Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images BEIJING — Covid infections are rising in the capital of China’s export-heavy Guangdong province, raising concerns of another strain on the national economy. Schools in eight of Guangzhou’s 11 districts moved classes online for most students starting Thursday. In recent days, more parts of the city have ordered people to stay home and non-essential businesses to close. “As things stand, it is hard to say whether Guangzhou will repeat the Shanghai experience this spring,” Nomura’s chief China economist Ting Lu and a team said in a note late Wednesday. “If Guangzhou repeats what Shanghai did in the spring, it will lead to a new round of pessimism about China.” Earlier this year, the metropolis of Shanghai was locked down for about two months and wider Covid controls led to second-quarter national GDP growing just 0.4%, according to official data. GDP rebounded in the third quarter with a 3.9% increase, but then exports unexpectedly fell in October. It was not immediately clear to what extent Guangzhou’s latest business restrictions affected the factories’ ability to operate. Many manufacturers are located outside the city but in the same province. State-owned automaker GAC Group said its factories in Guangzhou were operating normally as of Thursday morning. “The outbreak has not caused a material impact,” the company said in a statement. In just one week, the number of symptomatic Covid infections in Guangdong has multiplied fivefold to 500 as of Wednesday. During this period, asymptomatic infections increased sevenfold to about 2,500 cases. The latest outbreak prompted the American Chamber of Commerce in China to postpone an event in Guangzhou that had already been delayed since September, Michael Hart, the chamber’s president, said Thursday. He expects two more of the chamber’s events in the city this year to be postponed. “These travel impacts hurt local governments’ abilities to make investments,” Hart said, noting that such investments were not lost but delayed. “I’ve canceled more trips than I’ve been able to,” he said. Late autumn is a popular time for conferences and business travel in China. In particular, Guangzhou has indefinitely delayed its auto show that was due to start next week. The country’s biggest auto show that was supposed to be hosted in Beijing earlier this year was never postponed.
More travel restrictions
“Probably a bigger concern [than getting sick] it’s what he does [travel] do your Beijing sanitary code and you can come back?’ Hart said, referring to a government smartphone app for tracking Covid exposure. The city requires anyone entering a mall, taxi or public space to use the app. The venue can refuse entry if the application shows the person has not tested negative for Covid within the last three days — or carries a “pop-up” that is supposed to indicate suspected contact with Covid infection. The pop-up is preventing people from entering Beijing. His appearance has become so frequent and somewhat unpredictable that one Chinese commentator said in a widely shared video that any business trip outside Beijing was a choice between family and work. The video was removed from public view Thursday morning.
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The pop-up of Beijing’s health code enforcement is also affecting people’s mobility in the capital, which has reported a rising number of infections in recent days. “In Beijing, you just assume that a certain percentage of the workforce is going to have problems with pop-ups,” Hart said, noting that virus testing requirements for some office buildings have increased to once every 24 hours. “Instead of loosening, it’s getting tighter in some areas.”
