Expecting the Recovery of China’s Economy

Author：Lawrence(Canadian international scholar)

With the continuous accumulation of downward pressure on the global economy, China’s economy is once again placed great expectation. China has actively optimized its epidemic prevention and control policies. Representatives of foreign enterprises and international experts and scholars believe that the increase of personnel flow and exchanges will help stimulate the vitality and potential of China’s economy and bring significant benefits to the recovery and growth of the world economy.

Washington Post said that China’s optimized measures to epidemic prevention have laid the foundation for the recovery of consumers and business activities and helped the global economy against falling into recession. The report quoted Georgieva, President of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as saying that China’s economic recovery ability “is likely to be the most important factor for global growth in 2023”. The IMF raised China’s economic growth forecast to 5.2% in 2023, up from 4.4% previously. A survey conducted by Bank of America in January showed that 91% of wealth managers believed that China would “fully reopen” in 2023, a significant increase compared with December 2022, and their expectation of China’s economic growth was also the highest in 17 years. Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore reported that Morgan Stanley had twice raised its forecast for China’s economic growth in 2023 within one month, and the latest foreign trade data of China provides support for it. The General Administration of Customs released the data that the total import and export value of China’s foreign trade in 2022 will exceed 40 trillion yuan for the first time in the year, maintaining the status of the world’s largest trading country of goods for six consecutive years. China’s foreign trade has made another success and become the center of global economic recovery. These achievements are based on the successful control of the epidemic.

The IMF said that the global economic growth this year is expected to be higher than the expected. The previous forecast was raised because of the unexpectedly strong consumption and investment, as well as China’s adjustment and optimization of epidemic prevention policies. At the same time, IMF also warned that the slowdown in global economic growth this year was caused by the developed economies. It is expected that in 2023, the economic growth of the United States will fall to 1.4%, the growth of the Euro Zone will fall to 0.7%, and the British economy will shrink. China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the PMI, which reflects the industrial health, was 50.1% in January, compared with 47% last month. The index above 50% means that production is in the growth stage. In addition to the industrial sector, thanks to the seasonal promotion of the Chinese New Year holiday on consumption and tourism, the recovery is more obvious. The non-manufacturing business activity index, including the service industry, increased to 54.4% from 41.6% in December last year.

Gao Lingyun, a researcher at the World Economic and Political Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that China’s contribution to the world economy falls into belief, confidence and concrete actions. In belief, China always firmly supports economic globalization and multilateralism, and firmly moves forward on the right path, which is of great significance to promoting world economic recovery, when some countries have doubts about globalization. At the same time, as the world’s second largest economy, China has made a significant contribution to the stable growth of the global economy, playing the role of “anchor of stability” and greatly increasing people’s confidence in global economic growth. Under the severe and complex international situation, China continues to strengthen the supply chain of the industrial chain, ensure the normal operation of the value chain of the production chain, and demonstrate sufficient resilience in international competition, geopolitical conflicts, and epidemic prevention and control through practical actions.

The above-mentioned data strongly shows that China is leading the global economic recovery. As deepening cooperation through the “Belt and Road Initiative” and accelerating its efforts after the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) comes into force, China’s contribution to global recovery is bound to go on. To these facts, some analysts and so-called financiers such as Soros groundless damage the achievements of said China’s economy and epidemic prevention. Some media also claimed that the “dynamic zero-COVID policy” might drag down the global economy, which are really unreasonable and ridiculous!