Fast-forward China: How COVID-19 is accelerating five key trends shaping the Chinese economy | McKinsey

“Over the last few months, COVID-19 has spread across the world, uniting humanity in a shared experience that has highlighted the vulnerability of our societies. As the first country to grapple with the crisis, China has been on the frontlines both of post-COVID-19 economic recovery, and of the societal changes the pandemic has precipitated. Efforts to stabilize the domestic economy are already well underway, and though China’s first-quarter gross domestic product declined 6.8 percent over the previous year, according to government statistics, our simulations suggest that economic activity may have bottomed out in the first quarter.
As that recovery takes shape, several important shifts in the make-up of China’s economic landscape have already become apparent. COVID-19 has accelerated pre-existing trends, ushering in the arrival of a future we were likely already on track to realize. In this report, we discuss five trends shaping the Chinese economy that have been accelerated, or “fast forwarded,” as a result of the onset of the COVID-19 crisis (Exhibit 1).”

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For China, the 2020s will be a difficult decade | CapX

“At the dawn of the 2020s, China is facing challenges that are perhaps the most serious since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.

Until relatively recently, these were predominantly home-grown problems gathering momentum slowly over the last decade or so. They have become accentuated, though, by the emergence of a new, repressive governance system under President Xi Jinping, and, in the last two years by the so-called trade war and the eruption of instability in Hong Kong. In the 2020s, China’s growth is likely to continue to slow to about 3-4% a year. A ‘recession with Chinese characteristics’ is not out of the question.

We should pay close attention. Slower growth and the rising risk of a significant fall in the value of the yuan in the next few years could easily choke the narrative that China will become the biggest economy in the world. This would have a significant impact on how China, and we think about everything from economics to foreign and security policy in the global system.”

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