(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) China's economic war "epidemic" record: March data rebounded across the board, China's economy restarted, showing a positive trend

　　China News Agency, Beijing, April 17 Question: March data rebounded across the board, China's economy restarted and showed signs of improvement

　　China News Agency reporter Pang Wuji

　　The Chinese economy, which has nearly stopped in the epidemic prevention and control war, is on the road to restart.

　　According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on the 17th, the decline in China's major economic indicators, including industry, service industry, investment, consumption, import and export, etc., in March narrowed significantly year-on-year, showing a rebound. Experts in Beijing pointed out that this means that since March, the Chinese economy has gradually recovered and started to emerge from the "haze" of the epidemic.

　　Press "Restart"

　　In the first quarter, due to the impact of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, China's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 6.8% year-on-year. However, "the most difficult period may have passed", the main economic indicators showed a rebound in March.

　　Taking the value-added of industries above designated size as an example, Mao Shengyong, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, pointed out that this indicator increased by 8.5% year-on-year in March last year, the highest growth rate of the year. In comparison with the high base, in March this year, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size fell by 1.1%, which was a sharp decrease of 12.4 percentage points from January to February. In addition, industrial output above designated size in March basically recovered to the level of the same period last year. Among the 41 industrial industries, 90% of industries have increased in value in the month compared with January-February. This shows that the effect of industrial production recovery in March was obvious.

　　Zhao Xijun, deputy dean of the School of Finance and Economics of Renmin University of China, said in an interview with a reporter from China News Service that as the prevention and control of the epidemic progressed, the spread of the local epidemic in China was basically blocked, and the corresponding production, operation, investment and consumption activities began to resume. From the central government to local governments, we have also vigorously introduced policies and measures to support the resumption of production and production. Since March, compared with February, the most difficult time to fight the epidemic, various economic data have undergone considerable positive changes.

　　Zhang Tao, vice president of the International Monetary Fund, also said that China's economy was severely affected by the epidemic in the first quarter of this year, but since the second quarter, the prevention and control of the epidemic has achieved results, and economic vitality is recovering to the level before the epidemic.

　　Mao Shengyong believes that the momentum of improvement in March is expected to continue, especially as the resumption of production and production accelerates as a whole, and more vigorous policies continue to be introduced, economic data in the second quarter will perform better. Therefore, the Chinese economy in the second quarter will be significantly better than the first quarter. If the global epidemic situation is better controlled, the second half of the year should be better than the first half.

　　Recovery still has challenges

　　Although China's economy has shown signs of stabilizing recovery, the road to recovery is not smooth.

　　Zhao Xijun pointed out that since March, various economic activities have gradually recovered, but there is still some distance before returning to the "normal" state before the outbreak. Especially before the vaccine is successfully developed, it may be necessary to learn to coexist with this highly contagious virus for a long time, and the epidemic prevention will become normalized or become a reality that has to be faced. This also means that the continuous investment of huge epidemic prevention costs.

　　In addition, the global spread of the epidemic and its impact on external demand cannot be ignored. Lu Ting, China ’s chief economist at Nomura Securities, told a reporter from China News Service that China ’s export orders may fall sharply in the next two quarters, possibly exceeding the time of the 2008 global financial crisis. In addition to the direct drag on GDP, shrinking exports may also drag on fixed asset investment in manufacturing.

　　Zhu Min, Dean of the National Finance Research Institute of Tsinghua University, also pointed out that China's economy has bottomed out in March. Now many parts of China have a high recovery rate, but the overall capacity operation level is not high because export-oriented companies lack overseas orders. In the future, China still needs to constantly adjust its macroeconomic policies according to the new global epidemic prevention situation and trade situation.

　　From the perspective of domestic demand, Wang Jun, a member of the Academic Committee of the China International Economic Exchange Center, pointed out that China's domestic demand recovery rate is relatively slow, mainly due to the fact that consumption is still sluggish, investment is relatively sluggish, and infrastructure investment and manufacturing investment have both dropped by double digits. The leading indicators of real estate, such as the new construction area and the sales area, have fallen considerably, or may indicate that real estate investment will continue to decline in the future.

　　There are still challenges ahead, but the already stabilized Chinese economy will inject confidence into the world economy.

　　According to the forecast of the International Monetary Fund, this year the global economy is likely to experience the worst recession since the "Great Depression", and most countries will experience "negative growth." The agency predicts that the Chinese economy will grow by 1.2% in 2020, and that the Chinese economy will "substantially grow" to 9.2% by 2021. (Finish)