will prove a major test of the country’s health and governance systems, shaping how strongly it emerges from its COVID-19 endgame.

In Beijing, officials are working to calm the public and prevent the medical system from being overwhelmed by what they call an exponential rise in patients. They are opening hundreds of new clinics and appealing to residents not to call the emergency 120 phone line unless the need is dire, after calls surged sixfold last week.

“Do not panic,” Li Ang, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, advised the public Tuesday. People must keep fears in check, he urged, quoting a Chinese idiom: “Don’t blanch at the mention of a tiger.”

Matter of trust

Wearing a black, padded jacket in the subfreezing weather, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, long the senior enforcer of China’s “zero-COVID” restrictions, visited the epicenter of Beijing’s outbreak on Tuesday with a new message.

Instead of insisting on the “clearing” of every case, she expressed sympathy for front-line medical workers, while conveying “[Communist Party] General Secretary Xi Jinping’s concern and greetings to the people of the capital.”

Apart from brief statements by Ms. Sun saying the danger of COVID-19 has waned, China’s top leaders have remained silent on the dramatic change in pandemic policy, shifting responsibility to national and local health officials. The result is a leadership void when the country needs it most, experts say.

“Now that the leader himself has abandoned zero-COVID … no one wants to be associated with this policy that has obviously failed,” says Donald Low, a public policy expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. At the same time, he says, “no one dares utter the words ‘live with COVID,’ because they have been opposing that for three years.”

Mr. Xi, who gained a rare third term in October, closely associated himself with the “zero-COVID” policy, hailing it as a demonstration of the superiority of China’s political system over those of the United States and other Western democracies.

China’s persistence until this month with Mr. Xi’s “zero-COVID” approach indicates a lack of policy flexibility that could have drawbacks in other areas, Mr. Low says. Although the policy succeeded in keeping COVID-19 cases and deaths low in China by world standards, its social and economic costs became unsustainable as authorities imposed ever harsher lockdowns to try to contain fast-spreading variants.

“The Chinese state has become far less adaptive, far less responsive, to a fast-evolving situation like a pandemic,” he says.

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Parents bring their children to a fever clinic in Beijing's Chaoyang District, as the capital faces an exponential increase in COVID-19 patients after lifting many controls this month, Dec.13, 2022.

After widespread protests and mounting cases helped trigger the policy’s end, the overnight lifting of many controls has created public confusion. Adding to the chaotic atmosphere is the growing inaccuracy of official data on cases, as testing declines sharply. Chinese experts are now downplaying the severity of COVID-19, directly contradicting years of propaganda proclaiming its lethality.

“People are skeptical and distrustful of the government,” says Mr. Low.

Travelers rejoice – and worry

At train stations across China last weekend, thousands of college students crammed onto trains to head home – released a month early by their universities so they could avoid getting stuck at school as COVID-19 cases surge.

“Some students were protesting because they were unhappy about the COVID policy,” said one student, who asked to remain anonymous. “Now the schools are sending all the students home early.”

The recent easing of travel controls is one way China’s leaders are shifting their priority from “zero-COVID” to revitalizing the country’s sluggish economy and gross domestic product growth, which has dropped to decades-low levels since 2020, and is only projected to recover to about 3% this year – less than leaders’ stated goal of 5.5%

Many Chinese welcome the lifting of travel restrictions, including the deactivation this week of a national cellphone app that tracked everyone’s movements to determine risk exposure. But as hundreds of millions of Chinese prepare to return to their hometowns next month for the Lunar New Year holiday, many worry about spreading COVID-19 to every corner of the country.

In terms of economic growth, “we will see things getting worse before they are getting better,” says Larry Hu, chief China economist for the Macquarie Group Ltd., in Hong Kong. “For three to six months, we will see disruptions in production and consumption,” he says, as “consumers will feel anxiety” over the outbreak.

It’s an anxiety felt deeply throughout the capital. At one giant shopping mall in Beijing, many stores have seen few customers since reopening last week. 

Mr. Xi emphasized at a recent Politburo meeting that China seeks to “significantly boost market confidence,” and signaled Beijing would offer more support to private companies – a move critical to alleviating China’s near-record youth unemployment of around 18%.

The bright spot is that China’s economy is likely to rebound strongly later in 2023, experts say. 

“We are expecting 5% growth,” says Mr. Hu. 

Seeking stability

Facing the urgent domestic pressures to minimize damage from the current COVID-19 outbreak and restart the economy, experts say China will seek to avoid foreign policy challenges in coming months.

China has “ample incentive to seek a relatively stable external environment,” says Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington. “The Chinese diplomatic charm offensive is understandable.”

Mr. Xi has recently embarked on a string of overseas trips – to Central Asia, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia – for a series of meetings with foreign leaders, ending nearly three years during which he made no official international trips.

China has not yet lifted its COVID-19 restrictions that severely limit inbound travelers from overseas, but the Stimson Center’s Ms. Sun expects China’s international exchanges to gradually increase.

“China is mobilizing think tank scholars to go out again and reengage,” she says. Foreign experts are also eager to visit mainland China, she adds, although some may have safety concerns.

Recently, China’s leaders have even been conducting a series of in-person visits with foreign leaders without imposing the usual quarantine requirements. 

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held a face-to-face roundtable with the heads of six international economic organizations – including World Bank President David Malpass and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva – in China’s southern Anhui province earlier this month. “China’s doors will be opened wider,” he promised the group, with leaders planning to “facilitate international exchanges and people mobility” in the coming months.

“China needs the world,” he said, “and the world also needs China.”

Patrick Semansky/AP

Cherelle Griner, wife of WNBA star Brittney Griner, speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Dec. 8, 2022, in Washington, with President Joe Biden (right) and Vice President Kamala Harris. Brittney Griner was freed from a Russian penal colony in return for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

A thought experiment... What is your immediate response to the following words and concepts: freedom and individual rights; justice and the rule of law; the vision of a long-separated family finally able to reunite for the holidays.

By far most of us, I’m sure, would say they’re all positive and worth cherishing. And so, too, would heads of government in America and other democracies across the globe, who argue that world politics cannot be only about the exercise of power or the search for short-term gain.

Politics should be rooted in values.

Yet the controversy surrounding United States President Joe Biden’s prisoner swap to secure the freedom of Brittney Griner, an American basketball star effectively held hostage in Russia, has underscored something too rarely acknowledged about such “values-based” foreign policy.

It’s a lot easier said than done.

Almost always, it requires weighing, or even surrendering, one deeply held value in order to secure another – especially when dealing with autocratic leaders for whom democratic values are irrelevant to the pursuit of their own policy goals.

Even on broad geopolitical questions which might seem straightforward – like the stand taken by America and its allies against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine – values-based policy often requires values choices.

In the service of his overriding goal – the defense of Ukraine’s democratic government – Mr. Biden has found himself needing to make nice with U.S. partners like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, whose records on human rights he knows to be appalling.

Still, the plight of Ms. Griner, and the several dozen other Americans held captive in Russia or in other autocratic states, throws up especially difficult choices.

Russian Federal Security Service/AP

WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner sits in the plane as she flies to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to be exchanged for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout on Dec. 9, 2022.

These prisoners are U.S. citizens. Some have been detained on trumped-up charges. Others have committed relatively minor offenses and been sentenced, in trials no democracy would recognize as fair, to long, grueling confinement.

They’re effectively being held to political ransom.

And in Ms. Griner’s case, President Biden decided to pay.

He agreed to release Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer arrested in 2008 after being ensnared in a U.S. sting operation. He was sentenced to a 25-year jail term for telling DEA agents he would sell arms to Colombian rebels, adding he had no problem if they were used against Americans seeking to disrupt that country’s cocaine trade.

In making the deal to free Ms. Griner, the president was clearly acting from a values-based impulse. Indeed, our “thought experiment” describes almost perfectly the arguments he would have made to himself, colleagues, and aides in deciding to pursue the deal.

For critics, however, it was a decidedly unequal trade: Russia’s “merchant of death” in return for a basketball player.

But what has unsettled even some Biden supporters about his decision are the values trade-offs it involved.

The deal did not secure freedom for two other Americans still held in Russia: Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine imprisoned on what both he and Washington say are invented charges of espionage; or Marc Fogel, a schoolteacher serving a 14-year sentence for possession of a small quantity of medical marijuana prescribed in the U.S.

And a more fundamental question is raising its awkward head: Didn’t agreeing to any deal, whatever the terms, risk encouraging Russia and other countries that have already seized Western nationals to engage in further hostage taking?

This last concern will have resonated with allies as well.

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP/File

Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine who was arrested for alleged spying in Moscow. Hopes that he would be freed, along with WBNA star Brittney Griner, in return for Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer, were dashed when only Ms. Griner was let go.

The Chinese government arrested two Canadian citizens in Beijing four years ago, just days after Canada had detained Meng Wanzhou, a top executive in the Chinese tech firm Huawei, in line with a U.S. extradition request. The Canadians were held for nearly three years, until the U.S. Justice Department reached a “deferred prosecution” deal with Ms. Meng, allowing her, and the Canadians, to return home.

And despite Mr. Biden’s efforts to include Mr. Whelan in last week’s deal, Russia conditioned his release on a Bout-size ransom from another ally, Germany. Moscow wanted the release of Vadim Krasikov, serving a life sentence for the murder of a Chechen separatist in Berlin in 2021 – something both the United States and Germany evidently agreed was a non-starter.

So in the end, if Ms. Griner was to be spared nine years in a Siberian penal colony, the choice that President Biden felt he was left with was stark: the Viktor Bout deal, or no deal at all.

That may, of course, be a powerful argument for choosing no deal. Many commentators in recent days, not just Mr. Biden’s political opponents, have suggested that’s what he should have done.

Yet perhaps the most powerful argument on the other side – for deciding to take even an imperfect deal in order to free even one captive citizen – rests on a tenet embedded not only in democracy, but in many religious faiths too.

It is a belief that helps distinguish democracies from regimes like Russia’s: that human beings are not mere commodities; that each person has fundamental rights, and fundamental value.

Kevin Wolf/AP

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks before the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act, earlier this month. The speaker role is a key power position in American government – the representative who fills the role is second in line of succession for the presidency, after the vice president.

Voters directly elect representatives to serve in Congress, but the leaders of those 435 House members and 100 senators are chosen through an internal – and, for many Americans, largely opaque – process.

Yet congressional leaders play a critical role in setting legislative agendas, wrangling votes, and communicating party priorities to the public.

The House has three main leadership roles: speaker, majority leader, and minority leader. The Senate has majority and minority leaders. In both chambers, the majority and minority whips also play an important, albeit secondary, role.

What do congressional leaders actually do?

The speaker of the House – currently Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California – is the most powerful member of that chamber, controlling everything from what legislation makes it onto the House floor for consideration to who sits on what committee. The speaker is also second in line of succession for the presidency, after the vice president.

The majority leader, the speaker’s right hand, tracks the maneuvering of the minority party and handles the day-to-day details of floor proceedings.

The minority party leader is its floor leader – but the House gives the minority far less power than the Senate, and the House minority leader has fewer strategic tools at their disposal.

Majority and minority whips liaise between the members and leaders of their party, helping to “keep everyone in line,” says Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – or at least alerting the leaders if a member intends to break ranks on a vote. “Party leaders really don’t like being surprised by anything,” he says.

In the Senate, the majority leader holds the most important role, followed by the minority leader and the whips, who play much the same role as in the House.

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, applauds as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican (center), and Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, of California, hold medals for recipients of a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony earlier this month. The power they wield in their congressional leadership roles is part of the democratic process that political scientists say every citizen should understand.

The vice president is the president of the Senate – although it’s rare for the vice president to actually preside over Senate proceedings, says Dr. Wallach.

In general, the Senate imposes more hurdles for leaders to go through. “A lot of what happens in the Senate requires unanimous consent,” says Dr. Wallach, while the House typically employs unanimous consent only for noncontroversial matters. That forces Senate leaders to find ways of doing things that both parties will find acceptable.

How are leaders selected?

In the House, the Democratic and Republican caucuses nominate a candidate for speaker, to be chosen in an open election on the floor when the new Congress convenes. Minority and majority leaders and whips of both chambers are elected in their party caucus prior to the swearing-in of a new Congress.

For the upcoming Congress, the leaders and whips of both parties in both chambers have already been elected, by secret ballots.

The speaker vote is expected Jan. 3. California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican nominee, is still working to secure the necessary votes to win the gavel. A winning candidate needs a majority of votes from those who are present and voting that day, which means Mr. McCarthy can only afford to lose a handful of Republicans. It’s possible the vote could go to multiple ballots, though such an event would be rare.

Candidates often win support based on geography or ideology, or strategic fundraising and campaigning for allies, says Dan Glickman, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and an 18-year veteran of the House. 

History shows that if leaders get reelected in their districts by voters and the balance of each chamber remains the same, they’re frequently reelected to their congressional leadership role as well. There are advantages to having the same leaders serve multiple terms, says Mr. Glickman. But after a point, it can also create a kind of stagnation. In the House in particular, younger lawmakers may have less of an incentive to continue to serve if they see no path to leadership roles – a criticism that was lodged at the current Democratic slate of House leaders before many of them decided to step aside next month.

Why should any of this matter to voters?

Americans have a vested interest in understanding the workings of Congress, which frequently might seem arcane but has a direct impact on their lives.

“Congress is one-third of our government and the closest of all the branches to the people,” says Mr. Glickman, who is also a former secretary of agriculture.

The speaker of the House is particularly consequential because that person is the third most powerful leader in government after the president and vice president, notes Sara Angevine, an assistant professor of political science at Whittier College.

Skilled congressional leaders can “negotiate policy through compromise and deliberation,” she adds. That’s become more difficult in an age of extreme partisanship and polarization – but it’s a vital thing to model for the electorate. “[Leadership] roles and the principles of deliberative democracy are very, very important for the entire electorate to be aware of.”

When Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner started her livestream following a high-profile corruption conviction last week, few expected the divisive former president to elicit a united response.

Yet, when espousing her innocence, she announced she would not run again for public office at any level, bringing together Argentines of all political stripes into a state of shock.

Ms. Kirchner and her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, have been mainstays in the Argentine political scene for three decades, creating a movement known as Kirchnerismo out of the ashes of Argentina’s economic collapse in the early 2000s. Part of the broader Peronist movement – a political umbrella group rooted in working-class support that took shape in the 1940s and shifts depending on the era – Kirchnerism has earned adoration from the nation’s poor and left-wing adherents. 

Kirchnerism, as the movement is known in English, is credited with improving the living conditions of millions of Argentines, paying off the country’s debt, and expanding a slew of social rights. But as the economic picture deteriorated in recent years and allegations of corruption surfaced, its broader appeal has waned. 

With her surprising pledge to bow out of politics, including next year’s presidential vote, the question now is what her stepping back will mean for the political movement she has come to define: Is Argentina facing the end of Kirchnerism?

Convicted of fraud

On Dec. 6, a panel of three judges convicted Ms. Kirchner of fraud in a kickbacks scheme that directed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for road projects to companies owned by a Kirchner business associate and family friend. The fraud occurred between 2003 and 2015, the years she and her late husband were at the helm of the country, and is estimated to have cost the state $926 million. 

Ms. Kirchner says she’s a victim of political and judicial persecution that aims to silence her brand of politics and the people she represents. She’s expected to appeal.

Kirchnerism earned its place in Argentina’s political canon because it presented a simple yet revolutionary idea: a clear road map for the country. Argentina was ruled by dictators in the 1960s and into the ’80s, followed by difficult years of nascent democracy in which the central aim was stability, not long-term planning. The prosperity of the 1990s, with a plan that pegged Argentina’s currency to the U.S. dollar and sold off state assets, led to economic and political chaos as the country defaulted on its debt in 2001. 

“Néstor and Cristina’s program was so clear in saying that there had to be redistribution of wealth, there had to be state intervention so that the market generates demand,” says Valeria Brusco, a political scientist who has studied Kirchnerism. “Those were new things,” especially for the nation’s youth, who rushed to support the Kirchners. While the movement had its problems and the power couple made mistakes, proposals around expanding workers’ rights and providing subsidies for families, and pensions for people who never had them, have left their mark. 

Last month, at a rally in the provincial capital city of La Plata, thousands of people filled a soccer stadium, singing political songs and chanting “Cristina, president, Cristina, president” while they waited for Ms. Kirchner to speak.

“Everything in due measure, and harmoniously,” Ms. Kirchner told the crowd, quoting Juan Domingo Perón, whose 1940s-era political movement carried on long after his 1974 death.   

Rodrigo Abd/AP

A supporter of Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner plays a bass drum before the verdict and sentence in a fraud trial against the politician in Buenos Aires, Dec. 6, 2022. The court sentenced Ms. Kirchner to six years in prison and a lifetime ban from holding public office. She's expected to appeal the decision.

Mr. Perón’s alliance with trade unions earned him a loyalty that endured among the working class, and that survived crackdowns by military dictators. The identity attached to being Peronist was passed down in families, much like being part of a resistance, says Ms. Brusco. 

But Peronism has had many ideological faces, shifting from right to left under different leaders, and at times with party members seeing each another as enemies, says Ignacio Labaqui, a political scientist and professor at the Catholic University of Argentina. During the ’90s, under President Carlos Menem, Peronism sidelined the working class for a neoliberal approach to economics. Under the Kirchners, it returned to its populist roots.

The survival of Kirchnerism could depend on its ability to adapt in similar ways, analysts say.

“Historically [Peronism] had a great advantage, which is flexibility and pragmatism, moving a little bit to the left in certain periods, and a little bit to right in others,” says Mr. Labaqui. But by rooting itself strictly in leftist politics and policies, he says, Kirchnerism has been stripped of Peronism’s characteristic flexibility.

Pablo Fuchs, a taxi driver in Buenos Aires, was 10 years old when Mr. Perón took power for a third time in 1973, and calls himself a lifelong Peronist. 

“We were at the bottom of the ocean in 2001,” says Mr. Fuchs. “Kirchnerismo represented spring, something unthinkable, and not just with its discourse, but with facts,” he says. “Even if on an individual level things have not been as good as might justify supporting them, from a collective perspective, for the society,” Kirchnerism is key to Argentina’s future – even if Ms. Kirchner retires.

“Most powerful”

Mr. Labaqui sees a bumpier path ahead for Kirchnerism. For starters, the memory of the Kirchner glory days is starting to look like “sepia-tinged photos in a history book.” 

From 2003 to 2007, under Mr. Kirchner, the Argentine economy grew generously. The growth continued under Ms. Kirchner, until about 2011. But by 2015, voters opted for a right-wing coalition led by President Mauricio Macri. Worsening poverty and growing inflation led to a return of Kirchnerism in 2019 under President Alberto Fernández, who was hand-picked by Ms. Kirchner. But it hasn’t produced the economic recovery many hoped for. 

“The key thing for most voters is the good years, the golden years,” says Mr. Labaqui. Their failure to return, even if some factors, like the pandemic, were out of this administration’s control, has led some loyalists to start looking elsewhere for political hope.

There’s also the issue of no clear succession plan if Ms. Kirchner truly does step down: While the names of some people have been floated, including the Kirchners’ son, Máximo, the brand is still centered on Ms. Kirchner as an individual. 

A shrewd intellectual and political mind with a leadership style that doesn’t shy away from confrontation, Ms. Kirchner has been scrutinized for her manner of speaking, reacting, and dressing. She’s shown little interest in appealing to those who aren’t in tune with her objectives, says Ms. Brusco, who believes Ms. Kirchner’s decision not to seek electoral office next year could actually strengthen her political brand. 

“Today, Cristina is the most powerful” individual in the political movement, says Mr. Labaqui. “That’s a problem for Kirchnerism because it doesn’t have another figure to step in.”

There are factions of Peronists who want to break free of Kirchnerism’s hold on the movement, but support for Ms. Kirchner continues to be strong in the densely populated ring of municipalities around the capital, Buenos Aires, which is a trove of key votes, Mr. Labaqui says. “People have sung the last rites to Kirchnerismo so many times that I’m not really convinced.”

Silvia Saravia, a leader of a social organization that fights for the rights of low-income workers and poor people, sees a new level of competition for Kirchnerism emerging. Her group, Barrios de Pie, provides social assistance in some of the nation’s more impoverished neighborhoods. Even in these supposed strongholds, Ms. Saravia says the light of Kirchnerism is flickering.

“This last conviction has hurt her image,” Ms. Saravia says. “People are in search of options.”

Ms. Kirchner has tried to separate herself from this administration’s record by criticizing certain policies, such as restructuring a $45 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund. But people still consider her at least partly to blame for a seemingly never-ending economic crisis that will see inflation hit nearly 100% this year. 

Ms. Kirchner “has said it many times, ‘We created this thing. We know that we can [sustain it],’” says taxi driver Mr. Fuchs. “Kirchnerismo will not disappear, because it’s a long-term project.”

Wild reeds, spindly acacia trees, and dusty mountains greet travelers to this remote, arid spot. Yet here, near the lowest point on Earth, Jordan’s royal family is hoping visitors find something uplifting: their common humanity.

By the River Jordan, near the spot where many believe Jesus was baptized and John the Baptist held his ministry, Jordan is embarking on building a new village and vast interfaith ecosystem that is promised to be the largest Christian pilgrimage and interfaith center in the Middle East.

In a ceremony last week, King Abdullah unveiled a “baptism zone” masterplan, including a village, biblical wilderness, museum, farms, and spiritual and study center next to the traditional baptism site.

The initiative brought together international advisers and a foundation directed by the monarch that they say is charged with creating a “haven for interfaith contemplation.”

Jordan and the Hashemite royal family, which acts as the custodian of the baptism site, hope the zone will be more than just a center for Christian pilgrims, but a gathering point for people of different faiths and nationalities and a showcase for Jordanian interfaith harmony.

Church leaders hope it will serve as an anchor for Christians from across the region.

“This will be a living city at the River Jordan and the site of baptism, a place and practice which unites Christians from all different churches and diversity,” says Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rai of Lebanon, Patriarch of Antioch for the Maronite Church, one of dozens of regional church leaders who attended the launch of the zone.

“Humanity needs a meeting place and a dialogue today, and the River Jordan is a meeting place not only for Christians, but for mankind.”

UNESCO site

The 360-acre baptism zone will be adjacent to Bethany Beyond the Jordan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of preserved wilderness and Byzantine- and Roman-era churches and monasteries that was rediscovered in 1995 and has been visited by Catholic and Orthodox popes.

The new village would allow visitors to spend multiple days by the baptism site, which they are currently required to vacate by sunset due its location within an international border.

“This is a gem not only for Jordan but the entire world, and we want to share it with the world,” says Baptism Site Director General Rustom Mkhjian.

Taylor Luck

Georgian pilgrims descend to the river at Bethany Beyond the Jordan, in the Jordan Valley, Jordan, Dec. 1, 2022.

Advocates are pitching the zone, to include a guesthouse, outdoor amphitheater, and village square built with traditional Eastern Mediterranean architecture and materials, as a place to explore the humble simplicity of the area, suitable for spiritual retreats. It sets aside a 100-acre “wilderness” containing flora and fauna mentioned in the Bible, with hiking trails down to the River Jordan.

“The baptism site is a sanctuary and haven of love, peace, and tranquillity. This zone is designed to be in harmony with nature, just as people were in harmony with nature 2,000 years ago, to share this light with the world,” says landscape architect Kamel Mahadin, lead designer in the consortium of Jordanian and American firms tasked with designing the zone.

Jordan hopes the zone can boost the number of visitors to the site – currently 200,000 to 240,000 annually – to more than a million per year.

Development of the site is expected to take several years. The Jordanian state is donating the land and inviting private investors to operate the guesthouse and restaurants. Much of the zone – such as the botanical gardens and museum campus – will require donations.

Message of peace

Bethany’s modern history is tied to the power of peace.

It was only the 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, ending decades of enmity, that allowed for the demining of the Jordan Valley and eventual exploration and rediscovery of the religious site.

When late Franciscan archaeologist Michele Piccirillo and Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed, the king’s cousin and current chair of the Baptism Site Commission, surveyed archaeological remains along historical pilgrimage paths by the River Jordan in 1995, the pair walked between unexploded ordnance for hours.

“This place has gone from an area full of land mines to an area full of pilgrims from across the world in just 27 years,” Mr. Mkhjian says while greeting visitors in Russian and Italian as they walk down to the river on a December afternoon. 

“What greater message of peace is there? That is the message we want to share with the world.”

Advocates say the new zone’s museum campus and research center are to encourage scholars and visitors to explore the message of peace in the three Abrahamic religions at a site with significance to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

“Christianity took its first steps from here, the lowest point on Earth and in the wilderness, before spreading across the world,” says Jordanian Nadim Muasher, an adviser on the zone who is currently building a Catholic church and nondenominational prayer center by the baptism site.

“This is about spreading the concept of humility and emphasizing values, not power. It is a message needed in today’s world,” Mr. Muasher says.

Taylor Luck

Pilgrims stand in front of a Greek Orthodox church at Bethany Beyond the Jordan, a site where many believed Jesus was baptized, in the Jordan Valley, Jordan, Dec. 1, 2022.

Culture of acceptance

It is also a message that is distinctly Jordanian.

A largely arid junction of trade routes linking North Africa, Asia and Europe, Jordan has acted as a place of refuge since antiquity, welcoming John the Baptist and early Christians fleeing persecution, and wave after wave of refugees and migrants through the centuries. The result is a culture of acceptance Jordanians say they aim to share with the world.

“With the arrival of Islam, Christians here embodied their Christian values by treating their Muslim neighbors and friends with love, friendship and respect, and Muslims embodied their Islamic values by treating their Christian friends and neighbors with love, friendship and respect,” says Fr. Dr. Ibrahim Dabbour, secretary-general of Jordan’s Council of Churches.

“There is equality and a harmony built on accepting and loving the other in Jordan that is special, which visitors to the zone can see.”

The baptism site already hosts an interfaith conference center and a Muslim shrine and mosque; thousands of Muslims and other non-Christians visit it each year.

On a recent afternoon, Irish, Italian, Georgian, Japanese, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Russian pilgrims and visitors walked through the site and down to the river; some waded into the water, others took photos or gazed across toward Jericho and Jerusalem beyond. 

Yet they, like all pilgrims, arrived in individual buses and cars, rarely mingled or mixed, and quickly departed – heading off for luxury hotels at the Dead Sea or in the capital Amman.  

Planners hope the new village will encourage people of different faiths and nationalities to stay in the same guesthouse and break bread at communal tables in the village plaza.

Stuart Jones, a former U.S. ambassador to Jordan and later Iraq who served as an adviser on the zone, says King Abdullah’s vision is for a “haven for interfaith dialogue and interfaith contemplation.”

“There is always going to be a need for a place like this where people can come for pilgrimage, for reflection, and to have a dialogue between peoples,” he says.

Reuters

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, U.S., Dec. 7, 2022.

Over the last couple of years, the public’s trust in stock markets has been strained repeatedly – by the pandemic, the meteoric rise and fall of so-called meme stocks, and lately the stunning collapse of FTX, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Yesterday the federal agency that monitors U.S. stock markets took a step meant to shore up that lost confidence. It endorsed the broadest set of new rules in nearly two decades to improve competition and deliver better prices to small investors. “The markets have become increasingly hidden from view, especially for individual investors,” said Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The proposed reforms cap a year of global efforts to bring greater transparency to trading, ranging from equities to carbon credits. They draw attention to some of the more opaque workings of the modern stock market. As a measure of their complexity, they run to 1,500 pages, and their economic benefit to individual investors is minimal. The commission estimates that the new rules could net small investors an additional $1.5 billion annually, or merely $1.08 per $100 traded.

But as a means of bolstering trust, they may pay important dividends. They are designed to address ways that modern trading practices have been reshaped by high-volume, computer-driven investment strategies that the commission says put small investors at an unknowing disadvantage.

One rule would require brokers to buy and sell stocks on behalf of small investors through a new auction mechanism. This would allow more traders an opportunity to bid for them, ensuring individual investors a better shot at more advantageous prices – higher for sellers, lower for buyers. Another reform would require investment firms and exchanges to publish monthly data on the stock prices they provide investors. The new rules also seek to decrease the potential for company executives to fall afoul of insider trading restrictions.

The commission drafted the proposals partly in response to the advent of meme stocks like GameStop, which in 2021 gained rapid artificial value through viral popularity on social media and just as quickly collapsed. Large-volume wholesale broker-dealers like Charles Schwab worry the new rules may infringe on free competition. Bourses like the New York Stock Exchange and IEX see the opposite.

By their nature, regulations offer a measure of the public mood. As a Harvard study found more than a decade ago, “distrust influences not just regulation itself, but also the demand for regulation.” The commission’s proposals are now open to a period of public debate through March of next year. Inviting scrutiny of trading practices that affect a majority of investors is itself a public good, reflecting how democratic societies build real value through trust.