The crowds might be back in China’s restaurants but they are not spending as much as they used to. The economy is not back on track, the labor market is bad and salaries are being cut. Business analyst Shaun Rein has sent his researchers out, and they did come back with bad news, he tells CNBC.Read More →

China’s zero-Covid-19 policies might be over since December, visas might be available and the new government tries to restore business confidence, but the number of expats in Shanghai is still dropping, according to the latest update by Bloomberg. While earlier estimates by chambers of commerce in big cities of 50% of the expats leaving are not confirmed and might have been too high, Shanghai still sees an ongoing exodus, while replacements for expat positions are not yet coming in.Read More →

China claims that since the end of the disputed zero-Covid policies at the end of November 2022 till February 2023  200 million of its citizens have been diagnosed with Covid-19, writes AP. Of those, 800,000 critically ill patients have recovered, says the news agency in an article, based on notes from a meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee presided over by President and party leader Xi Jinping. The president claims Covid-19 has been effectively beaten.Read More →

Domestic tourism in China saw a jump, and consumer sentiment is improving more slowly after the zero-Covid policies ended, says consumer expert Ashley Dudarenok at CNBC. Brands are relucted in spending their marketing budgets. Dudarenok said that heading into 2023 and the Lunar New Year, some smaller brands had turned more conservative on China and cut their marketing budgets for the country in half.Read More →

The exit of the Zero-Covid policy in China was not the cause of the rampant spread of the virus, or triggered by the protests, but was already spreading unstoppable for a longer time, according to the World Health Organization, writes Reuters. WHO’s emergency director Mike Ryan described the end of the zero-Covid policy as an unavoidable strategic decision on Wednesday 14 December.Read More →

Strategic analyst Victor Shih, author of Coalitions of the Weak, (2022), looks at China’s sudden exit from its contested zero-Covid policy. Was it because of the protests, was it planned before, and what does it mean for the country’s domestic policies and economics? A discussion at the New Yorker on how decisions at the  top-level take place.Read More →

One of China’s leading health experts, Zhong Nanshan, expects China to return to normal after Covid-19 halfway 2023, according to AFP. After the surprise turnaround in early December from the zero-Covid policy, the country is now bracing for a dramatic upsurge in patients, both under quarantine at home and in the hospitals because the Omicron variant is highly transmissible but less mortal, he told state media on Sunday 11 December.Read More →

Now China suddenly started to retract its zero-Covid strategy, strategic analyst Ian Johnson looks back at how the country got itself into this unprecedented mess at the Prospect. The economic slowdown and high unemployment “are all underlying issues that actually make the government’s challenge greater than first appears,” says Ian Johnson.Read More →

China is taking a short breath from the anti-Covid protests and comes to terms with the effect of the sudden relaxation of the zero-Covid measures. Political analyst Victor Shih takes a step back at KQED and looks at the fallout of the protests in the short term.Read More →