Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Image caption Passengers gathered outside Secundarabad station in Andhra Pradesh state
India has partially restored train services amid reports of chaos and overcrowding at some stations.
At least 145,000 people will travel in trains on Monday as the country starts to reopen after a prolonged lockdown.
Two hundred trains will now start operations – up from the existing 30 that are currently running.
But maintaining social distancing and cleanliness is proving to be a difficult task as huge crowds gathered outside some stations.
India’s mammoth railway network usually carries 25 million passengers every day.
The ministry of home affairs has issued specific guidelines for the smooth operation of train services. They say that all passengers will have to be screened, social distancing must be followed at the station and in trains and only passengers who have confirmed tickets will be allowed to travel.
Image caption Police struggled to enforce social distancing due to large crowds
But some stations reported chaotic scenes as officials struggled to enforce these guidelines. BBC Telugu reported that people were standing much too close to each other at Secunderabad railway station in the southern state of Telangana.
“Railway staff and police didn’t allow passengers to go inside the station until at least one hour before the scheduled departure, citing physical distancing measures. This led to some chaos outside the railway station as a large number of passengers had gathered and there was no physical distance maintained. Police later arrived and organised the queues,” BBC Telugu’s Sharath Behara says.
Reporting from Delhi, BBC Hindi’s Salman Ravi said strict social distancing was being followed when passengers boarded trains, and all of them wore masks.
Image caption Passengers waiting outside the train station in Delhi
“But the same was not observed at ticket booking counters. Many people who did not have tickets also turned up at the station and that caused crowding,” he added.
Train services came to a grinding halt when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown on 24 March to stop the spread of coronavirus.
This left millions of daily-wage workers stranded as they desperately tried to go back to their villages from cities. Many of them decided to walk long distances – in some cases more than 1,000 kilometres.
As pressure and criticism mounted, the government started running special trains to ferry migrants. Some 30 trains restarted on 12 May, since then there has been a consistent demand to reopen more routes.
Getting the train network going again is part of the government’s wider strategy to slowly reopen the economy. Millions have lost jobs and factories are struggling to reopen as demand is likely to be sluggish in the coming weeks.
There has been strong demand for air freight services since April, when Chinese factories got back to work
Cargo flights have become critical in moving protective health equipment across the globe
Planes of German air carrier Lufthansa at the country’s largest airport in Frankfurt. Photo: Reuters
German freight carrier Lufthansa Cargo is expanding in China, surpassing 100 weekly flights for the first time, and adding new flights to Shenzhen.
Peter Gerber, CEO of Europe’s largest cargo airline, said there had been heavy demand for its services, though this might cool by the peak of summer.
“At the moment, cargo demand is very, very strong,” he told the Post. “It started to get strong in April, when Chinese industries got back to work, and after that we have seen a constant, heavy demand, a real peak.”
Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon report combined HK$4.5 billion loss for start of 2020
15 May 2020
Global air freight capacity has been squeezed as two-thirds of the world’s aircraft have been grounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The collapse of air travel has practically put a stop to passenger flights, which typically carry half of all air cargo.
Since the pandemic, cargo flights have been critical in moving protective health equipment across the globe. From sending masks and other supplies to China in February, the German carrier is now taking urgent supplies from the mainland back to Europe.
Peter Gerber says Lufthansa Cargo has a high responsibility in maintaining supply chains, for both global health and world trade. Photo: Handout
“We have a high responsibility in maintaining supply chains in these unprecedented times for both global health and world trade,” Gerber said.
With the addition of Shenzhen, Lufthansa Cargo will fly to five destinations in China. It serves more than 300 destinations in 100 countries.
The cargo carrier is part of the Lufthansa Group and coordinates all the freight that goes into the passenger planes of its sibling brands, including Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian.
Coronavirus: South Africa asks Hong Kong to remove its citizens from government quarantine list
16 May 2020
By next week, Lufthansa Cargo will be running more freight flights to China than the 72 passenger flights the group flew weekly before the pandemic to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Nanjing and Qingdao.
Lufthansa Cargo has a fleet of seven Boeing 777 Freighters (777Fs), with two new 777Fs arriving this year as part of its strategy to operate a fleet with a single aircraft type.
It also has six McDonnell Douglas-11Fs that Gerber said would still be retired as planned at the end of 2020, despite the extra demand for cargo capacity.
Its additional flights to China will make use of “preighters” – passenger aircraft flying cargo only. Gerber felt the trend of using empty passenger planes as “preighters” had peaked, pointing out that they cost the same to operate as freighters but carry only a fraction of the cargo.
Although he did not rule out future expansion, he said: “Demand will gradually come down in the next two or three months because a lot of equipment would have been shipped by then and some shipments will go on rail or ocean shipping.”
Coronavirus: Cathay Pacific could get cash injection from shareholder Qatar Airways
13 May 2020
He said some uncertainty remained over continued demand for airfreighted cargo, given the battered state of the world economy. Airlines would have to consider longer-term demand before deciding to invest more in cargo aircraft. “It depends how it looks beyond the next year,” he said.
Gerber said no decision had been taken yet on whether to convert some of the group’s orders for Boeing’s newest widebody 777X passenger aircraft into cargo planes.
He added that future plane orders would be balanced against the wider needs and spending decisions at Lufthansa Group, which is currently negotiating a government pandemic bailout package in the region of €9 billion (US$9.7 billion).
BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhua) — A Chinese health official on Saturday urged people to wear masks correctly and avoid travel during peak hours over coronavirus concerns in the May Day holiday.
Travelers are encouraged to reserve visiting slots in advance, and pay attention to their temperatures, said Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission, at a press conference in Beijing.
Some tourist attractions have seen large crowds of tourists not wearing masks Friday, the first day of the five-day May Day holiday, Mi said.
China recorded more than 23 million domestic tourist trips Friday, with the domestic tourism revenue reaching over 9.7 billion yuan (about 1.38 billion U.S. dollars), according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
GUBEI WATER TOWN, China (Reuters) – The mock Qing dynasty village nestled below the Great Wall would normally be teeming with tourists on Labour Day, but the thin crowds on Friday showed that while China’s coronavirus epidemic has subsided, people’s fears could take longer to fade.
During holidays, some 100,000 visitors a day would traipse round the quaint stone-paved streets of Gubei Water Town, 110 kilometres (68 miles) northeast of Beijing. Its marketing manager reckoned on getting just a tenth of that number this year.
“People have concerns about the virus and are unwilling to travel long distances,” said Guo Baorong. For a start, there will be no international tourists this time, he said, noting foreigners would normally make up around 15% of visitors.
About 70% of China’s tourist attractions had reopened as of Thursday, according to China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, but all sites have had to cap visitors to 30% of designed capacity.
More sites, including the Forbidden City in Beijing, were set to reopen Friday.
Staff at the entrance to Gubei Water Town checked visitors’ temperatures and health tracking codes. And inside, lines on the ground directed tourists to stand one meter apart and stores used ropes to keep crowds from forming. Like everywhere in China since the lockdowns were imposed to stem the epidemic, everyone wore masks.
Still, in places where tourists squeezed together as the streets narrowed, staff shouted at them to spread out.
Some tourists enjoyed the smaller crowds.
Xiao Chen, a 24-year-old student wearing traditional Chinese garb known as “Hanfu” came to Gubei to take pictures around ancient architecture.
“It’s good to come out of the city. There was barely anyone in Gubei Water Town yesterday, and even today, it’s not crowded,” she said.
The tranquility may not last. Room bookings jumped on Thursday after Beijing and nearby areas began easing coronavirus restrictions, with about 90% of accommodation now reserved.
“We were not expecting that many people to come in,” said Guo.
The richest man in China opened his own Twitter account last month, in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak. So far, every one of his posts has been devoted to his unrivalled campaign to deliver medical supplies to almost every country around the world.
“One world, one fight!” Jack Ma enthused in one of his first messages. “Together, we can do this!” he cheered in another.
The billionaire entrepreneur is the driving force behind a widespread operation to ship medical supplies to more than 150 countries so far, sending face masks and ventilators to many places that have been elbowed out of the global brawl over life-saving equipment.
But Ma’s critics and even some of his supporters aren’t sure what he’s getting himself into. Has this bold venture into global philanthropy unveiled him as the friendly face of China’s Communist Party? Or is he an independent player who is being used by the Party for propaganda purposes? He appears to be following China’s diplomatic rules, particularly when choosing which countries should benefit from his donations, but his growing clout might put him in the crosshairs of the jealous leaders at the top of China’s political pyramid.
Other tech billionaires have pledged more money to fight the effects of the virus – Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is giving $1bn (£0.8bn) to the cause. Candid, a US-based philanthropy watchdog that tracks private charitable donations, puts Alibaba 12th on a list of private Covid-19 donors. But that list doesn’t include shipments of vital supplies, which some countries might consider to be more important than money at this stage in the global outbreak.
The world’s top coronavirus financial donors
How Alibaba compares to the top five. No one else other than the effervescent Ma is capable of dispatching supplies directly to those who need them. Starting in March, the Jack Ma foundation and the related Alibaba foundation began airlifting supplies to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and even to politically sensitive areas including Iran, Israel, Russia and the US.
Ma has also donated millions to coronavirus vaccine research and a handbook of medical expertise from doctors in his native Zhejiang province has been translated from Chinese into 16 languages. But it’s the medical shipments that have been making headlines, setting Ma apart.
“He has the ability and the money and the lifting power to get a Chinese supply plane out of Hangzhou to land in Addis Ababa, or wherever it needs to go,” explains Ma’s biographer, Duncan Clark. “This is logistics; this is what his company, his people and his province are all about.”
A friendly face
Jack Ma is famous for being the charismatic English teacher who went on to create China’s biggest technology company. Alibaba is now known as the “Amazon of the East”. Ma started the company inside his tiny apartment in the Chinese coastal city of Hangzhou, in the centre of China’s factory belt, back in 1999. Alibaba has since grown to become one of the dominant players in the world’s second largest economy, with key stakes in China’s online, banking and entertainment worlds. Ma himself is worth more than $40bn.
Officially, he stepped down as Alibaba’s chairman in 2018. He said he was going to focus on philanthropy. But Ma retained a permanent seat on Alibaba’s board. Coupled with his wealth and fame, he remains one of the most powerful men in China.
Media caption The BBC’s Secunder Kermani and Anne Soy compare how prepared Asian and African countries are
It appears that Ma’s donations are following Party guidelines: there is no evidence that any of the Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation donations have gone to countries that have formal ties with Taiwan, China’s neighbour and diplomatic rival. Ma announced on Twitter that he was donating to 22 countries in Latin America. States that side with Taiwan but who have also called for medical supplies – from Honduras to Haiti – are among the few dozen countries that do not appear to be on the list of 150 countries. The foundations repeatedly refused to provide a detailed list of countries that have received donations, explaining that “at this moment in time, we are not sharing this level of detail”.
However, the donations that have been delivered have certainly generated a lot of goodwill. With the exception of problematic deliveries to Cuba and Eritrea, all of the foundations’ shipments dispatched from China appear to have been gratefully received. That success is giving Ma even more positive attention than usual. China’s state media has been mentioning Ma almost as often as the country’s autocratic leader, Xi Jinping.
AFP
So far…
Over 150 countries have received donations from Jack Ma, including about:
120.4mface masks
4,105,000testing kits
3,704ventilators
Source: Alizila
It’s an uncomfortable comparison. As Ma soaks up praise, Xi faces persistent questions about how he handled the early stages of the virus and where, exactly, the outbreak began.
The Chinese government has dispatched medical teams and donations of supplies to a large number of hard-hit countries, particularly in Europe and South-East Asia.
However, those efforts have sometimes fallen flat. China’s been accused of sending faulty supplies to several countries. In some cases, the tests it sent were being misused but in others, low-quality supplies went unused and the donations backfired.
In contrast, Jack Ma’s shipments have only boosted his reputation.
“It’s fair to say that Ma’s donation was universally celebrated across Africa,” says Eric Olander, managing editor of the China Africa Project website and podcast. Ma pledged to visit all countries in Africa and has been a frequent visitor since his retirement.
“What happens to the materials once they land in a country is up to the host government, so any complaints about how Nigeria’s materials were distributed are indeed a domestic Nigerian issue,” Olander adds. “But with respect to the donation itself, the Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, called it a “shot in the arm” and pretty much everyone saw it for what it was which was: delivering badly-needed materials to a region of the world that nobody else is either willing or capable of helping at that scale.”
Walking the tightrope
But is Ma risking a backlash from Beijing? Xi Jinping isn’t known as someone who likes to share the spotlight and his government has certainly targeted famous faces before. In recent years, the country’s top actress, a celebrated news anchor and several other billionaire entrepreneurs have all “disappeared” for long periods. Some, including the news anchor, end up serving prison sentences. Others re-emerge from detention, chastened and pledging their allegiance to the Party.
“There’s a rumour that [Jack Ma] stepped down in 2018 from being the chairman of the Alibaba Group because he was seen as a homegrown entrepreneur whose popularity would eclipse that of the Communist Party,” explains Ashley Feng, research associate at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC. Indeed, Ma surprised many when he suddenly announced his retirement in 2018. He has denied persistent rumours that Beijing forced him out of his position.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Ma discussed trade with then-President-elect Donald Trump in January 2017
Duncan Clark, Ma’s biographer, is also aware of reports that Ma was nudged away from Alibaba following a key incident in January 2017. The Chinese billionaire met with then-President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower, ostensibly to discuss Sino-US trade. The Chinese president didn’t meet with Trump until months later.
“There was a lot of speculation of time that Jack Ma had moved too fast,” Clark says. “So, I think there’s lessons learned from both sides on the need to try to coordinate.”
“Jack Ma represents a sort of entrepreneurial soft power,” Clark adds. “That also creates challenges though, because the government is quite jealous or nervous of non-Party actors taking that kind of role.”
Technically, Ma isn’t a Communist outsider: China’s wealthiest capitalist has actually been a member of the Communist Party since the 1980s, when he was a university student.
But Ma’s always had a tricky relationship with the Party, famously saying that Alibaba’s attitude towards the Party was to “be in love with it but not to marry it”.
Even if Ma and the foundations connected to him are making decisions without Beijing’s advance blessing, the Chinese government has certainly done what it can to capitalise on Ma’s generosity. Chinese ambassadors are frequently on hand at airport ceremonies to receive the medical supplies shipped over by Ma, from Sierra Leone to Cambodia.
China has also used Ma’s largesse in its critiques of the United States. “The State Department said Taiwan is a true friend as it donated 2 million masks,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry tweeted in early April. “Wonder if @StateDept has any comment on Jack Ma’s donation of 1 million masks and 500k testing kits as well as Chinese companies’ and provinces’ assistance?”
Perhaps Ma can rise above what’s happened to so many others who ran afoul of the Party. China might just need a popular global Chinese figure so much that Ma has done what no one else can: make himself indispensable.
“Here’s the one key takeaway from all that happened with Jack Ma and Africa: he said he would do something and it got done,” explains Eric Olander. “That is an incredibly powerful optic in a place where foreigners often come, make big promises and often fail to deliver. So, the huge Covid-19 donation that he did fit within that pattern. He said he would do it and mere weeks later, those masks were in the hands of healthcare workers.”
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Ma at an Electronic World Trade Platform event with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last year
Duncan Clark argues that Ma already had a seat at China’s high table because of Alibaba’s economic heft. However, his first-name familiarity with world leaders makes him even more valuable to Beijing as China tries to repair its battered image.
“He has demonstrated the ability, with multiple IPOs under his belt, and multiple friendships overseas, to win friends and influence people. He’s the Dale Carnegie of China and that certainly, we’ve seen that that’s irritated some in the Chinese government but now it’s almost an all hands on deck situation,” Clark says.
There’s no doubt that China’s wider reputation is benefiting from the charitable work of Ma and other wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs. Andrew Grabois from Candid, the philanthropic watchdog that’s been measuring global donations in relation to Covid-19, says that the private donations coming from China are impossible to ignore.
“They’re taking a leadership role, the kind of thing that used to be done by the United States,” he says. “The most obvious past example is the response to Ebola, the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The US sent in doctors and everything to West Africa to help contain that virus before it left West Africa.”
Chinese donors are taking on that role with this virus.
“They are projecting soft power beyond their borders, going into areas, providing aid, monetary aid and expertise,” Grabois adds.
So, it’s not the right time for Beijing to stand in Jack Ma’s way.
“You know, this is a major crisis for the world right now,” Duncan Clark concludes. “But obviously, it’s also a crisis for China’s relationship with the rest of the world. So they need anybody who can help dampen down some of these those pressures.”
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan waded into the hotly contested politics of the Pacific on Wednesday, donating face masks and thermal cameras to its four diplomatic allies there to combat the coronavirus in a region where China is challenging traditional power of the United States.
The small developing nations lie in the highly strategic waters of the Pacific, dominated since World War Two by the United States and its friends, who have been concerned over China’s moves to expand its footprint there.
Democratic Taiwan has faced intense pressure from China, which claims the island as its territory with no right to state-to-state ties, and is bent on wooing away its few allies.
Taiwan has only 15 formal allies left worldwide after losing two Pacific nations, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, to China in September.
Beijing has ramped up its diplomatic push into the Pacific, pledging virus aid and medical advice.
In its own aid programme, Taiwan has donated 16 million masks to countries around the world.
“We are a very small country, so it’s easier for us to work with Taiwan than mainland China,” Neijon Edwards, the Marshall Islands ambassador to Taiwan, told Reuters at the donation ceremony in Taipei.
China has been too overbearing, she added.
“It’s pressing too much, and it’s been trying to come to the Marshall Islands, several times, but up to this time we haven’t even opened the door yet.”
While the masks presented at the ceremony are going to Taiwan’s Pacific allies, all its 15 global allies are sharing the thermal cameras.
“Today’s ceremony once again shows that Taiwan is taking concrete actions not only to safeguard the health of Taiwanese people but also to contribute to global efforts to contain COVID-19,” said Foreign Minister Joseph Wu.
Though Pacific Island states offer little economically to either China and Taiwan, their support is valued in global forums such as the United Nations and as China seeks to isolate Taiwan.
China has offered to help developing countries including those of the Pacific, and many see Chinese lending as the best bet to develop their economies.
But critics say Chinese loans can lead countries into a “debt trap”, charges China has angrily rejected.
The debt issue was a serious problem and would only lead to the spread of Chinese influence regionwide, said Jarden Kephas, the ambassador of Nauru.
“They will end up dominating or having a lot of say in those countries because of the amount of debt,” he told Reuters, wondering how the money could ever be repaid. “We are not rich countries.”
MILAN/DETROIT (Reuters) – Global automakers reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic are accelerating efforts to restart factories from Wuhan to Maranello to Michigan, using safety protocols developed for China and U.S. ventilator production operations launched in recent weeks.
Certain safety measures differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. Italian sports car maker Ferrari NV (RACE.MI) said on Wednesday it would offer voluntary blood tests to employees who wanted to know if they had been exposed to the virus.
General Motors Co’s (GM.N) head of workplace safety, Jim Glynn, told Reuters on Wednesday GM is not persuaded blood tests are useful. But Glynn said GM has studied and adapted measures taken by Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) to protect warehouse workers, such as temperature screening to catch employees with fevers before they enter the workplace.
Auto manufacturers and suppliers are converging on a consensus that temperature screening, daily health questionnaires, assembly lines redesigned to keep workers 3 to 6 feet (0.9 m to 1.8 m) apart, and lots and lots of masks and gloves can enable large-scale factories to operate safely.
“We know the protocols to keep people safe,” Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president for global manufacturing, told Reuters in an interview. GM has relaunched vehicle plants in China and kept factories running in South Korea, he said.
GM has not said when it will reopen assembly plants in the United States. Other automakers are putting dates out in public, even though health officials and federal and state policymakers are wary of lifting lockdowns too soon.
“You see vehicle manufacturers … putting a stake in the ground,” said Brian Collie, head of Boston Consulting Group’s automotive practice. By setting a public date to restart production, they signal suppliers to get ready to ramp up, he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the global auto industry into the worst tailspin since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Consumer demand for vehicles has collapsed as governments have enforced lockdowns in China, and then in Europe and the United States. For the Detroit automakers and their suppliers, the shutdown of profitable truck and sport utility vehicle plants in North America has choked off cash flow.
In Europe, major automakers have said they hope to begin building vehicles again in mid-to-late April. In the United States, several big automakers, including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI) (FCAU.N), Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T) and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), are aiming to restart production during the first week of May.
Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and unions are discussing plans for beefed-up health measures at Italian plants to pave the way for production to restart as soon as the government eases a national lockdown due to expire on April 13, unions said on Wednesday.
Among the proposals from Fiat Chrysler’s Italian unions: move meals to the end of shifts, allowing employees to chose to avoid canteens, eat their food elsewhere and leave half an hour earlier without losing pay.
FCA did not comment on specific measures.
In the United States, some non-union automakers have also said they hope to restart vehicle plants as soon as next week.
Tire maker Bridgestone said on Wednesday it plans to restart U.S. production on April 13.
But the Trump administration has said people should continue to practice social distancing until April 30.
VENTILATOR ASSEMBLY
For the Detroit automakers, the United Auto Workers union will play a key role in deciding when and how plants will restart.
UAW President Rory Gamble said in a statement on Wednesday the union is in “deep discussions with all three companies to plan ahead over the implementation of CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] safety standards and using all available technologies to protect all UAW members, their families and the public.”
Among the union’s concerns is that members who report being ill can take time away from work without penalty, Gamble added.
The UAW has supported GM and Ford Motor Co’s (F.N) efforts to launch production of ventilators in U.S. plants – operations that have allowed the companies and the union to road-test safety measures at small scale.
At GM’s ventilator assembly plant in Kokomo, Indiana, workers and managers have been fine-tuning details such as when employees are handed masks, and when they step in front of a temperature screening device.
At first, ventilator assemblers in training at Kokomo walked down a hall before getting a mask, said Debby Hollis, one of the UAW-represented workers. Last week, she said, “They met us at the door and had us get in the masks there.”
The coronavirus pandemic has completely changed patterns of consumer psychology across the world, experts say
Complexity of the crisis, the number of variables and its magnitude make a consumer recovery unprecedented and difficult to predict
The coronavirus has caused panic buying around the world as consumers frantically stockpile of goods such as toilet paper, hand sanitisers and masks. Illustration: Brian Wang
Before the coronavirus crisis began rippling through the global economy, Susan Wang had big plans for 2020.
Not only was she going to buy a new Apple MacBook and iPad, plus a projector so she could host friends for movies at home, but she was set on making a career move.
“I was planning to change my job, but my headhunter told me that all recruitment has been postponed to the second quarter,” said the 27-year-old who works for a British company in Hong Kong.
“Our headquarters in London has a plan for redundancy, too. It is better to save some money in case I get laid off.”
As Covid-19 spreads across the world, sending stock markets reeling and prompting big companies to slash jobs, Wang has become increasingly frugal like scores of other consumers from China to the United States.
She has stopped eating at restaurants and now tries to keep her weekly food bill under HK$500 (US$64), whereas in the past she wouldn’t think twice about spending HK$100 per meal.
Amid mounting uncertainty, the coronavirus pandemic – which has claimed the lives of more than 41,000 people and infected at least 842,000 worldwide – is fundamentally changing consumer behaviour in Asia, Europe and North America.
Consumer experts said the 2009 global financial crisis, the Great Depression that started in 1929 and the September 11 terrorist attacks give some clues about how and when global consumption might recover. But the complexity of this crisis, the number of variables and its magnitude make this consumer recovery unprecedented and difficult to predict, they added.
Coronavirus: What impact will the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic have on you?
“The coronavirus pandemic has completely changed patterns of consumer behaviour all over the world. People are afraid, and when people are afraid, they go into survival mode,” said Jesse Garcia, a Los Angeles-based consumer psychologist, who is also the CEO of market consulting firm My Marketing Auditors.
plummeted a record 44 per cent in February and those figures are only expected to get worse, with sales forecast to slump between 30 and 40 per cent in the first half of the year, according to the Hong Kong Retail Management Association.
In the US, retail sales dropped by 0.5 per cent in February, even before many states had issued stay-at-home orders to protect the world’s largest economy. The decline was the biggest fall since December 2018.
Experts say non-essential products and services are set to be worst affected by the coronavirus pandemic, while goods and services that can be consumed at home will see a spike in sales.
The coronavirus pandemic has completely changed patterns of consumer behaviour all over the world. People are afraid, and when people are afraid, they go into survival mode – Jesse Garcia
“Online consumer behaviour is frenetic,” said Ross Steinman, a professor of psychology at Widener University in the US state of Pennsylvania. “Consumers are refreshing and refreshing and refreshing websites to secure grocery delivery times, purchase paper towels from their usual big box retailer and scavenge for rice and canned soup from third party sellers on Amazon.
“A pronounced spike in coronavirus cases will only amplify the freneticism.”
So far, one of the biggest shortages for consumers is toilet paper. Television stations across the globe have beamed images of empty supermarket shelves and huge queues as people hoard toilet paper rolls, masks and hand sanitiser.
The frantic stockpiling can be explained by a psychological concept called informational conformity, said Vicki Yeung, associate professor at the Department of Applied Psychology at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
A pronounced spike in coronavirus cases will only amplify the freneticism – Ross Steinman
“When people lack knowledge and are in an uncertain situation, they tend to follow the group’s behaviour and blindly conform, but once they obtain more information, and digest and process the situation, the panic gradually fades away,” she said.
“During this Covid-19 pandemic, people generally feel jittery and anxious because they feel their sense of control has disappeared.”
Unlike other recent global crises such as the September 11 attacks, the coronavirus is less a one-time sharp shock to the system and more of a rolling source of anxiety that could retreat and resurface repeatedly, consumer behaviour experts said.
This was the pattern with the Black Death plague that hit Europe in 1347 and returned episodically over many years, ultimately killing millions of people.
During this Covid-19 pandemic, people generally feel jittery and anxious because they feel their sense of control has disappeared – Vicki Yeung
“It may be we’ll have to shut down things again in October or August. And this could go on for years,” said Charley Ballard, an economist with Michigan State University in the US. “The more that happens, the more damage it does to buoyant consumer psychology.”
Furthermore, relative to the 2009 financial crisis and even the Great Depression, when much of the damage was concentrated at least initially in the financial sector, this crisis has seen virtually the entire economy grind to a halt all at the same time, devastating employment and consumption.
Last week, a record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits within one week, as restaurants, hotels, barber shops, gyms and retail outlets shut down in a nationwide bid to stem the pandemic. The previous record of 695,000 was set in 1982.
On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs predicted the US jobless rate will hit 15 per cent in the second quarter of this year from the coronavirus economic freeze, and could rise further beyond that to near the historic peak of 24.9 per cent seen in 1933 during the Great Depression. Economists at the St. Louis district of the US Federal Reserve projected unemployment could cost as many as 47 million jobs in the US this year, sending the unemployment rate past 32 per cent before making a sharp recovery.
US now has world’s most coronavirus cases, surpassing China
China’s unemployment rate jumped to 6.2 per cent for January and February from 5.2 per cent in December and 5.3 per cent a year earlier. It was the highest level since records began in 2016, but did not include China’s estimated 291 million migrant workers.
Consumer spending accounts for more than 60 per cent of the Chinese economy and drives 70 per cent of the US economy. But with the pandemic causing many people to go into hibernation and likely to lead to cycles of job cuts, economists have predicted a consumer-led global recession by the second quarter of this year.
Just how long it will take for consumer behaviour to return to normal depends on each person’s psychological resilience, including how quickly they can adapt to change, how optimistic they are and whether they can adopt strategies to regain a sense of control, Yeung said.
Anirban Mukhopadhyay, chair professor of marketing at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said as long as the coronavirus threat was still present, people would remain fearful to some extent. But he added that people were resilient.
Satellite images show world sites deserted amid coronavirus pandemic
“Human beings adapt to events and stimuli over time,” Mukhopadhyay said. “Research has shown that even people who win lotteries tend to return to their earlier levels of life satisfaction after some months, as do people who have to have amputations.
“So even if the source of the fear does not go away, we learn to live with it.”
Ballard, from Michigan State University, estimated it could take upwards of two years for American consumers to feel secure enough in their jobs and gain enough confidence to fully open their wallets. A longer and more episodic duration for the disease could push that higher, he added.
Further complicating the consumer picture, he said, is that many supply chains are at risk of breaking. And consumers will be wary of spending for a while in many traditional areas, including crowded sporting events and concerts, restaurants and flights.
A new phase of coronavirus blame game: what is the legacy of Covid-19 on global supply chains?
Some experts have even suggested that consumer behaviour may be permanently changed as a result of the pandemic.
“It seems very unlikely that people will get back to life as it was before, once the coronavirus is over,” said Andreas Kappes, a lecturer in psychology at City University of London.
“People’s behaviour is extremely orthodox, often referred to as the status quo bias and captured in expressions like ‘past behaviour best predicts future behaviour.’ Now, the crisis forces us to change our behaviour, radically, and we might discover that new way suits us better.”
KATHMANDU, March 29 (Xinhua) — The emergency epidemic prevention materials donated by the Chinese side arrived here on Sunday to help Nepal fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
The supplies that arrived at Tribhuvan International Airport in Nepali capital city Kathmandu in the wee hours of Sunday were formally handed over to the Nepali Health Minister Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal by the Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi.
Dhakal welcomed the Chinese support and expressed gratitude to the northern neighbor for helping the Himalayan country overcome the epidemic.
“I would like to thank the Chinese people and the Chinese government for supporting Nepal in this difficult time to fight the COVID-19,” the minister said during the handover ceremony.
At a time when many countries are fighting against this battle, China keeping Nepal in the priority list and sending supplies immediately is really commendable, the minister expressed, adding that Nepal expects China’s support in the coming days as well.
The donations from China’s Sichuan Province and the Chinese Embassy include different kinds of masks, thermometers, Chloroquine phosphate tablets, protective clothing and portable ventilators weighing 1.1 tons.
Similarly, the donation from Alibaba Foundation, Jack Ma Foundation includes 100,200 N95 masks and 20,064 PCR test kits weighing 1.4 tons.
“We will try our best to send other necessary supplies as soon as possible. In case of any emergency, we can send a medical expert team or arrange a video conference meeting as well to help the health workers here,” the Chinese ambassador said.
She also welcomed the national lockdown enforced by the Nepal government, stating that it has received encouraging support from the general public.
Nepal is reportedly in dire need for medical supplies as the entire situation escalates in the country. Nepal, facing the shortage of test kits and personal protective equipment for health workers, has recorded five confirmed cases of the COVID-19 so far.
But there is a growing concern over a possible spike in the cases due to the relatively low number of tests. Nepal has enforced a week-long nationwide lockdown since March 24 to prevent the spread of infection.
The health ministry said that the received support materials will be distributed to federal and provincial levels hospitals immediately and will be useful for the prevention and management of the COVID-19 in Nepal.
Mahendra Shrestha, director general at the Department of Health Services under the Health Ministry, told Xinhua on Saturday, “The procured test kits from China will help us in the situation of spike in positive cases of the COVID-19.”
WUHAN, China (Reuters) – China reported a drop in new coronavirus infections for a fourth day as drastic curbs on international travellers reined in the number of imported cases, while policymakers turned their efforts to healing the world’s second-largest economy.
The city of Wuhan, at the centre of the outbreak, reported no new cases for a sixth day, as businesses reopened and residents set about reclaiming a more normal life after a lockdown for almost two months.
Smartly turned out staff waited in masks and gloves to greet customers at entrances to the newly-reopened Wuhan International Plaza, home to boutiques of luxury brands such as Cartier and Louis Vuitton.
“The Wuhan International Plaza is very representative (of the city),” said Zhang Yu, 29. “So its reopening really makes me feel this city is coming back to life.”
Sunday’s figure of 31 new cases, including one locally transmitted infection, was down from 45 the previous day, the National Health Commission said.
As infections fall, policymakers are scrambling to revitalise an economy nearly paralysed by months-long curbs to control the spread of the flu-like disease.
On Monday, the central bank unexpectedly cut the interest rate on reverse repurchase agreements by 20 basis points, the largest in nearly five years.
The government is pushing businesses and factories to reopen, as it rolls out fiscal and monetary stimulus to spur recovery from what is feared to be an outright economic contraction in the quarter to March.
China’s exports and imports could worsen as the pandemic spreads, depressing demand both at home and abroad, Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology, said on Monday.
The country has extended loans of 200 billion yuan (22.75 billion pounds) to 5,000 businesses, from 300 billion allocated to help companies as they resume work, Xin said.
Authorities in Ningbo said they would encourage national banks to offer preferential credit of up to 100 billion yuan to the eastern port city’s larger export firms. The city government will subsidize such loans, it said in a notice.
VIRUS CONCERNS
While new infections have fallen sharply from February’s peak, authorities worry about a second wave triggered by returning Chinese, many of them students.
China cut international flights massively from Sunday for an indefinite period, after it began denying entry to almost all foreigners a day earlier.
Average daily arrivals at airports this week are expected to be about 4,000, down from 25,000 last week, an official of the Civil Aviation Administration of China told a news conference in Beijing on Monday.
The return to work has also prompted concern about potential domestic infections, especially over carriers who exhibit no, or very mild, symptoms of the highly contagious virus.
Northwestern Gansu province reported a new case of a traveller from the central province of Hubei, who drove back with a virus-free health code, national health authorities said.
Hubei authorities say 4.6 million people in the province returned to work by Saturday, with 2.8 million of them heading for other parts of China.
Most of the departing migrant workers went to the southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, the eastern provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and northeast China.
In Hubei’s capital of Wuhan, more retail complexes and shopping streets reopened.
Electric carmaker Tesla Inc has also reopened a showroom in Wuhan, a company executive said on Weibo.
Shoppers queued 1-1/2 metres (5 ft) apart for temperature checks at Wuhan International Plaza, while flashing “green” mobile telephone codes attesting to a clean bill of health.
To be cleared to resume work, Wuhan residents have been asked to take nucleic acid tests twice.
“Being able to be healthy and leave the house, and meet other colleagues who are also healthy is a very happy thing,” said Wang Xueman, a cosmetics sales representative.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 