By its own standards, China’s economy is having a bad year. After four decades of stellar growth, the east Asian country will barely expand at all in 2020. But just about every country – big or small – has faced a hit from the Covid-19pandemic, and China has suffered less than most. Whereas most western industrialised nations are still struggling to get back to where they were before the virus struck, Beijing has reported that there was year-on-year growth in the third quarter.
Financial analysts tend to take China’s growth figures with a pinch of salt but even so it is clear that the world’s second biggest economy has been leading the way in the recovery from Covid-19. There are a number of reasons for that.
