AccScience Publishing / GHES / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ghes.1842
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

How long has it taken China’s economy to recover from the COVID-19 epidemic?

Hui Jin1* Jiamin Xue1* Haochuan Yang1 Zhenyu Zhu1 Mihajlo Jakovljevic2,3,4
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1 Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
2 UNESCO - The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Trieste, Italy
3 Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong, China
4 Department of Global Health Economics and Policy, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia
Submitted: 15 September 2023 | Accepted: 4 March 2024 | Published: 6 June 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic has profoundly impacted the stability of China’s economy, resulting in severe short-term economic fluctuations. A critical question arises: How long did it take for China’s economy to return to its pre-epidemic development status? This paper aims to answer this question and conducts an in-depth analysis of China’s national economic resilience in the face of this unprecedented challenge. To achieve this goal, this paper begins by examining the progression of the COVID-19 epidemic and China’s corresponding economic policies. It then delves into the national economic resilience of China across macroeconomic, industrial, and financial dimensions. This is achieved by analyzing the trajectory of economic recovery in these three dimensions following the substantial shock of the pandemic. The result shows that China spent approximately 2 years to restore its macroeconomic development, industrial structure, and financial system to the pre-COVID-19 epidemic status. This result reflects the national economic resilience of China to some extent. Following the immense shock of the COVID-19 epidemic, China’s economy exhibited a rapid recovery, demonstrating robust national economic resilience. This recovery can be attributed to several factors: first, a solid economic foundation established over past decades; and second, the strategic policies implemented by China, including decisive epidemic management, effective fiscal measures, and adaptable monetary policy.

Keywords
COVID-19
Economic resilience
China; Macroeconomics
Case study
Financial system
Funding
This research was supported by the Major Program Project of the National Social Science Fund of China (No: 19ZDA055), Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (ZSTU) Scientific Research Fund (No: 21092117-Y), and ZSTU Philosophy and Social Sciences Research Prosperity Program (No: 21096075-Y). The funding agency had no role in designing the study, conducting the analysis, and interpreting the data or writing the manuscript.
Conflict of interest
Prof Mihajlo Jakovljevic serves as Founding Editor-in- Chief of Global Health Economics and Sustainability, GHES, ASP. Authors declare absence of other conflict of interest issues in relation to the aforementioned content.
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