While the Canberra political establishment has been sparring with China’s Foreign Ministry—and with Australian billionaires—much of the corporate elite has begun puzzling how to slipstream China’s post–Covid-19 economic recovery.

Optimists hope that Beijing will summon a massive infrastructure stimulus, triggering a commodity boom, as happened after the global financial crisis in 2009.

China’s emergence from the pandemic has been slower than expected, with some public health controls becoming institutionalised, and with second-order economic effects being felt via lost export orders and jobs. Life is returning to normal in most provinces, but strict neighbourhood-level monitoring, testing, and social distancing remain in place. China—as Australia—can’t relax fully while the virus is still spreading internationally.

New locally transmitted cases are still being reported, so school openings have been postponed, and cinemas closed again after briefly reopening.

Please click here to read the full “The prospects for China’s post–Covid-19 economy” article originally published at The Interpreter written by Griffith Asia Institute, Industry Fellow, Rowan Callick.