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But the Chinese city at the center of the pandemic has shown that normal could still be a long way off.
Despite the lifting of stricter closure laws, many stores are still closed, restaurants are restricted to take away, and even when citizens go out, they still wear protective gear and try to avoid each other.
The mood on the ground is very different from the official statements. At a press conference on April 8, Luo Ping, an epidemic control official in Wuhan, said that some sectors of the city had already returned to a 100% restart rate.
During a recent trip to the city, business owners told CNN that they were struggling with zero profits and huge rents, and experts said it could take months for the city’s economy to recover, if not more.
“In the short term, of course, there will be a recovery,” said Larry Hu, an economist at Macquarie Capital Limited. “Production will recover first and then consumption, because many people are still reluctant to leave … but from a long-term perspective, from a three-year perspective, the virus will continue to harm Wuhan’s long-term growth.” “
Struggling to recover
Wuhan is a metropolis with a population of more than 11 million, larger than most US cities. USA And yet it is considered a second-tier city within mainland China.
The capital of China’s central Hubei province, Wuhan, is a manufacturing and transportation hub for the rest of the country.
The original outbreak was first detected in Wuhan in mid-December, and as the outbreak worsened, the city sealed off its borders with the rest of China on January 23 in an attempt to stem the spread.
Almost overnight, life stopped. In some parts of the city, people were confined to their homes for several months in a row, unable to leave and relying on grocery delivery services and other basic necessities.
With the shutdown now, the local government is ready to resume normal business as quickly as possible as Beijing puts pressure on the provinces to help boost a crisis economy.
But there are indications that despite hopeful rhetoric, Hubei’s economy could take a long time to recover from the severe blockade.
Shaun Roache, Asia Pacific chief economist at S&P Global Ratings, said Wuhan’s lesson to the rest of the world was that prompt and early action on the coronavirus was costly to the economy but could lead to a faster reopening.
“(But) the blockades have a disproportionate effect on small and medium-sized companies. These companies have less access to credit to help them ‘bridge the road to recovery’ and may also have difficulties in meeting opening requirements,” he said .
When CNN returned to the city on April 21, a tour of a shopping street showed that more than half of local businesses remain closed.
The fears of a second wave.
Some small business owners relayed to CNN their concern that any government aid is likely to come too late to save their small shops and restaurants, leading to their final closure.
Remarkably closed there are still fitness centers and cinemas, with no immediate plans to reopen.
Most of the stores that have reopened have changed their business models. Major chains like Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and Pizza Hut are among the brands that prevent customers from entering the physical space. Instead, the tables are set up in the shop windows and the staff takes out the orders to deliver.
Roache said that while manufacturing could recover reasonably quickly from the virus, it was the service sectors that appeared to be the slowest to return to 100% productivity. “This is important because service industries are the largest employers in most economies,” he said.
Worst of all, some local citizens and business owners told CNN that they believed it was only a matter of time until a second wave of infections hit the city, sparking a second shutdown and another blow to the economy.
There may still be a long way to go for Wuhan and the rest of the world before we can get back to something that looks like normal.
CNN’s Ben Westcott contributed to this article.
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