What's the state of China's economic recovery?

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**Editor's Note: **What is the state of China's economic recovery post-pandemic? Do the economic numbers reflect the challenges and opportunities on the ground? In this episode of Reality Check with Wang Guan, CGTN anchor Wang Guan breaks down some key economic data, and discusses the prospects of the world's second largest economy with World Bank's China Director Martin Raser and Vanguard Investment Strategy Group's Chief Economist Wang Qian.

Official surveys show that 99 percent of China's large industries and 84 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises had reopened by mid-April. Industrial production, a major gauge of factory activity, grew by 3.9 percent from a year earlier, recovering from a recent drop. That growth rate, by the way, is twice as fast as most economists expected.

Another measure of economic activity is investment. In April, China's investment in fixed-assets such as machinery and land rose, so did property investment and infrastructure investment, though all are still below pre-pandemic levels. There is a slower recovery on the demand side.

In April, retail sales, a gauge of consumer spending, fell by 7.5 percent year on year. Overseas demand has also been weak as many countries are still battling the coronavirus.

In other words, Chinese factories are churning out clothes, toys and electronics faster than consumers in China or overseas want to buy them.Given the uncertainties abroad, many are looking to China's parliamentary "Two Sessions" to provide more fiscal measures to stimulate domestic consumption.

Another concern is jobs. The official urban unemployment number in April is 6 percent, slightly higher than 5.9 percent in March. But as you will soon hear from economists, this number may not include everyone who's out of work.

A silver lining of this pandemic is the expansion of China's digital economy, with online sales, teleconferencing and online entertainment thriving amid social distancing orders.

Before COVID-19, China was already a digital leader – accounting for 45 percent of global e-commerce transactions. After COVID-19, bricks and mortar retail sales plummeted but online sales rose 3 percent in the first two months of 2020.

Company communication platform DingTalk doubled its monthly active users in a single quarter to 17 million. Leading this wave of digitization are China's private firms.

At the height of COVID-19, Alipay and WeChat supported the Shanghai government's "Suishenma" health QR code launch to help contain the spread of the virus.

Now back to the big question, what must China do to sustain its economic recovery? How can it balance reopening the economy and preventing a second wave of the outbreak?

World Bank's China Director Martin Raser and Vanguard Investment Strategy Group's Chief Economist Wang Qian share their views with CGTN.

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