Steady Road To Recovery

Life and business are gradually resumed in China as epidemic wanes

- Hu Fan

If the Chinese people were waiting for the assurance from their government that the COVID-19 epidemic was under control, that signal came on April 29. On that day, green light was given to the convening of the annual Two Sessions, the country’s most important political event of the year.

The Two Sessions, or the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), top political advisory body of China, started on May 22 and May 21, respectively, this year. It’s unprecedented for this annual event to open two months later than usual.

April also saw great progress in epidemic control, especially in Wuhan, a city that was severely hit by the novel coronavirus. The last remaining assistance medical team from southwest China’s Sichuan Province left Wuhan on April 7, one day before the lifting of the city’s lockdown. The two hospitals specially built for receiving COVID19 patients in the city, Huoshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals, were officially shut down on April 15.

This allowed a further shift from epidemic control to economic recovery. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, by April 24, 84.6 percent of China’s enterprises above designated size had restored more than half of their production capacity. This was a 4.1-percentage-point increase compared to that at the beginning of the month, although there are still many challenges for enterprises, including an increase in inventory and decrease in profit.

Gradual recovery