A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
The author is a senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, and former director of economic and business policy for mayor of London
The centrality of poverty reduction to China’s state policy was once more strongly emphasized by the Report on the Work of the Government to this year’s full session of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature. The novel coronavirus outbreak has evidently struck a heavy blow to the Chinese economy, and the pandemic’s indirect international consequences are creating the greatest global economic downturn since the Great Depression, which will weigh negatively on China throughout this year. For this latter reason, as is well known, China took the unusual
