That Bloomberg article seemed rather light in the pants.
Car and Iphone sales are down in China -- oh no.
This hasn't been an easy year for business in China.
Limited domestic tourism (though Shanghai was pretty crowded during Chinese National Day), almost no foreign tourism, business trips curtailed, most export markets hurting big time.
A lot of small shops went out of business; landlords have a hard time filling empty shops, etc. Restaurants and bars who made it through the rough 1st half of the year are fine now. Exports and consumer spending are definitely off. Purchases like a new mobile phone or car are exactly what people are putting off.
There have been costs to the Chinese economy from the virus year.
On the flip side:
China to leapfrog US as world's biggest economy by 2028 - think tank
Reuters 26 December
LONDON, Dec 26 (Reuters) - China will overtake the United States to become the world's biggest economy in 2028, five years earlier than previously estimated due to the contrasting recoveries of the two countries from the COVID-19 pandemic, a think tank said.
"For some time, an overarching theme of global economics has been the economic and soft power struggle between the United States and China," the Centre for Economics and Business Research said in an annual report published on Saturday.
"The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding economic fallout have certainly tipped this rivalry in China's favour."
The CEBR said China's "skillful management of the pandemic", with its strict early lockdown, and hits to long-term growth in the West meant China's relative economic performance had improved.
China looked set for average economic growth of 5.7% a year from 2021-25 before slowing to 4.5% a year from 2026-30.
While the United States was likely to have a strong post-pandemic rebound in 2021, its growth would slow to 1.9% a year between 2022 and 2024, and then to 1.6% after that.
https://news.trust.org/item/20201225230716-a54n8
Poll
5 (45.5%)