Chinese President Xi Jinping told local officials during a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee on February 3, that some of the actions taken to contain the virus are harming the economy. He urged them to refrain from “more restrictive measures”, the two people said. Referring to actions by local authorities outside Wuhan - where the virus is thought to have first taken hold - shutting down schools and factories, sealing off roads and railways, banning public events and even locking down residential compounds, Xi Jinping said some of those steps have not been practical and have sown fear among the public. Some of the local measures have been publicly denounced by the central government, with Ou Xiaoli, an official at the National Development and Reform Commission, warning on Tuesday that restrictions on daily lives and normal production, including imposing preconditions for factories to be able to reopen, were not in line with guidelines from Beijing. He said “These tendencies must be stopped.”
Separately, China’s provincial-level governments have been permitted to issue a further 290 billion yuan ($41.6 billion) of special-purpose bonds (SPBs) early, adding to the 1 trillion yuan of such debt approved in November to boost infrastructure spending amid a slowing economy that’s set to take an additional hit from the coronavirus epidemic. Zhang Jun, Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University and Director of the China Center for Economic Studies, a Shanghai-based think tank, wrote in a commentary that "Provided there are no further external shocks, continued policy loosening should limit the full-year decline in GDP growth to 0.5 to 1 percentage point. That would imply a 5% to 5.5% full-year economic expansion in 2020, which is still largely in line with China’s current growth trend."






Subscribe to Newswire | Site Map | Email Us
Centre for China Analysis and Strategy, A-50, Second Floor, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi-110057
Tel: 011 41017353
Email: office@ccasindia.org