As if the beginning lockdown in the heart of the second largest economy in the world were not enough, on Monday the false report that the richest person in the world in the world had now also contracted the corona virus caused an additional moment of shock in the stock market world.

Elon Musk caught the virus, but not in China, as reported on Twitter, the Wall Street Journal corrected itself in the evening.

However, the fact that Musk's car manufacturer Tesla has to stop the tapes again for four days in its Shanghai "Gigafactory" on Monday is true.

Most of the model variants "3" and "Y" manufactured there are usually shipped to Europe.

Henrik Ankenbrand

Economic correspondent for China based in Shanghai.

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On Sunday, the Shanghai government declared a city-wide lockdown, which it had categorically ruled out just a short time before.

The number of people suffering from Covid-19 in the city had increased by just 50 that day.

3,450 people who tested positive for the virus were asymptomatic.

But because China is still determined to treat every single infection in the hospital, the people there are now lying in beds tightly packed in the corridor.

The impression that those in power are losing control of the pandemic is now even affecting the price of oil.

This fell on Monday due to concerns that China's virus-weakened economy could demand less of the commodity.

The country, as the “motor of the global economy”, seems to be “stuttering”, said the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce with concern.

After all, in the other economic centers of the country such as Shenzhen or Dongguan, production has already been throttled and ports have been closed.

Employees should work despite the lockdown

Volkswagen did not have to close its plant in Shanghai on Monday.

In the western part of the city, where the factory of the German car manufacturer and Chinese market leader is located, the lockdown will not start until Friday.

Tesla's production, on the other hand, is in eastern Pudong, which the authorities had completely sealed off early Monday morning.

According to reports, on Sunday the manufacturer was still trying to summon its workers to the factory to let them work and stay overnight in a closed system with no contact to the outside world for the four days of lockdown.

However, Tesla found that there was not enough food for the workers in stock – the company obviously considered getting supplies to be a hopeless task.

In fact, the government had promised that there would be no food shortages during the lockdown.

In reality, however, most of the supermarket shelves in the western half of the city, which bears the name Puxi, were already completely empty on Monday.

Even if the city initially maintained stock exchange trading and operations in the world's largest container port, economists are concerned that China's economy and the rest of the world economy, which is closely linked to it, could suffer serious damage.

Just a week ago, Shenzhen ended its 7-day city-wide lockdown.

With Jilin, a center of the Chinese auto industry in the north, an entire province had even been placed under house arrest.

That had forced VW and the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota to shut down plants there in droves.

In Shanghai, too, most residents had actually spent days and sometimes even weeks in a lockdown, which the government did not want to call that for fear of damage to their reputation.

A total of 831 international companies have their regional headquarters in the city.

Almost 4 percent of China's gross domestic product is generated in Shanghai, which is around two and a half times that of Wuhan, which went into lockdown for months in spring 2020.

If you include the surrounding provinces, the region even accounts for a fifth of China's economic output.

According to the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, the companies there were struggling with the “often unforeseeable measures that were implemented overnight”.

Goods could no longer be transported beyond the city limits, customer visits were impossible.

Shanghai is deeply integrated into global supply chains, which suffer even more.