According to measures announced by city officials on Thursday for the eastern Pudong area, which includes the Shanghai financial district, all residents living in complexes where positive cases have been found will be confined to their homes for an additional 14 days. The measures will effectively extend to many residents a broad four-day Pudong lockdown that began on March 28. Shanghai’s western Puxi district, which includes the historic center and the famous Bund waterfront, will launch its own four-day lockdown on Friday. Shanghai officials said 5,653 Covid cases had been confirmed by March 30, slightly lower than 5,982 a day earlier. The expansion of lockdown restrictions in Pudong came after new evidence showed that lockdowns across China had a negative impact on economic activity. According to the data, China’s manufacturing and services activity shrank in March for the first time in almost two years, underscoring the economic pressures of the government’s controls on the coronavirus. The official manufacturing PMI, a factory activity index in which a reading of 50 separates the monthly expansion from the contraction, fell to a five-month low of 49.5. Non-manufacturing PMI fell to 48.4, its lowest level since August. State media also reported on Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping had reiterated previous instructions that local officials should try to minimize the financial impact of the lockdown. But Xi also told the standing committee of the Chinese Communist Party’s ruling political bureau that extinguishing major epidemics should remain a top priority, punishing those responsible for losing control. On Wednesday night, state media reported that the State Council was preparing efforts to support economic growth affected by the Covid-19 outbreak in Shanghai and the northeastern province of Jilin. Although the measures were not disclosed, the State Council noted that 40 per cent of this year’s quota of Rs 3.65 trillion ($ 575 billion) for special purpose bonds – widely used for infrastructure investments – had already been disbursed. He also warned government agencies to refrain from “measures detrimental to stabilizing market expectations” and to prepare “contingency plans to address the potential for greater uncertainty.” Zhao Qinghe, a senior statistician at the National Bureau of Statistics, said coronavirus outbreaks across China were affecting businesses. He noted that some companies had complained about inadequate staff due to the virus and added that the range of delivery times was at its lowest level since March 2020, shortly after the outbreak of the pandemic in central China. The State Council’s commitment marked the second time in so many weeks that the Chinese government has sought to boost confidence in the country’s economic prospects. On March 16, a State Council committee headed by Liu He, Xi’s closest financial adviser, made similar commitments in a bid to reassure investors affected by the Covid-19 outbreak and the financial consequences of the Russian invasion. in Ukraine.

In the wake of Liu’s intervention, the finance ministry said it would not proceed with long-delayed plans to introduce a real estate tax in various cities. China’s securities regulator has also urged state-owned enterprises and financial institutions to help stabilize the country’s financial markets. China is battling the worst Covid-19 epidemics in two years after severely curbing the virus from its initial outbreak through strict quarantine measures, travel restrictions and mass testing. This week, Shanghai was locked in universal trials that split the city in half and excluded it from the rest of the country. Earlier, officials had stated that no lockdown would be imposed. Pudong’s four-day lockdown, which hosts about 9 million people, was scheduled to end at 5 a.m. Friday. About 16 million people live in Puxi. Julian Evans-Pritchard, China’s senior economist at Capital Economics, said the PMI figures “indicate that the economy is shrinking at a faster pace since the peak of the initial Covid-19 epidemic in February 2020.” The downturn in the non-manufacturing industry “was driven entirely by the sharp drop in the services index”, he added, virus ». Additional report by Emma Zhou in Beijing