The Chinese economy has slowed down abruptly as a result of a trade war with the United States. Meanwhile, the coronavirus has completely destroyed the economic growth. It is a well-known fact that China’s authorities tend to downplay economic problems. According to official data, the country’s economy shrank for the first time in 30 years. Thus, Chinese GDP declined by 6.8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the last three months of 2019. This has been the first contraction of the economy since 1992 and the worst statistics in 40 years. Against this background, the Chinese authorities are likely to revise the protectionist stance on trade and the political course. For the last couple of years, socialist China has actively promoted its political system sparking a considerable interest among several Asian countries. However, Beijing has confronted a serious problem in the face of the coronavirus which is beyond the Communist Party’s control. At the beginning of the pandemic, when it was possible to prevent the spread of the infection across the world, the Chinese government decided to keep silence about the actual scale of the disaster. As a result, COVID-19 is sweeping through the rest of the world while China’s planned economy which, by the way, has proved to be inefficient several times is on the brink of collapse.
