As the disease has spread to nearly 10 other countries, including the U.S., airports around the world are screening passengers from China. Airline and travel-related stocks are taking a hit. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell sharply Wednesday and early Thursday but has largely recovered since.
But what is happening on the ground in China’s domestic economy, which is facing this outbreak amid its lowest growth rate in 30 years?
Authorities there have locked down ground zero of the viral outbreak—the enormous city of Wuhan, which is geographically 10 times the size of Dallas or San Diego, and contains 11 million residents. At least eight other cities in the region are under transport lockdown, meaning some 40 million people are restricted from traveling, according to Chinese state media reports.
Predicting how the outbreak and subsequent consumer panic and investor uncertainty will affect certain sectors is often easy, but less clear-cut for several areas.
Morningstar Investment Management Asia forecasts that Chinese airlines with Wuhan-connected routes will suffer in the short term, but “barring a ‘black swan’ event, we expect airline operations to normalize over time,” Ivan Su, a Morningstar equity analyst, said in an emailed statement.
Also expected to take a hit are China’s leading travel site
Trip.com
(ticker: TCOM) and the tourism and gambling sectors in Macau, which recently announced its first coronavirus case.
Macau’s economy was hit hard in early 2003 by the SARS epidemic, though central government support helped it rebound soon after. As China is experiencing significant economic cooling, investors are waiting to see what, if any, stimulus measures are rolled out for various sectors once the disease is better understood and contained.
One hard-hit sector looks to be China’s movie industry. The disease struck smack in the middle of the country’s biggest annual holiday, Lunar New Year, which often rakes in a substantial portion of each year’s box office receipts—close to $10 billion last year. An industry source told entertainment outlet Deadline that the disease’s effects could cost the industry $1 billion globally this year.
The dour news spread quickly on Chinese social media, but one clever studio spun straw into gold. The makers of one film, the much-anticipated comedy “Lost in Russia,” decided to not only release the movie online, but to offer it for free. Within hours Friday, the announcement became the top-trending topic on China’s
Twitter
-like Weibo, and Hong Kong-listed
Huanxi Media Group’s
(1003:HK) share price had skyrocketed an eye-popping 43%.
Although many industries and stores close their doors during the holiday, one exception is large, higher-end restaurants, where families and big groups go to treat each other to lavish meals. There is scant data on how they are faring so far, but one Chinese woman who returned to her hometown for the holiday in Henan, a province not far from Wuhan that has reported its own viral cases, said she had urged her friends and family to skip the festive dinners and play it safe at home.
“My brother and mother were on the fence about going to the big dinner,” Lü Gaili, a 33-year-old illustrator, told Barron’s. “I couldn’t seem to convince them, so I secretly used each of their phones to text the family saying ‘I’m not going tonight.’ This way everyone thought we had all decided against going.”
Many Chinese haven’t gone to this extreme to convince their loved ones to avoid crowded Lunar New Year events. Three other Chinese citizens told Barron’s they and numerous friends had canceled big gatherings because of the perceived risk.
And these are only examples of voluntary avoidances of activities that would generate economic activity. Beijing authorities have outright banned events, including its major new year festival, and have shuttered several of its preeminent tourist attractions, including the Forbidden City, the National Museum, and parts of the Great Wall.
Shanghai has shut down several events as well, including some of its river cruises, but none have provoked the despondency that arose online Friday when Shanghai Disneyland announced it was closing its doors for an unspecified duration.
Hong Kong, Macau, and several other cities have taken similar precautions. Despite only moderate ups and downs for overseas stocks, mainland Chinese markets ended the week on a palpably sour note, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index having its worst Lunar New Year’s eve in its 30-year history, falling nearly 3% Thursday before the start of the seven-day trading break.
Because of China’s enormous population, the enervation of economic activity, even for as little as a week—and this epidemic could have longer staying power—is enough to significantly dent the country’s overall economy, experts say.
If the virus continues to spread, “the economic impact for China—and potentially elsewhere—will be significant,” according to a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which said up to one percentage point could be shaved off the country’s 2020 real GDP growth rate.
Other analysts were more pessimistic. “The current outbreak’s likely impact will range from a 0.8% cut to real GDP if the epidemic is controlled within three months, to a 1.9% cost to GDP if the epidemic lasts nine months,” said Mo Ji, chief economist of Greater China for asset management firm AllianceBernstein.
“Most likely, the duration of the outbreak will be something in between,” he said. “For at least another three to four months, China will have to fight not only the spread of the disease but also the damage it causes to economic growth. We currently anticipate a possible one percentage point cost to real GDP growth.”
Tanner Brown is a contributor to Barron’s and MarketWatch and producer of the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief podcast.
