Is it true that China is expected to post one of its worst growth rates in the last many years due to the COVID-19 pandemic?

A poll conducted by Reuters shows that China’s GDP growth could actually stumble to its slowest annual pace in almost 50 years in the aftermath of the pandemic and its downstream impact. China’s growth for 2020 has been projected at 2.5%, which marks the slowest rate of growth since 1976. China undertook its massive opening up of the economy in 1979 under Deng Xiaoping and has not looked back sense. This year could be a major disruption for China. It is likely to be a sharp fall from the 6.1% GDP growth that China reported in 2019. However, for the March quarter, the Chinese economy is expected to contract by 6.5%. It will be the first time since 1992 that China would have seen such a bad contraction in any quarter. China is the export and import engine of the world and hence any slowdown in China is likely to have major global ramifications. Analysts are already expecting 30 million job losses this year due to staggered work resumptions and an unwillingness of people to come back to the cities. Back at the peak of the 2008-09 crisis also, China had only laid off 20 million people. Of course, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will certainly ramp up its policy easing to support the economy but will not follow the ultra aggressive US approach.