The official 'The Paper' observed (March. ) that while businesses are re-opening, the economy remains severely depressed. It observed that “Big data from Baidu searches shows that, at present, over 50% of offline [businesses] have resumed work nationally.” It said “The percentage of offline [businesses] that have resumed work exceeds 63% in Xining, Dalian, and Changchun, which lead the country in this respect.” Separately Xinhua reported that less than half of small and medium enterprises are back at work. It said “Around 45 percent of China's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) had resumed work by Monday”, up from 32.8 percent as of February 26, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The magazine reporting on the coal industry, MySteel, said “The capacity utilization rate as of March 3 [of coal mines was] 83.4%, according to official data from China’s National Energy Administration.” It added that this“rate was 6.9 percentage points higher from the previous level of 76.5% on February 22 and marked a two-fold increase on that recorded on February 1.”
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