The COVID-19 coronavirus and its economic impact
The extensive efforts to contain the new coronavirus have caused economic growth in China to slow abruptly and are having repercussions around the world.
The charts on this page track the spread of the virus in China and its economic impact. Most include daily data, which we are updating every working day. This page also contains links to our latest analysis on the impact of the outbreak in China and around the world.
Twelve charts.
Based on the above charts ZeroHedge has published the following article:
China Is Disintegrating: Steel Demand, Property Sales, Traffic All Approaching Zero
by Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/15/2020 – 08:11
In our ongoing attempts to glean some objective insight into what is actually happening “on the ground” in the notoriously opaque China, whose economy has been hammered by the Coronavirus epidemic, yesterday we showed several “alternative” economic indicators such as real-time measurements of air pollution (a proxy for industrial output), daily coal consumption (a proxy for electricity usage and manufacturing) and traffic congestion levels (a proxy for commerce and mobility), before concluding that China’s economy appears to have ground to a halt.
That conclusion was cemented after looking at some other real-time charts which suggest that there is a very high probability that China’s GDP in Q1 will not only flatline, but crater deep in the red for one simple reason: there is no economic activity taking place whatsoever.
We start with China’s infrastructure and fixed asset investment, which until recently accounted for the bulk of Chinese GDP. As Goldman writes in an overnight report, in the Feb 7-13 week, steel apparent demand is down a whopping 40%, but that’s only because flat steel is down “only” 12% Y/Y as some car plants have ordered their employee to return to work (likely against their will as the epidemic still rages).
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