BOUND SHANGHAI

After almost three years of lockdown, China has reopened for business. We head to the country's commercial centre to find out what we've been missing...

- LAURA MILLAR

The economic impact of the pandemic was felt all over the world as countries grappled with various measures to contain the disease.

In China, efforts to deal with the pandemic were among some of the most severe, with extensive lockdowns, closed borders and a zero-Covid policy.

Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in Shanghai, China’s economic powerhouse, which accounts for up to 4 per cent of the country’s GDP. Sitting strategically within the Yangtze River Delta, it has the busiest container port in the world, and is a huge exporter of parts for automobiles, electronic equipment, machinery and more. The city made headlines when the Omicron variant struck in March 2022 and an ensuing 70-day strict lockdown obliterated access to the city’s seaports and airports.

The strict Covid policies caused a major decline in the country’s manufacturing capacity, logistics and human mobility that had severe effects on global supply chains and the world economy.

China’s GDP grew by just 3 per cent in 2022, its slowest pace since the mid1970s, and below expected targets of 5.5 per cent – though this was still far ahead of many others. The UK, for example, experienced a GDP decline of 21.7 per cent in the same period.

Thankfully, in December 2022, China announced it would be reopening its borders – and by January 2023, Covidzero was officially over, prompting a sigh of relief from the international community and a flood of visa applications (mine among them) in readiness for when flights resumed from the UK.

We didn’t have to wait long. On 23 April, British Airways resumed daily flights from London to Shanghai, while on 1 May, Virgin Atlantic relaunched its direct route from Heathrow to Shanghai.