Steady Road To Recovery Life and business are gradually resumed in China as epidemic wanes
If the Chinese people were waiting for the assurance from their government that the COVID-19 epidemic was under control, that signal came on April 29. On that day, green light was given to the convening of the annual Two Sessions, the country’s most important political event of the year.
The Two Sessions, or the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), top political advisory body of China, started on May 22 and May 21, respectively, this year. It’s unprecedented for this annual event to open two months later than usual.
April also saw great progress in epidemic control, especially in Wuhan, a city that was severely hit by the novel coronavirus. The last remaining assistance medical team from southwest China’s Sichuan Province left Wuhan on April 7, one day before the lifting of the city’s lockdown. The two hospitals specially built for receiving COVID19 patients in the city, Huoshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals, were officially shut down on April 15.
This allowed a further shift from epidemic control to economic recovery. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, by April 24, 84.6 percent of China’s enterprises above designated size had restored more than half of their production capacity. This was a 4.1-percentage-point increase compared to that at the beginning of the month, although there are still many challenges for enterprises, including an increase in inventory and decrease in profit.
Gradual recovery
The sectors that are not ready to reopen are in an especially difficult situation. Industries that involve a gathering of great numbers of people in confined spaces, such as cinemas and theaters, are facing greater pressure.
Yao Qiuxin is a full-time translator with China’s National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The center has been closed to audiences since late January, and it is still uncertain so far when it will reopen to the public.
Despite the absence of audiences, the center has managed to continue its operations, but in a different way. On April 11, the center held the first of its spring series of concerts dedicated to online audiences, bringing music to people locked down at home. The performances were delivered by the center’s orchestras in the concert halls, and broadcast online and on television in cooperation with multiple media agencies.
To make up for the poor sound quality, a broadcasting team was set up to not only record as much sound as possible, but also film the moves and facial expressions of the performers. These details are often not available to on-site audiences.
The effect was unexpectedly good. The three concerts of the spring series gained some 160 million views online. On May 12, they started their summer series, with the first show dedicated to nurses fighting the epidemic in celebration of the International Nurses Day. This time, they cooperated with 22 art organizations in 16 other countries to broadcast the performances to online audiences across the world.
Yao works as a subtitle translator for these performances, which will be made into discs and distributed abroad.
Though most of the businesses in the city have reopened and she has experienced months of lockdown at home, she is not eager to go out and make up for the days missed. Instead, she opts to stay at home unless she has to go to the market in her neighborhood for necessities.
“I am not totally sure about the safety of going out too often,” she told Chinafrica.
When she doesn’t need to go to the office, she spends her time on translating an English detective novel. The story takes place in a theater, so she is having fun working on it.