China restarts its economy as rest of the world continues to slip

While the rest of the world is battling economic demons and a major slump, China, from where Covid-19 originated, is back on its feet, key economic indicators show. As per numbers released by Chinese government officials and the National Bureau of Statistics of China on Tuesday, one of the key indicators of the economic condition of any country, the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) was 52.3 percentage points in March. The PMI was 35.7 percentage points in February.

The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) is a measure of the prevailing direction of economic trends in manufacturing. Purchasing by manufacturers is a primary indicator of business activity as it shows what the market sentiment is when it comes to buying supplies in anticipation of demand.

Experts use the threshold of 50% as the cut-off point for judging economic performance. If PMI is above 50%, it reflects that the overall economy is expanding, if less than 50%, it shows that the overall economy is in recession.

Similarly, the construction business activity index of China was 55.1%, up by 28.5 percentage points from last month, while the service business activity index was 51.8%, up by 21.7 percentage points from last month. The new orders index was 49.2%, up by 22.7 percentage points from the previous month.

The CSI 300, which is the stock market index that shows the performance of the top 300 stocks traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock exchange, had opened at 4,152.24 this year and had slumped to 3,688 points on 2 February and 3,530 points on 23 March. However, now it has stabilized at 3,700. With the