Coronavirus: China economy facing uneven recovery, three months after lockdown
- The uneven nature of China’s economic recovery from the coronavirus lockdown was laid bare in separate surveys released on Thursday
- Exporters warned the worst might be ahead, while Beijing looks set to pump money into construction projects to salvage the recovery effort
More than three months after the Chinese economy was shut down to contain the spread of coronavirus, new sentiment surveys released on Thursday offered a snapshot of how uneven the recovery has been.
For exporters, the worst of the downturn remains ahead, the polling suggests, while the great effort to restart the economy has left people in the service sector feeling better than the industrial base.
There was also fresh evidence to suggest that Beijing is turning to its favoured playbook of old to lift the economy, with firms in the construction sector the most buoyant of all.
But in this comprehensive window on the world’s second largest economy, other countries behind China on the virus-containment curve can see that shutting down and starting over again is likely to be a long and frustrating process.
