Across China, factories that produce everything from smartphones to sneakers have been dormant since the Lunar New Year holiday in late January as the nation battled to contain the spread of the new coronavirus. Now plants are slowly coming back online, prodded by President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders who worry that an extended shutdown will jeopardize the government’s lofty development targets for 2020. Economists are tracking energy consumption, poring over pollution charts, and studying data on traffic movements to discern how quickly the world’s second-largest economy can get back to business. Bloomberg Economics has estimated that the economy was operating at as much as 80% of normal capacity as of March 6.
Millions of migrant workers who were left stranded by restrictions on travel imposed after the start of the January holiday are being allowed back into the megacities along China’s east coast. They have to endure quarantines when they get there, but back they are going. About 78 million have returned to work, which is about 60% of those who went home for the holiday, and almost all will have returned by early April, the government said in early March.
Given the extent of the virus controls, it will take time to get that many people back on the job. At one stage the cheap-and-cheerful long-distance buses that ply China’s highways were allowed to travel only half full as part of an effort to prevent contagion.
Economists have long suspected that China fudges its statistics, and so they have become accustomed to tracking proxies for economic activity, such as energy consumption. The use of coal burned to generate electricity has been steadily ticking up and is now approaching normal levels for this time of year.