Six ways the coronavirus crisis will change China’s relations with the world
- The Covid-19 epidemic is disrupting the global economy, supply chains and diplomatic events. Beijing likes to say that any event within its jurisdiction is an internal affair, but that clearly doesn’t apply in this case
This is also why we see the whole world sharing the price of the epidemic with China, whether it is in human casualties, economic losses or societal fallout, as a local health scare develops into a pandemic on a nationwide – and even worldwide – scale.
How the epidemic unfolds will impact the world, and reshape China’s relations with the outside world in a number of areas.
The first casualty will be the world economy, due to severe disruptions of economic activity in large parts of China and global travel restrictions. A sharp slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy, which is also a chief engine of global growth, will drag on the world economy, which is operating dangerously close to stall speed.
The World Bank has estimated that a severe flu pandemic could cause economic losses amounting to about 5 per cent of global GDP, or US$3 trillion. A milder pandemic could reduce global gross domestic product by around 0.5 per cent.
