By Jianli Yang and Lianchao Han
This year, for the first time since 1990, China did not announce a GDP growth target during the annual National People’s Congress in May. Prior to that, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on April 17 that the country’s economy had recorded a 6.8 percent contraction in the first quarter of 2020. It was the first time since 1976 that China acknowledged economic shrinkage.
China’s extraordinary growth for nearly a half-century has ended because of the COVID-19 pandemic, right? No, that’s not entirely correct.
The fact is that the fiscal condition of the world’s second-largest economy was in dire straits even before the pandemic struck. The novel coronavirus only made… [Continue Reading]