Although Hubei is still at a low point of commercial activity, the commercial activity of many cities in Hubei, including Wuhan, has increased rapidly in the past week.

With the resumption of work and production, the national average commercial activity gradually showed a cyclical small jump. As of March 10, it has recovered to 67.47% in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Although Hubei is still at a low point of commercial activity, the commercial activity of many cities in Hubei, including Wuhan, has increased rapidly in the past week.

On March 11, the Hubei Provincial New Coronary Virus Infection Pneumonia Prevention and Control Headquarters announced that orderly resumption of work and production and the safe and orderly movement of personnel. The province takes the county as a unit, divides low, medium, and high risk areas, implements differentiated prevention and control based on zoning, and allows enterprises to resume work and production in a time-sharing manner, and enterprises in specific industries implement flexible and dynamic management. Among them, the enterprises that have not stopped production or business since the Spring Festival in Wuhan can continue production; other enterprises should resume production before noon on March 20 before 24 o'clock.

Time to complete repair

The Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Tsinghua University Institute of Information Research “Think Tank 2861” project team released a set of business activity research data covering 336 cities nationwide.

Chen Wen, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that this study is to obtain the city's day-time business activity flow through big data. According to the average business population data of the same region in the fourth quarter of 2019, the business activity of each city is calculated. .

Compared with some of the current resumption data, Chen Wen believes that this data can better monitor the actual activities or number of migrants who have resumed production, in order to avoid the data bias caused by resumption of non-reproduction or less resumption.

The data shows that due to the impact of the epidemic, commercial activities throughout the country were almost stagnant during the Spring Festival, and the commercial population was less than 10% of the previous year. Subsequently, from January 31, February 10, February 17, February 24, March 2, and March 9, the data ladder showed a periodic small jump rise. On March 10, the national average commercial activity reached 67.47%. Nationally, Hainan and Xinjiang have relatively low levels of commercial activity.

As of March 10, most of the 336 cities had high levels of commercial activity, and there was little spatial difference. Most of the cities with more commercial activity were small and medium-sized cities. On March 10, Shanwei, Quanzhou, Xuzhou, Quzhou, Qinhuangdao, Tongliao, Liuzhou, Shangrao, Huludao, and Zunyi were ranked among the top ten in terms of commercial activity.

Wuhan is still at the bottom of business activity. Wuhan's commercial activity was 1.78% on January 28, and has been growing slowly since then. By March 6, Wuhan's commercial activity was 15.27%. However, there was a leap from March 8-9. As of March 10, Wuhan's commercial activity has returned to about 30% of the average level in December last year.

Not only Wuhan, but from March 3 to 10, the commercial activity of other cities in Hubei Jingzhou, Huanggang, Xiaogan, Enshi, Jingmen, Shiyan, etc. recovered quickly. The increase in business activity within a week has exceeded 19%.

Therefore, from March 3rd to 10th, the top ten cities in terms of the increase in commercial activity across the country were mostly cities in Hubei Province: Jingzhou (23.19%), Huanggang (22.54%), Xiaogan (21.16%), Enshi Prefecture (21.10%), Jingmen (20.21%), Shiyan (19.79%), Suizhou (19.44%), Anqing (18.52%), Shaoxing (16.40%), and Xiangyang (16.02%).

Chen Wen said that in general, although the current recovery of urban commerce is relatively fast, there is still some distance to complete repair.

A large number of migrants affected the activity of cities

From the perspective of cities in the Yangtze River Delta, the change in business activity has basically kept pace with national trends. On March 10, the average commercial activity in the Yangtze River Delta was 66.75%, slightly lower than the national 0.72 percentage point.

According to the data on March 10, most cities in the Yangtze River Delta have a high level of commercial activity, and their spatial distribution shows a trend of high in the north and low in the south. Ningbo, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Taizhou, and Wenzhou all belong to Commercial activity is not high and is basically behind the national ranking. The commercial activity of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hefei has been relatively low in the Yangtze River Delta.

"Some cities with slower recovery, most of them are cities where migrants have come to dominate." Chen Wen said.

The calculation of the number of returning workers in more than 1,000 major labor-exporting districts and counties shows that as of February 22, less than half of the labor force in these areas returned to work; as of March 7, at least 25% of the labor force has not returned . Therefore, large cities relying on foreign labor to return to work more slowly than small and medium cities.

Take Shanghai as an example. At the end of 2019, Shanghai's commercial population was about 19 million, and the commercial population density was 3008 people per square kilometer. It is the most densely populated city in China.

On January 28, Shanghai ’s commercial active population fell by 89.6% (about 91% nationwide over the same period) to 1.98 million; on February 7, 14, 21, 28, and March 6, the commercial active population recovered to 4.7 million, 5.78 million, 7.2 million, 9.3 million and 11.5 million people, and the degree of commercial recovery reached 24.84%, 30.28%, 37.83%, 48.77% and 60.3%.

On March 10, Shanghai ’s commercial activity increased to 66.91%, and its corresponding commercial active population reached 12.7652 million, ranking second among 336 major cities in the country, accounting for 1.88% of the total commercial active population on the day. , Accounting for 11.86% of the total commercial active population in the Yangtze River Delta region.

Author: Xuhui Yun