China’s Coronavirus Has Revived Global Economic Fears

In short, those in control of money took note of a growing crisis in a country of 1.4 billion people, whose consumers and businesses are a primary engine of economic growth around the world, and they chose to reduce their exposure to risk.

By late Monday, the virus had killed more than 80 people in China. Nearly 3,000 had been infected — mostly in mainland China, but also in Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, and as far away as Australia, Canada and the United States.

The emergence of the virus in China, whose government jails journalists and tightly controls information, left the world uncomfortably short of facts needed to assess the dangers.

“It’s the uncertainty of how the global economy is going to respond to the outbreak,” said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec, a specialist bank in London. That will depend on the severity, the spread and the duration of the outbreak, he said, and “we don’t really know the answers to any of these questions.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/business/coronavirus-china-economic-impact.html?emc=rss&partner=rss