'Hmm, the prospects for 2023 look bleak.'
Approaching 2023, the Covid-19 virus is still seen to be haunting China and its impact on economic growth is widening again.
Most recently, major cities in China from Wuhan to Xining re-imposed restrictions (lockdown) to curb the spread of Covid-19 and its variant, Omicron.
Chinese media reported an increase of more than 1,000 cases in the last 3 days across China, and although the record is not as bad as the tens of thousands at the beginning of the year, the Great Wall country does not want to take any chances.
In general, at the beginning of this year, the city of Shanghai was imposed a full lockdown (full lockdown) under the zero-Covid policy by the government, thus putting pressure on the Chinese economy.
In addition, Guangzhou, which is known as the 4th largest city in China's economic output, was also recently restricted after there was an increase in infection cases in the area in the past month.
According to Nomura notes, as many as 28 cities are implementing lockdowns with 207.7 million people affected and an impact of around $3.55 trillion to China's gross domestic product (GDP).
The calculation is equivalent to the overall record of China's economy in the first quarter of 2021.
This will undoubtedly have an impact on China's economic growth which is starting a recovery pattern lately as the main sector has to be closed.
In the meantime, the city of Wuhan, which was the first place of the spread of Covid-19, saw a resurgence of new infection cases this week, forcing the authorities to take drastic measures against 800,000 people there.
One of the residents of Wuhan expressed his familiarity with the situation by saying that they had forgotten about the news about Covid.
On the other hand, the authorities are said to be forced to restrict the distribution of food from city to city and this is seen to cause supply issues in China soon.
