Coronavirus: how will China’s role in the global economy change when faced with pandemic backlash?
- Beijing is bracing for repercussions following the coronavirus, but it is determined to maintain China’s integral role in the global economy
- Realignment of global value chains will speed up post-crisis, but China can leverage its advanced infrastructure and industrial capabilities, experts say
This is the third in a series of five stories exploring the global backlash that China may face as a result of its actions and rhetoric during the coronavirus pandemic. This story examines the outlook for China’s economy as it recovers from the outbreak, including the risk that its place in the global value chain may be fundamentally altered as a result of the pandemic.
Consensus is growing in Beijing that the coronavirus pandemic is set to make the world more hostile towards China, undermining the accommodating international environment that underpinned the country’s spectacular rise from a closed communist backwater into a global economic powerhouse.
One of the most pressing challenges facing the central government will be the acceleration of a global value chain realignment, which may hit China’s job market in the short term and marginalise the country’s long-term role in the global economy, according to Chinese researchers and analysts.
While Beijing is politically and ideologically at odds with Western liberal democracies, it is determined to stay embedded within the global market.
Whether China can maintain its position in the global economy or ends up isolated after the pandemic is brought under control, will be one the most important questions post-crisis.