China’s efforts to stabilize economic growth are running into new speed bumps, upsetting an already fragile recovery.
The current wave of Covid-19 outbreaks — the worst since early 2020 — has infected more than 50,000 people across the country, and measures to contain the spread of the virus have led to city lockdowns, halted some factory production and squeezed the tourism and catering industries. The impact on China’s GDP growth in the first quarter could be a loss of 0.3 to 0.8 percentage points, some analysts said.