A sobering statistic emerged this morning in the form of figures for Wuhan’s economic activity during the first quarter. The worse-than-feared 40.5 percent drop in GDP over the same period last year comes as another forewarning to virus epicentres elsewhere.
China breaks down its GPD figures by primary, secondary and tertiary industries. In the primary sector, largely the production of raw materials, Wuhan’s GDP fell by 36.4 percent, while the drop was 37.7 percent for the tertiary sector, namely the supply of services.
However, the worst news came, as expected, in the secondary sector that largely comprises manufacturing. Herein, Wuhan’s performance was down 45.4 percent on the first quarter of last year, reports The Paper.
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Wuhan is well known in China as a hub of manufacturing, particularly in the iron, steel and automotive sectors. It is home to Dongfeng Motors that is one of the “Big Four” of Chinese automakers, together with Changan Automobile, the FAW Group, and SAIC Motor. Dongfeng is also the joint venture partner in China for the French brands Peugeot-Citroën.
Those industries aside, and just as with Nanjing, in recent years there has been a big push for a cleaner, high-tech economy for Wuhan. Indeed, the city now touts itself as China’s “Optics Valley”. Home to the world’s largest fiber optics production, Wuhan is also a key driver in weaning China’s dependence on overseas suppliers of silicon chips.
Such cleaner, modern industries were the least to suffer during Wuhan’s lockdown. Internet and related sectors were relatively less affected, with information transmission, software and information technology services down 25.4 percent.
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In other sectors, Wuhan’s total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, together with the associated supply chain, was down 45.9 percent. Therein, the output of vegetables and aquatic products decreased by 24.2 and 54.9 percent respectively.
In the first quarter, fixed asset investment in Wuhan fell 81.6 percent year on year. In terms of sub sectors therein, industrial investment, infrastructure investment and real estate development investment decreased by 88.4, 84.1 and 75.7 percent respectively, while private investment dropped 84.6 percent.
In all the doom and gloom, there were at least two spots of growth. Somewhat at odds with each other were the 341.2 percent growth recorded by health industries related to epidemic prevention, which is to be expected, and the 9.2 percent growth for quarter 1, 2020, displayed by Wuhan’s tobacco industry.
