What is fuelling China’s economic recovery?

“THE EIGHT HUNDRED” is an unusual Chinese film for its depiction of Nationalist soldiers as heroes in a grinding battle against Japanese invaders in 1937. The Nationalists, or Kuomintang, fought a long on-off civil war against the Communist Party and so are typically portrayed as villains and stooges on Chinese screens. From a global perspective, the film is unusual for a different reason. It is that rarest of things in these covid-clouded times: a box-office hit. Released a month ago, it has pulled in nearly 3bn yuan ($440m), propelling Chinese cinemas to their best showing by far since January, when the country went into near-total lockdown.

Many of China’s factories reopened as early as February, but it is only now, nearly eight months on, that the broader economy is approaching its normal trajectory. Based on a batch of activity data published on September 15th, China is on track to expand by roughly 5% in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, a smidgen below the 6% growth rate that it reported in the second half of 2019, before covid-19 erupted. That puts it well ahead of all other big economies in the scale of its recovery.