China suffers a new outbreak of COVID with a stable economy

China, bad figures for COVID and good for the economy, for the moment.

China announces the death of three people in Shanghai from COVID, bringing the total death toll since the epidemic began to more than 4,600; while the city of 25 million inhabitants remains in total confinement.

Many have difficulty obtaining food, medicine and other basic necessities.

Many people are also refusing to be admitted to government isolation centers, where the authorities lock up positive but asymptomatic residents, because they complain that some of these centers do not meet minimum hygiene conditions.

The record numbers of infections had not been seen since the start of the pandemic, in the first half of 2020.

China, which applies a severe “zero tolerance” policy towards the new coronavirus, is going through a wave of outbreaks attributed to the omicron variant. The record numbers of infections had not been seen since the start of the pandemic, in the first half of 2020.

A GDP that rises more than expected in the face of an uncertain future

Faced with this dismal health context, Beijing announced good economic results on Monday.

China’s gross domestic product grew 4.8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022, according to data released on Monday. The data is above what was expected by analysts who forecast 4.4%.

The National Statistics Office has assured that, during the first quarter of this year, the Chinese economy “continued to recover and develop, operating in a sustained manner.”

All this, the institution stressed, despite “a more complex and serious international environment (in veiled reference to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent geopolitical earthquake) and the multiple challenges posed by the frequent outbreaks (of COVID-19) to Nacional level”.

However, the statistical institution also made public this Monday other important economic data that already point to a worsening of the situation, as is the case of retail sales, key to the change in the economic model advocated by Beijing and especially sensitive to the effect of the lockdowns.

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