China’s Industrial Reboot Runs Into the Global Coronavirus Shock
Official numbers suggest the country is getting back to work, but even if they’re accurate, the big challenge is demand, not supply.
Workers at an electronic technology company in China’s Shaanxi province on March 4.
Photographer: Tao Ming/Xinhua/ZUMA Press
Across China, factories that produce everything from smartphones to sneakers have been dormant since the Lunar New Year holiday in late January as the nation battled to contain the spread of the new coronavirus. Now plants are slowly coming back online, prodded by President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders who worry that an extended shutdown will jeopardize the government’s lofty development targets for 2020.
Economists are tracking energy consumption, poring over pollution charts, and studying data on traffic movements to discern how quickly the world’s second-largest economy can get back to business. Bloomberg Economics has estimated that the economy was operating at as much as 80% of normal capacity as of March 6.