Chinese economy: 1% growth and 80 million unemployed

By: Jean-Pierre Boris Follow

After several decades of double-digit growth, the Chinese economy will almost stagnate this year due to the coronavirus crisis. But this result, enviable for many other countries, given the circumstances, reveals the limits of Chinese development.

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This is where it all started, in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019 as far as we know. At the beginning of January 2020, the international media reported a mysterious virus, a dozen deaths identified. The rest, you know it. The 11 million inhabitants of Wuhan confined to their homes, the paralyzed city, the virus that is spreading around the world, nine million people infected, nearly 500,000 dead according to the WHO and an economic and social cataclysm that affects all the economies, starting with the US economy. But where did it all start, in China, where is the economy? Will the growth of recent decades resume its course? Or has the epidemic given a fatal blow to the Chinese economic boom? Will China have to correct the terms of its forward race?

These are some of the questions discussed with the three specialists of the Chinese economy gathered for this program:

- Mary-Françoise Renard  is Professor of Economics at Clermont-Auvergne University and head of the China Research Institute at CERDI. Latest publication  "China's economy" in the Repères collection by La Découverte editions.

- Jean-François Dufour  is director of the consultancy firm DCA Chine Analyze and editor of the newsletter The China Industrial Monitor. He is the author of " China Corp 2025, behind the scenes of Chinese capitalism ", published by Éditions Maxima. 

- Éric Girardin  is Professor of Economics at Aix-Marseille University. He conducts his research on the Chinese economy at the Aix-Marseille School of Economics. With Zhenya Liu, he published a book devoted to the Chinese stock markets. The book " Demystifiying China's stock market" published by Palgarve Macmillan. 

Will Chinese power succeed in halting the rise in unemployment? Officially, it reached 5.9% last May. But, this rate could actually be much higher: up to 20%, estimated a study, because the official figures do not take into account the self-employed, nor the migrant workers, the little hands of Chinese growth. And there are many in the country, 290 million in total. Men and women who had left the countryside to find work in big cities, but since the epidemic there have been no job opportunities.

Unemployment in China

A report by Angelique Forget and Charlie Wang

Second city in Korea, Busan (or Pusan) is also a huge port, the fourth in the world for container flows. The main partner is of course China and the resumption of economic activity in the big neighbor has caused a revival of commercial shipping. In May, the traffic of huge container ships between Busan and Chinese ports increased by almost 10%.

Busan port

A report by Stéphane Lagarde

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