Shuli Ren, Columnist

Not Even a Virus Can Stop This President From Dreaming

Xi Jinping’s Made in China 2025 ambitions are alive. Despite two-thirds of the economy in shutdown mode, strategic sectors are still humming.

February 5, 2020 at 1:24 AM UTC

By Shuli Ren

Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder.

Eyes on the prize.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

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Headlines are often scarier than reality. By many accounts, the coronavirus outbreak seems unstoppable. At least two-thirds of China’s economy has shut down, with more than a dozen provinces extending their Lunar New Year break to next week. It could be even longer in the country’s eastern electronics-manufacturing hubs, which have the largest number of patients outside the epicenter of Wuhan. The world’s export powerhouse is grinding to a halt, investors fear.

But that’s not the full picture. Even as the government diverts resources to contain the outbreak, with millions of people on lockdown, some factories are still humming. President Xi Jinping hasn’t forgotten his Made in China 2025 dream.