Lockdown effects in China
Last update January 14, 2022 by Sabrina Touami & Heleen Buldeo Rai.
The first case of COVID-19 was detected in China and specifically in Wuhan at the end of 2019. On January 23, 2020, the central government of China imposed a lockdown in Wuhan and other cities in the Hubei province to quarantine the centre of the outbreak. The lockdown in Wuhan set the precedent for similar measures in other Chinese cities. On 13 March 2020, Huangshi and Qianjiang became the first Hubei cities to remove strict travel restrictions within part or all of their administrative confines. On 8 April 2020, the Wuhan lockdown officially ended (Raymond, 2020).
E-commerce in China already makes up more than 50% of worldwide retail sales on the internet, but the Chinese online trade is not stopping there (Cramer-Flood, 2020). According to eMarketer, the expansion of e-commerce in China is still happening at a faster pace than elsewhere. Between 2016 and 2020, the share of online sales in all retail sales more than doubled – from around 20% to a projected 44% (Lipsman & Liu, 2020). Social commerce - a concept blending social media, e-commerce and group buying - has been making strides in recent years, bumping up online sales (Buchholz, 2021).
Chinese e-commerce evolved rapidly during the last five years, supported by high internet and smartphone penetration, increasing consumer confidence in online shopping, emergence of e-commerce platforms, and the availability of various alternative payment solutions such as Alipay and WeChat Pay. According to GlobalData’s (2021) e-commerce analytics, e-commerce sales in China grew at a compound annual growth rate of 17.7% between 2017 and 2021 to reach the value of CNY 13.8 trillion (or US $2.1 trillion) in 2021.
China e-commerce value (GlobalData, 2021).
References
Buchholz, K. (2021). E-Commerce Grows Fastest in China. Statista.
Cramer-Flood, E. (2020). Global Ecommerce 2020. eMarketer.
GlobalData (2021). Chinese e-commerce market to reach US$3.3 trillion in 2025. GlobalData.
Lipsman, A. & Liu, C. (2020). US Ecommerce 2020. eMarketer.
Raymond, Z. (2020, April 7). China Ends Wuhan Lockdown, but Normal Life Is a Distant Dream. New York Times.