Retail sales and the property market in China are being hammered by draconian Covid restrictions and the country’s nascent recovery is being choked off. The Telegraph has more.
Navigating the maze-like showroom that is an Ikea store has always been notoriously difficult. But last weekend, hundreds of shoppers in Shanghai found themselves barging their way past security guards just to get out of the doors at the Xuhui district outlet.
On social media it looked like a closing-down sale or Black Friday scrum. But these shoppers weren’t in search of a bargain Billy bookcase. They were simply trying to leave the store.
China’s draconian approach to tackling Covid-19 has previously left some shoppers trading their handbags for sleeping bags. In Shanghai, those unfortunate enough to fail in the escape from Ikea were trapped for hours behind the locked exit as authorities ordered swab tests for all customers, all because one shopper was in close contact with someone with the virus.
They’re not alone. Horror stories have emerged of people being locked in Uniqlo for 48 hours or being trapped in Disneyland as authorities mass-tested tens of thousands in the pursuit of Covid-zero. “I never thought that the longest queue in Disneyland would be for a nucleic acid test,” one disgruntled theme park-goer said last year on social media.
Official figures on Monday provided further evidence that the strict Covid policies are choking off an already nascent recovery. Retail sales have slowed, factory production is stuttering and even investment is falling short of expectations. The talk now is not whether the country will miss an implicit growth target of 5.5pc this year, but by how much.
Shanghai, China’s most populous urban area, has endured some of the strictest and prolonged lockdowns in the world under a strategy set by the country’s premier Xi Jinping. The city of 20 million people has ordered flash lockdowns of areas where positive cases or their close contacts have been detected.
It is hurting morale as well as damaging business sentiment and tourism, and inflicting long term damage on the economy.
Worth reading in full.
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Re President Biden’s ban on LNG exports, it’s worse than “cynical”. Per House Speaker Johnson, President Biden when questioned by the Speaker denied that he did it! If not President Biden doing that, then who did it and why?
The ‘blob’ we are to assume?
Still, at least we can take some satisfaction in knowing that Kneel is going to make this country the world leader in unreliables. We will be cold, poor, hungry and immobile but just think of the accolades…
Yes if we try really hard and all make sacrifices (except for members of the cabinet, obviously), we might be able to reduce Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions from 0.8% to 0.4% of the world total!
….on second thoughts, with the rate that China and India are developing, we can probably achieve that relative reduction without even trying
Wealthy Chinese tourists coming to visit us a we shiver in our caves because we’re neither allowed to wear fur nor light a fire as this would upset the climate? I mean, a whole country, especially one in the northern hemisphere, going back to the Paleolithic so that “green billionaires” can brag about this accomplishment in their Caribbean resorts ought to be quite of a tourist attraction. A large open air zoo of cavemen without any desire to improve their lots through technological progress to avoid upsetting mother nature and her high-priests Dale Vince and Chris Packham.
Except this absurd Labour Government cannot possibly last till 2029. There are already signs that they will be forced to reverse some of the absurdity like forcing heat pumps on people at considerable expense, forcing us all into EV’s etc etc, because reality is a very hard enemy to defeat. And the reality is that you cannot run Industrial Society on wind and sun as the Germans are now finding out.
I think it would have been better to show GDP per capita on the graph as that would eliminate differences in population growth as a factor but a quick internet search suggests that US growth per capita has been shockingly higher than Europe.
GREEN = Control of the world’s wealth, resources and YOU.—- The United Nations Politics of Sustainable Development has decided that the lifestyles in the prosperous west are too high and must be reduced. Ofcourse that standard of living comes from the use of Fossil Fuels, and that is why they want rid of them. The tragedy for citizens all across the western world who do not have a Trump fighting for their prosperity means that the EU and UK and to some extent Canada, Australia etc all have these eco socialist governments determined to follow the Sustainable Development instructions from the UN. ——The good news is that in many countries now there is a fight back against this tyranny. In Germany where this stupid phony planet saving nonsense has created a collapse of the Industrial base people are fighting back and here in the UK our absurd Labour Government with its draconian climate agenda that is determined to impoverish its own citizens we now see the surge in support for REFORM, who are totally against this and have stated they will halt Net Zero. —–Perhaps with Trump leading the way all of this can be achieved, and the western world can return to the prosperity that the UN/WEF seek to destroy.
The AfD is currently polling at 20% which means a coalition excluding it can always be formed. It would need at least 51% to actually have a chance to govern and I’m not convinced that the establishment parties would let that happen, should it become possible. After all, it’s well-known that the most dangerous enemy of the DINO¹ is people with unfiltered opinions who might not vote as they’re supposed to.
¹ Democracy In Name Only.
Germany’s renunciation of nuclear power plants followed the tsunami overwhelming the Japanese nuclear plant. Here is a map of Germany’s nuclear industry (as was) Template:Germany nuke plant map – Wikipedia
Clearly, Merkel was terrified that tidal waves would overwhelm all these plants, four of the 26 being situated on the coast!
And of those as you say, 4 are off the coast in one of the most stable tectonic regions of the world as I understand it. This basically confirms the German decision was 100% ideological, and nothing to do with science at all as we know
But will someone who makes much of his income from EVs, Elon Musk, allow this to happen.
I think he’ll play the long game here – he isn’t that daft. Tesla cars will continue to sell and have a reasonably large user base, they suit certain limited use types, as do other EV’s