FirstFT: Today’s top stories | Financial Times

Britain has declared that China is now in “a state of ongoing non-compliance” with the 1984 Sino-British joint declaration, which was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy after the territory returned to Beijing’s control in 1997.

Dominic Raab, foreign secretary, said radical changes planned by Beijing to restrict participation in Hong Kong elections represented a further clear breach of the legally binding declaration.

His comments came ahead of the publication this week of a UK foreign and defence policy, which will lead to Boris Johnson’s government setting out its strategy for dealing with China.

While David Cameron’s government claimed that the UK and China were engaged in a new “golden age”, Johnson will set a strategy to make Britain less reliant on Chinese investment and technology. (FT)

Coronavirus digest

• The US has crafted a plan with Japan, India and Australia to provide 1bn doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine to south-east Asian nations.

• A dispute has broken out between EU member states over coronavirus vaccine allocation in the latest fallout from AstraZeneca’s worsening supply shortfalls.

• Joe Biden said every US adult would be eligible for a coronavirus vaccination by May 1.

• Thailand postponed the public vaccination of its prime minister with the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab after three European countries paused their rollout.

• A year of the pandemic has laid bare the flaws of our great metropolises. Simon Kuper suggests how to make them healthier, cheaper and happier. (FT)

Here’s how the world’s illustrators responded to a year of Covid-19.

In the news

Germany’s Christian Democrats suffer heavy defeat Angela Merkel’s party slumped to its worst results in two former strongholds — Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate — as voters, angered by government missteps over coronavirus and several corruption allegations against CDU MPs, deserted the party in droves. (FT)

Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces new charges in Iran Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is facing a fresh legal charge in the country, just a week after she was released following five years of imprisonment. The British-Iranian charity worker appeared in court in Tehran on Sunday accused of engaging in “propaganda against the [Islamic Republic] establishment”. (FT)

Deadliest day in Myanmar since coup Security forces killed at least 39 people on Sunday, including 22 anti-coup protesters in the Hlaingthaya township and 16 protesters and one policeman who were killed in other places. Meanwhile, the Chinese garment factories in the area burnt after alleged arson attacks. (Reuters)

Met chief insists she will not quit over Everard vigil Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, insisted she would not resign after she came under growing pressure to explain how a vigil for a murdered woman ended in violent clashes. (FT, BBC)

Fears mount over North Korean ‘great leap backwards’ Foreign government officials, international aid workers, human rights activists and diplomats are urging the North Korean leader to partially reopen his country to foreign assistance amid mounting fears over food security and economic collapse. (FT)

Jack Ma’s private jet records show billionaire is down but not out The billionaire has made only one public appearance since upsetting the Chinese government last October. But the Financial Times has obtained the flight details of Ma’s private jet, which suggest that while the 56-year-old is down, he is far from out. (FT)

• The chief executive of Ant Group has resigned, just as the fintech group is about to embark on a major restructuring at the behest of China’s regulators. (FT)

Ford is latest global carmaker to struggle in India After almost 30 years and with only a toehold in the market to show for it, the carmaker faces crunch time in India, a country which has consistently thwarted the ambitions of global peers. “We are assessing our footprint in India,” Lynn Antipas Tyson, the company’s executive director of investor relations, told an investor conference this week. (FT)

Singapore fails to keep up on carbon emissions The city-state has failed to keep pace with the progress of its wealthy peers in shedding its reliance on fossil fuel energy, according to an FT analysis of data released by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. The data show that its CO2 emissions growth rate was the third worst of any, after Burundi and Niger. (FT)

• John Kerry, Joe Biden’s climate envoy told the FT that Brussels’ plans for a carbon border tax should be a “last resort”. (FT)

The day ahead

China economic figures Beijing has a busy Monday with industrial production, fixed asset investment, retail sales, and unemployment figures set to be released. (FX Empire)

Antony Blinken begins Asia trip The US secretary of state begins travel to Asia to meet officials from Japan and South Korea. He will stop in Alaska on his way back to the US to meet officials from China. (US State Department, FT)

10th anniversary of Syrian Civil War Monday marks 10 years since the country’s ‘Day of Rage’ and the beginning of the civil war. On the eve of the anniversary, Pope Francis called for “decisive” commitment to end fighting and rebuild the nation. (Reuters)

What else we’re reading

By targeting house prices, New Zealand shows the way Just as it led on inflation, the country has launched a novel attack on rising asset prices, writes Ruchir Sharma. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordering the central bank to make housing price stability a higher priority could inspire others to rethink the role of easy money. (FT)

A turning point for Japan Inc’s fortunes? Toshiba’s extraordinary general meeting this week, billed as a showdown between one of the country’s most identifiable companies and a global cast of fund managers, is acting as a full-body MRI scan for the health of Japan’s capital markets after five years of claimed progress on governance. (FT)

Emotions drive market swings Savvy players are undoubtedly feeding off retail players’ “fast” thinking mistakes. But there is a wider lesson, writes Gillian Tett: if you want to understand share prices, look beyond valuation models or trading algorithms. (FT)

Welcome to the future of work A new world is emerging in the places crushing Covid-19, and it is not always what you might expect, writes Pilita Clark. Even in parts of the world leading in vaccinations, there are new challenges in bringing people back to the work. Anna Gross explores the question of how pandemics end. (FT)

Korean TV’s unlikely star: Subway sandwiches South Korea’s broadcasting regulations don’t allow commercial breaks during programming — but that has not stopped companies from advertising. Product placement is particularly aggressive in South Korean TV, and no company dominates the screen more than Subway, the US sandwich chain. (NYT)

Like all firms, the British royal family must learn to listen on diversity No culture is so superior that it will survive without investigating new thinking, modernity and the beneficial elements of other cultures, writes Margaret Casely-Hayford. (FT)

• Although, at 39, Meghan only scrapes into the millennial generation, her personality and outlook suggest that millennialism seeps through every pore. Not even the institution of the monarchy can muzzle them any more, writes Jo Ellison. (FT)

Video of the day

Charts that count The reflation trade — which assumes a successful vaccine rollout, pent-up demand and fiscal stimulus will boost economic growth and prices — has dominated markets. The FT’s Robert Armstrong explains why investors have embraced “reflation-mania” and what it means for different stocks. (FT)