It is too early to say what the economic impact of the sudden surge in the past week of Covid-19 cases in Beijing will be, but the widespread fear – and in some cases even panic – suggest that it may temporarily derail the consumption recovery we were... https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3089274/chinas-economic-recovery-coronavirus-doubt-beijing-outbreak?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=share_widget&utm_campaign=3089274

...seeing. I have heard that some people who can afford it have left the city, and one of my PKU students who was planning to visit me this weekend from Shandong told me that he is no longer able to travel to Beijing, while one of my closest friends was called by officials...

...yesterday and told that because he had met with his parents in the past week, and they had been at the Xinfadi food market on June 1 (they knew all of this from tracking devices on his phone), he should go for tests and then quarantine himself.

I went bicycle riding...

...earlier this afternoon, and while vehicle traffic seemed fairly normal, pedestrian traffic seemed a little light, although it is hard to say. The picture below shows the famous chestnut shop near my house: there is no line of people buying chestnuts. I asked my student Tang...

...Jie to send me the most recent subway ridership data for Beijing and he sent me the following graph. It suggests that until June 12 we were within the normal recovery process, with weekday subway traffic at 65-70% of levels for the same time last year, and weekend traffic...

...at 55-60% of last year’s level. In the past 4 days, however, subway ridership has dropped by nearly 20% from levels the previous week. I have asked him to send me the data every day to see how quickly confidence recovers.