retail sales and factory output in china
slumped to two-year lows in april while
unemployment climbed to two-year highs
the new figures show the growing
economic damage wrought by the country's
ongoing covet 19 lockdowns
retail sales in china falling more than
11 percent for the month that's year on
year a drop last seen at the outbreak of
the pandemic
industrial production meanwhile fell
about 3 percent unemployment reached
more than 6 percent in urban areas
dozens of chinese cities remain in tight
lockdown including the world's largest
port city shanghai
all right my colleague clifford coonan
joins me in studio for more clifford how
unexpected or expected were these
numbers
well they're they're certainly
surprising and um they're worse than the
forecasts had had predicted but at the
same time what's really surprising i
think is just the extent uh you know the
the depth of the slowdown
it was obviously um partially because of
it largely because of the lockdown in
the in the major cities but it's hit
retail sales which were which the
government has long relied on to to prop
up the economy things like passenger car
sales are down 47
um and then and that sort of feeds into
other areas for example you know the
passengers car sales falling so much
that accounts for so many jobs so we had
this problem with unemployment as well
rising and the figures are the worst in
two years but when you think about it
two years ago was also pandemic related
you know so really these are these are
the worst in in since they've been
records in china um particularly because
unemployment data is quite recent in
china so um we're looking at all sectors
of the economy struggling from this and
it's it's prompting a lot of questions
about the the depth of the economy
one of the questions is prompting is
what does it mean for western business
so many of them you know relying on
cities like shenzhen shanghai to either
manufacture to ship to both i mean what
does that mean for them are they
reconsidering uh what they're doing in
china absolutely i mean i give an
example there's a um a lot of there's a
lot of foreign teachers in china for
example and um one of the headmasters of
one of the most prominent uh of foreign
schools in in china
just left but he didn't without saying
anything because um he didn't think he'd
be able to get out the lockdown has had
a huge impact on on people um and it's
caused quite a scandal in china and it's
it's not unusual a lot of people uh
foreigners working in china now are
worried because the level of
micromanagement that's going on with the
lockdown is incredible and it means that
if you're trying to hire foreigners and
china still needs foreign talent to keep
keep economic growth going it's becoming
a real challenge means the government's
almost more inscrutable in some ways you
don't know when a lockdown is coming you
don't know if you're going to be able to
move around or do business exactly and
it it it shows up i mean i think it in
some ways this is xi jinping's churchill
moment he's treating it like a um like a
war on kovic standing his ground exactly
and um which means he's being very very
rigid and the level of micro management
is incredible people you know every
three days you get a knock on the door
and you're forced to take
a test you know and this is this is
proving a real problem and what's the
domestic support for that line though
within china i mean is there
disagreement with this hard hard line
you're seeing the economic numbers just
plummet like this well i think this is
going to be the factor it's going to
really hit support for the government
because they're thinking because because
omicron isn't as bad as other variants
there's increasingly a lot of
dissatisfaction
about this there's a lot of censorship
on trying to stop it
is is this a phase when we look at
omicron and we know the pandemic isn't
necessarily a phase but does beijing see
this perhaps a phase once they get
through this they'll just turn the
economy back on
yeah this is i think there is a feeling
that you can turn it on and off and this
is going to be obviously a test of that
i think to a certain extent they can you
know because foreign companies are still
deeply embedded there you know with the
supply chain they're not going to be in
vietnam or exactly
these countries just don't have the
infrastructure that china has they don't
have the scale that china has um and um
india isn't there yet you know another
possibility so i think people are still
going to be in china but i think i think
the thinking about china has changed um
even in germany where which is always
which is very very involved heavily
invested in china is also now looking at
things like we saw volkswagen recently
is looking um
quite closely at the united states
america that's right you know so people
are thinking it's less there's less of a
sort of a um a focus on china that there
was
so ultimately it they will the economy
will come back but maybe in a different
way
all right my colleague dw businesses
clifford kuhn and thank you very much