XI URGES JOINT EFFORT IN VIRUS FIGHT

China will prioritize efforts to restore and raise the production capacity of medical supplies and epidemic containment materials to further contribute to international cooperation in halting the spread of the novel coronavirus and stabilizing global economic growth, President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday night.

He made the remark in a telephone conversation with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. Xi also had telephone calls with the presidents of Serbia and Kyrgyzstan.

While talking with Niinisto, Xi reaffirmed China's commitment to furthering global public health development and safeguarding the stability of the global industry and supply chains.

Human beings are a community with a shared future, and only by making joint efforts and showing solidarity can the international community get through the difficult times and conquer the pandemic, he said.

China is willing to continue with sharing its experience on epidemic containment with Finland and help the country to overcome its shortage of medical supplies, he added.

Xi also expressed his hope that Finland can ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country, especially students, saying that joint epidemic containment efforts will consolidate bilateral friendship.

Niinisto said Finland hopes to enhance cooperation with China to conquer the pandemic as soon as possible.

A speedy recovery of the Chinese economy is of paramount importance to the world, he said.

Xi and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, in their phone conversation, hailed the great friendship between the two countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xi said that China and Serbia share the most profound state-to-state relationship and the two countries have shown their close brotherhood and cordial friendship when faced with the disease.

Beijing will continue to provide help and support to Belgrade to fight the outbreak, he added.

Xi stressed in the phone call that the friendship between China and Serbia is profound and special. It will only become stronger and cannot be defeated when faced with risks and challenges of various kinds, he said.

The Serbian people will always be sincere and reliable friends of the Chinese people whatever difficulty or challenge occurs, Vucic said, adding that he will continue to maintain close exchanges with Xi.

While talking with Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov, Xi said China will soon send a team of medical experts to Kyrgyzstan to help the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jeenbekov said the pandemic again highlighted that Xi's idea of building a community with a shared future for mankind is urgent, realistic and meets the needs of the time.

LI CALLS FOR ENHANCED REGIONAL INTEGRATION

Premier Li Keqiang called on Tuesday for greater progress in regional economic integration between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, Japan and the Republic of Korea to enable the further opening up of markets and to stabilize industry and supply chains.

He made the remark in a speech during a special ASEAN-China, Japan and ROK leaders' meeting on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting was conducted as a videoconference.

The premier underscored that ASEAN and the three countries must further reduce or waive tariffs and scrap barriers in order to open markets to each other and restore economic growth.

Li said China welcomes the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank's proposal of a COVID-19 Recovery Facility with an initial capitalization of $5 billion.

China will provide 100 million face masks, 10 million protective suits and other urgently needed medical supplies to ASEAN countries as grant assistance and via commercial channels, he said.

He called for greater efforts to facilitate essential or urgently needed exchanges in the fields of commerce, logistics, production and technological services between the countries, and said the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership should be signed as scheduled.

The 16 RCEP countries have set a target of signing the pact, which could be the world's largest trade deal, by the end of this year.

Li highlighted the need for a stronger sense of community with a shared future between the countries amid the pandemic.

The countries must make all-out efforts to bolster cooperation in epidemic containment and improve the overall level of public health, he said.

Coordination among the health, customs, transport and immigration departments of the countries should be stepped up to synergize epidemic containment efforts, he said.

It is also important for the countries to share experience on treatment and diagnosis, work together in the research and development of vaccines and facilitate the commercial procurement of medical supplies, he said.

Cooperation and coordination with the World Health Organization must be enhanced, he added.

The premier also highlighted closer policy coordination to guard against various challenges and risks.

It is also important to ensure the supply of grain and market security in the region and prevent a possible food crisis, he added.

Leaders taking part in the meeting agreed that funding will be reallocated from the ASEAN Plus China Cooperation Fund and the ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation Fund to establish a special response fund to support ASEAN countries in containing the outbreak.

They agreed to explore the possibility of establishing a reserve mechanism for key medical supplies.

The meeting also welcomed funding support from multilateral financial institutions, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the AIIB, to counter the outbreak and its potential risks.

EXPORTERS TO FOCUS ON E-COMMERCE, PROCESSING TRADE

China will create fresh momentum for exports in e-commerce and processing trade and will actively respond to foreign restrictions in order to stabilize the country's foreign trade growth this year, a customs official said on Tuesday.

The country will encourage more global companies from the maintenance and remanufacturing sectors to establish operations in China's comprehensive bonded zones, support manufacturers in central, western and northeastern regions to undertake processing trade and facilitate the global expansion of cross-border e-commerce firms, said Li Kuiwen, a spokesman for the General Administration of Customs.

China's foreign trade volume totaled 6.57 trillion yuan ($931 billion) in the first quarter of this year, falling 6.4 percent year-on-year. In the meantime, the country's exports dropped 11.4 percent to 3.33 trillion yuan, and imports declined 0.7 percent to 3.24 trillion yuan, according to customs data released on Tuesday.

China's foreign trade in March totaled 2.45 trillion yuan, decreasing 0.8 percent year-on-year.

The administration will strengthen its ability in dealing with foreign restrictions encountered by export-oriented companies, and guide companies to learn in advance the entry requirements and quarantine procedures of various trading partners, said Li.

With the United Kingdom having formally left the European Union at the end of January and its trade volume no longer being part of the bloc's total amount, the customs official said that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations replaced the EU as China's largest trading partner in the first quarter of this year.

China's foreign trade with ASEAN member nations registered 991.34 billion yuan, an increase of 6.1 percent year-on-year, and accounting for 15.1 percent of China's total global trade volume.

Between January and March, China's trade with the EU was 875.93 billion yuan, down 10.4 percent year-on-year, while trade with the United States dropped 18.3 percent year-on-year to 668.01 billion yuan, and with Japan it fell 8.1 percent to 465.68 billion yuan.

China's foreign trade with economies related to the Belt and Road Initiative rose 3.2 percent on a yearly basis to 2.07 trillion yuan during the same period.

Even though China's foreign trade rebounded in March and most domestic manufacturers have resumed production, Zhang Jun, a senior analyst at Morgan Stanley Huaxin Securities, warned that domestic goods and machinery manufacturers may run short of orders in the second quarter or even in the second half of this year due to a decline in shopping and factory shutdowns overseas caused by the pandemic.

Wei Jianguo, vice-chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said it is time for China to highlight the roles of processing trade and cross-border e-commerce businesses to ease the pressure on general trade, which refers to imports or exports of goods. It is equally important to further tap the consumption potential in the domestic market to help Chinese exporters seek new growth points.

IMF SEES CHINA'S GROWTH REBOUNDING IN 2021

China's economy will likely grow at 1.2 percent this year and rebound strongly to 9.2 percent in 2021, the International Monetary Fund predicted Tuesday, as it said the COVID-19 would precipitate global growth into the deepest recession since 1930s but a recovery of 5.8 percent is expected if the pandemic fades.

"Global growth is projected at –3.0 percent in 2020, an outcome far worse than during the 2009 global financial crisis," the IMF said in World Economic Outlook released Tuesday. It added that there was "extreme uncertainty", and the situation could get much worse.

"The Great Lockdown", as the IMF called the global downturn, is the worst since the 1930s Great Depression.

The growth forecast is marked down by more than 6 percentage points relative to IMF's projections in October and January, which is an "extraordinary revision" over such a short period of time, according to the IMF report.

The report was released during the annual spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank that are taking place virtually April 14 through April 17.

The IMF predicted a partial rebound in 2021, with the global economy growing at 5.8 percent.

"This recovery in 2021 is only partial as the level of economic activity is projected to remain below the level we had projected for 2021, before the virus hit," Gita Gopinath, the IMF's chief economist, told reporters via a video link.

The economy of the United States, which has the largest numbers of both infections and deaths of the novel coronavirus, is projected to contract by 5.9 percent this year, and is poised to bounce back to 4.5 percent next year, the IMF said in its report.

Unlike the US and other major economies, Asia is likely to be the only region with a positive growth rate in 2020, though, averaging at 1 percent, the growth is more than 5 percentage points below its average in the previous decade, the IMF said.

The 186-member lender institution forecast a subdued 1.2 percent of growth for China for the whole of 2020, even the country experiences a sharp rebound in the remainder of the year with sizable fiscal support.

It was a sharp reduction from 6 percent growth predicted in the IMF's January forecast.

India is another country expected to be spared from recession in 2020 with a projected growth rate of 1.9 percent.

The IMF said that indicators in China, such as industrial production, retail sales, and fixed asset investment, suggest that the contraction in economic activity in the first quarter could have been about 8 percent year over year.

But the world's second-largest economy is expected to lead the economic recovery in the region. The IMF predicted China's growth to bounce back next year with 9.2 percent, a rarity for a decade. The last time the Asian country posted a similar growth rate was in 2009.

The rebound in 2021 depends critically on the pandemic fading in the second half of 2020, allowing containment efforts to be gradually scaled back and restoring consumer and investor confidence, according to the IMF.

CHINA IMPORTS MORE US FARM PRODUCTS

China's agricultural imports from the United States more than doubled in value during the first quarter of this year on a yearly basis, as the Sino-US phase-one trade deal has been gradually fulfilled despite the COVID-19 outbreak, customs data showed on Tuesday.

Since the first phase of the Sino-US trade agreement, signed in mid-January, has been gradually implemented, there have been some "positive factors" in the economic and trade ties between the two countries, Li Kuiwen, spokesman of the General Administration of Customs, said during a media conference.

In the first quarter, the country's imports of US agricultural products amounted to 35.56 billion yuan ($5.04 billion), an increase of 1.1 times on a yearly basis, customs data showed.

Specifically, soybean imports rose twofold to 7.81 million metric tons, pork imports by more than sixfold to 168,000 tons and cotton imports by 43.5 percent to 124,000 tons, according to the data.

Despite a pickup in agricultural imports, the country's total imports from the US decreased 1.3 percent year-on-year to 191.46 billion yuan, the data showed.

Li said it should also be noted that China's exports to the US declined in the first three months, partly due to the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak and the extension of the Spring Festival holiday this year.

China's exports to the US shrank 23.6 percent year-on-year in value terms to 476.55 billion yuan between January and March, Li said, citing the customs data.

The world's two largest economies inked their phase-one trade pact on Jan 15, after yearlong negotiations. Based on the deal, China will ensure it purchases and imports manufactured goods, agricultural goods and energy products from the US.

As the COVID-19 epidemic has disrupted the global economic and trade orders, there have been concerns about whether the agreement can be fulfilled.

Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the economic policy committee at the China Association of Policy Science, said the COVID-19 outbreak can be an opportunity for China and the US to strengthen trade cooperation.

"It is necessary not only to create conditions to implement the first-phase of the economic and trade deal, but also to expand trade especially in medical devices, medicinal materials, equipment and to cooperate in vaccine research and development," Xu said.

WUHAN RESTARTS: CENTRAL SOES ON FAST TRACK

After being in lockdown for 76 days, Wuhan is actively resuming production and construction operations, with centrally administered State-owned enterprises' branch companies in the city pressing the fast-forward button, China Youth Daily reported.

Electricity consumption, a key barometer of economic activity, witnessed the revival of Wuhan's economy.

Between this year's Spring Festival and mid-March, Wuhan's electricity consumption fell nearly 40 percent year-on-year. However, with the resumption of production and public traffic, power use rose simultaneously in the city.

From March 22 to April 10, daily maximum load of the power grid increased to 5.59 million kilowatts from 4.34 million kilowatts, with a daily growth rate of 3.4 percent.

The State Grid Wuhan company drew a plan to create a safe and orderly environment for power use. For small and medium-sized enterprises which were hit hard during the epidemic, the company offered preferential policies to help them reduce the cost of electricity.

Shi Yihui, deputy director of the power dispatch and control center of the company, predicted that by the end of April, Wuhan's power consumption would reach 6.2 million kilowatts, 90 percent of the level of the same period last year.

Besides electricity consumption, the construction of the "new infrastructure" has also been accelerated in the city.

In 2019, Wuhan unveiled a plan to set up 15,000 5G bases in 2020, and China Tower Wuhan company is responsible for the construction of macrocell bases. The company resumed production on March 23, two weeks earlier compared with other enterprises.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, employees couldn't conduct on-site investigations and the construction list of 5G bases couldn't be finalized until the end of March, which affected their work schedule in aspects such as material purchasing and construction arrangements to some extent.

However, during the pause, the company completed the construction and reconstruction of 5G bases for 96 emergency sites including Huoshenshan Hospital, Leishenshan Hospital and some makeshift hospitals, where doctors could conduct CT image transfers and telemedicine through 5G technologies.

After 5G construction was brought into the national "new infrastructure" project, the Wuhan city government unveiled a new plan, which requires the China Tower Wuhan company and several enterprises to deliver 15,000 bases during the first half of this year.

On April 8, Wuhan lifted its months-long lockdown imposed after the novel coronavirus epidemic. Since the company fully resumed production, the number of 5G projects that have started construction reached 1,327.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. - Audrey Hepburn