Coronavirus: Beijing’s economic recovery from June outbreak offers hope ahead of China GDP release

Outbreak at the Xinfadi wholesale food market sprang up in Beijing in June, but shops, bars and restaurants have since largely reopened

China is set to announce its second quarter gross domestic product growth rate on Thursday, with many economists predicting a sharp rebound

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Beijing remains the only part of the country rated as high-risk for coronavirus, with other regions gradually winding down control measures, leading to growing signs of improvement in production and consumption. Photo: AP

Published: 6:30pm, 10 Jul 2020Updated: 9:54am, 14 Jul 2020

The sight of more than a dozen patrons sitting on stools outside a popular barbecue restaurant on Beijing’s famous Gui Jie food street waiting to be seated is not only good for China’s services industry, but also offers hopes that it can maintain a delicate balance between containing the coronavirus and growing its economy.

This typical scene on a normal Wednesday evening would have been unthinkable last month when the street lived up to the literal translation of its name, ghost street, after an outbreak of coronavirus originating from the Xinfadi wholesale food market sprang up in Beijing.

Back in mid-June, only a handful of the usual throngs of local residents, expats and tourists would have been found, with only a handful of customers seated at a popular crayfish restaurant that would normally require over an hour’s wait to get a table.

Now, with masks removed or tucked under their chins, friends are comfortable to chat across a table after the government declared last week that the area was low-risk, providing a huge relief to some of the restaurants who had been forced to close at the height of the most recent outbreak.

“You can’t keep stopping everything just because of this disease, life has to start anyway,” said a customer in his 30s at a bar on Gui Jie, eyeing the queues of people outside the other restaurants.

“[Covid-19] may become a common disease just like the flu, we only need to wait for the vaccine now.”

Beijing’s recovery of economic activity, though, is not fully complete, with a number of bars and restaurants in Sanlitun, a famous shopping and entertainment area in the Chaoyang District, still closed even though the neighbourhood has also been rated low-risk.

Consumers had already flocked back to shopping centres the previous weekend, although they are now required to register for a tracking app, which is necessary to enter all public areas from convenience stores to office buildings.