Economy on life support – China bets on major works to stop the crisis

The world’s most populous country has developed its infrastructure significantly over the past few decades, most notably in the late 2000s when it came to reviving an economy weakened by the global financial crisis.

This time, the Chinese power has not announced a quantified plan for the development of major works, according to the minutes of a State Party meeting broadcast Tuesday evening by the New China agency.

Modernize the country

“Xi Jinping called for comprehensive efforts to strengthen infrastructure construction,” the state news agency reported.

The current state of facilities in the world’s second-largest economy “remains incompatible with the requirements of development and national security,” Chinese leaders acknowledged.

In particular, to “maintain domestic demand” it is necessary to invest in transport, energy and water resources.

The said meeting in turn boosted investment in waterways, ports, airports, green energy, research, IT and telecommunications.

Do it better than America

China has been facing a slowdown in its economy since the beginning of the year due to the generalization of quarantine measures in hopes of averting a strong epidemic resurgence.

Shanghai, the country’s main economic engine, has been on lockdown since early April and there is no end date in sight. Earlier, the technological metropolis of Shenzhen (south) was also quarantined for a week.

This cessation of activity makes the country’s 5.5% growth target for 2022 increasingly hypothetical.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Xi Jinping has instructed his government to ensure that the country’s growth this year will exceed that of the United States.

Such a move would confirm the alleged superiority of the Chinese political system over Western democracy, the Chinese number one has argued, according to the American daily.

Meanwhile, the threat of containment now hangs over Beijing. On Wednesday, the neighboring town of Sanhe announced the quarantine of its 752,000 residents after the discovery of a positive case.

Elsewhere in the country, significant restrictions have also been taken in Yiwu (east), which threatens to further dampen international trade.

The city, located about 300 km from Shanghai, is known as a giant market for consumer goods for export.

But there are also positive signs with the announcement of the lifting of the curtailment on Thursday in Changchun and Jilin, two major cities in the northeast of the country, the cradle of the auto sector.

No immediate recovery

The return of the health crisis comes on top of the recovery in the real estate and technology sectors, which has severely affected these two pillars of national growth in recent years.

In this context, “projects to accelerate infrastructure spending are political tools designed to directly increase government spending,” notes economist Rajiv Biswas of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

But they won’t revive the economy anytime soon, warns his colleague Ting Lu from the Nomura bank.

“With the incarcerations, it is even more difficult to increase investment in infrastructure because relocations are banned and there is a labor shortage” in the affected areas, he notes.

Ultimately, the recovery through infrastructure may, at best, only “compensate for some of the decline in activity caused by the slowdown in exports, the decline in real estate and the costs of the zero Covid strategy,” Nomura estimates. an analyst note.

Xi Jinping’s announcements, however, reassured markets as the Shanghai Stock Exchange closed nearly 2.5% on Wednesday after opening lower, while Shenzhen’s gained nearly 4%.

AFP

Posted today at 3:55 PM.

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