Hoe Ee Khor, chief economist of ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office, noted during an online press conference held by AMRO on Apr 12 that China holds a lot of policy space to head off the challenges confronting the world’s second largest economy. For China, an about 5 percent economic growth this year is achievable despite headwinds, he said.

Concerning the pandemic’s impact on China’s economic growth, he pointed out that relaxing the dynamic zero-COVID-19 policy is a very difficult decision that only the Chinese government and the people can make, because it’s about the trade-off between saving lives and saving livelihoods. Since China is such a large country, even a low fatality rate could result in millions of infections, severe infections, and maybe millions of deaths.

In terms of regional development, he believed that regional countries should strive to facilitate digital technology development by cooperating to harmonize their regulatory regime and improve connectivity, cross-border flows and digital integration. This will help the region boost productivity and growth, he said.