Starting the text of The Economist magazine, “When its borders are opened on January 8, China will have spent 1,016 days closed to the world”. Further ahead, “China’s great reconnection with the outside world marks the end of an era: that of the global pandemic”.
The “period of turbulence” with Covid will last until March, the publication projects, but “economic activity should recover strongly”, including jobs, consumption and even the real estate sector.
The effects will be felt “beyond borders”. Citing that the country consumes three-fifths of the iron ore produced in the world, among other data, the Economist recalls that “China’s most direct channel of influence is through commodities”.
In the case of natural gas, for example, a stress test carried out by the International Energy Agency showed that Russia could redirect to China all the production currently delivered to Europe, which would even be forced to ration.
Overall, “higher commodity prices will be a boon for exporters like Brazil.”
PEAK?
The Global Times, from Beijing, linked to the PC, publishes that “the peak of Covid infection in megacities” in China is coming to an end, which is corroborated by a scholar of the American organization Council on Foreign Relationsciting figures from the resumption of public transport in Beijing and others.
The Chinese newspaper adds, however, that the contagion “should reach rural areas soon”, as well as small and medium-sized cities, extending there until the end of this month.
THE DEMON XBB.1.5
For Washington’s influential Sinocism newsletter, “restrictions and testing requirements [de viajantes chineses] by the United States” and then other countries, American allies, “are more theater than substantive, more for reasons of internal politics, neither constructive nor effective”.
The justification for them would be the risk of possible Chinese variants. But in China and even Taiwan, the fear expressed by newspapers such as Shine, from Shanghai, and Zhongguo Shibao, from Taipei, is “the great demon XBB.1.5” —originated in the US, according to the man himself. Eric Topolthe leading American physician on Covid, on social media.
EXCESS MORTALITY
Regarding the number of victims of the Covid wave, Bloomberg reports that the China Center for Disease Control will calculate “and disclose” the excess mortality in the period.
The data, “which measures the difference between the number of deaths during the Covid wave and the number of deaths expected if it had not occurred, has been used around the world to provide a comprehensive view of the impact”.
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