As China battles the greatest Covid-19 outbreak the world has ever seen, experts have issued a dire warning about the health of the world’s finances in 2023.
Covid-19 broke out in China a month ago, on December 7, after Chinese President Xi Jinping abruptly changed his contentious zero-Covid policy in the face of massive nationwide protests.
On New Year’s Eve, the International Monetary Fund issued a warning that the economic downturn in China, Europe, and the US didn’t bode well for the world economy.
In particular, the slow growth in Asia is concerning. For the first time in 40 years, according to Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF, “China’s growth in 2022 is expected to be at or below world growth.”
This will have massive flow-on effects, experts warned. China’s internal supply chain is already imploding due to the massive outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. As many as 248 million people contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December. Experts are bracing for more than 60 per cent of the population to be infected.
