Coronavirus: tales of economic woe spread on Chinese social media as workers, small businesses suffer

Acute economic pain is gripping many people in China as the coronavirus erases potential income streams and business revenues

A survey found that two thirds of Chinese small businesses expect to fail if they have no revenue for two months

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An extended lack of income among workers, especially those with families, risks a major increase in urban poverty, one expert warned. Photo: EPA

Published: 8:30pm, 6 Feb 2020Updated: 5:52pm, 14 Feb 2020

Tales of economic misery among Chinese workers and small businesses caused by the coronavirus outbreak are spreading rapidly on social media, raising questions about the outlook that no one can answer.

While many can hang on for now with no income or revenue by relying on savings, their problems will become unmanageable in a few months if the virus outbreak is not brought under control and economic conditions return to near normal.

An extended lack of income among workers, especially those with families, risks a major increase in urban poverty, one expert warned.

Professors at the Tsinghua and Peking universities in Beijing, two of China’s top institutions of higher learning, found that 67.1 per cent of the 995 small and medium-sized enterprises they surveyed said their financial reserves could only sustain operations for two months if they had no revenue at all, while 30 per cent said their revenues this year were expected to shrink by at least half from 2019.

The gathering of economic storm clouds is particularly pronounced for migrant workers who left their rural homes to take odd jobs or to start their own small businesses in large cities, with many expressing deep anxiety about lost incomes and revenues during the Lunar New Year holiday amid looming pressure to make payments for rent, food and other expenses.