Our Top Weekend Reads

This week, in an essay for Foreign Policy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren—a Democratic candidate in the 2020 U.S. presidential election—called for the United States to stand up to China as protesters continue to take to the streets in Hong Kong.

The People’s Republic of China has now outlived the Soviet Union. As Beijing celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding, Foreign Policy explored the big questions surrounding China’s future.

Meanwhile, local activists in Canada are working to implement policy solutions to the country’s worsening opioid epidemic, but politicians are reluctant to adopt them at the national level.

Here are Foreign Policy’s top weekend reads.

People hold signs reading “Don’t shoot our kids” as they gather in the Tsuen Wan area of Hong Kong on Oct. 2.

1. It Is Time For the United States to Stand Up to China in Hong Kong

U.S. President Donald Trump continues to stand idly by as China cracks down on protestors in Hong Kong, but the United States needs a president capable of standing up both for U.S. economic interests and its values abroad, Elizabeth Warren writes.

Foreign Policy illustration/Getty Images

2. 70 Years of the People’s Republic of China

The country marked its 70th anniversary with a massive military parade. Foreign Policy published a series of articles that ask: What historical trends help shape its trajectory, and what does the future look like for the world’s rising superpower? Is China an awakening giant or a stumbling one?

National Security Advisor John Bolton listens to U.S. President Donald Trump speak during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the Oval Office of the White House on April 9. Alex Wong/Getty Images

3. John Bolton Is Ready to Go Rogue

Upon his early departure as U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, Alexander Haig issued a blistering attack of Reagan’s foreign policy. But Reagan’s popularity never wavered. As John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, goes on the attack, history shows that the president might still have the advantage, John Gans writes.

Newly recruited Houthi fighters chant slogans as they ride a military vehicle during a gathering in the capital, Sanaa, to mobilize more fighters to battlefronts to fight pro-government forces in several Yemeni cities on Jan. 3, 2017.MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images

4. Saudi Arabia’s Self-Fulfilling Houthi Prophecy

Riyadh launched its bombing campaign in Yemen in the belief that Iran was covertly supporting the Houthi rebels. That wasn’t accurate, but the intervention caused Iran to become more heavily involved anyway, Rawan Shaif writes.

Users make their way into a pop-up safe injection site in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Jan. 26, 2018. John Lehmann/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

5. Canada’s Drug Crisis Has a Solution. Politicians Don’t Like It.

As the opioid crisis worsens in Canada, grassroots activists are testing policy solutions in the country’s hardest-hit areas. The problem? National politicians refuse to get on board, Justin Ling writes.