Home | News | Asia Outperforms West on Pandemic Managing and Economic Sustainability

Asia Outperforms West on Pandemic Managing and Economic Sustainability

954 Views

By Matthew Osteen

October 26, 2021
2:59 pm
Los Angeles, CA

The entire world has suffered, in one way or another, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Some countries have undergone harsh health regulations and lockdowns, while others have attempted to seal themselves away from any physical foreign involvement by closing borders and downing flights. All walks of life have lost loved ones, yet each nation has not been handling the situation in exactly the same manner. One of the most telling statistical indicators of Covid-19 pandemic response success is the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) growth percentage change trend. Nariman Behravesh, Chief Economist at the consulting firm IHS Markit and author of Spin-Free Economics: A No-Nonsense, Nonpartisan Guide to Today’s Global Economic Debates, states that poor responsive tactics of Europe and the Americas are responsible for huge new market hits during Covid-19.

Nariman Behravesh, Chief Economist at the consulting firm IHS Markit and author of Spin-Free Economics: A No-Nonsense, Nonpartisan Guide to Today’s Global Economic Debates, states that poor responsive tactics of Europe and the Americas are responsible for huge new market hits during Covid-19. He further states that Asia, China in particular, is the only economy to avoid massive recession as well as radical GDP and unemployment negative change.

The GDP growth for Asia dropped by only 1.14% from 2018 to 2019, making that year’s growth still upward by 3.04%. Asian markets plummeted to a loss of 2.87% from 2019 to 2020, yet bounded back upward from 2020 to 2021 by 6.96% The U.S. GDP dropped to -3.51% before only recovering to 6.39% growth in 2020. The U.K. GDP growth rate was a whopping -9.92% by the end of 2020 with a 2021 recovery growth of only 5.34%. This places Europe at least one year behind Asia in economic growth recovery.

GDP growth percentage history and projections show Asia’s superiority in economic handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“{Covid-19}…has certainly plunged the world economy into a very deep but mercifully a short recession. Everybody’s been hurt. I don’t think anybody’s really been spared by this – it’s a combination of fear, uncertainty and the reaction to the lockdowns,” Behravesh said in an interview with the World Economic Forum. “Now, a lot of people blame this deep recession on the lockdowns, but I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. If you look at a country like Sweden, even though they didn’t do a lockdown, their economy still suffered pretty severely.”

Where most Asian countries immediately turned to closing borders and tracking the infected, the U.K. and U.S. seemed distracted with Brexit and the American presidential election. Eventually the western nations began to adopt the more cautious tactics of the east (i.e. masking, gathering restrictions, infection tracking), but not before the fear and distrust in leadership could be reflected in the economic stats. Asian countries seemed to be able to skirt this economic downfall with a greater margin of success.

Large checks, increased unemployment benefits, and over-the-top government spending bills have caused the U.S. economy to plummet.

One of the largest factors in the U.S. decline was the government’s decision to issue massive relief payments to all citizens as well as incentive payments for continual unemployment. This gave employees a large financial boon to not go back to work. “We can’t pay our employees as much to work as they now get sitting at home,” claimed multiple small business owners. Unlike North America’s attempt to simply print and hand out more money, Asian countries such as China and South Korea have concentrated more on tracking and containing the sick populace instead of limiting everyone’s ability to work.

In 2020 U.S. unemployment reached 8.31%, a 4.64% increase, while China saw only a slight increase of 0.4% reaching a top of 5.0%. When factoring in the change of these statistics during the pandemic, it is clear that the Chinese employment rate remained basically stable as the U.S. more than doubled. African, Middle Eastern, and South American unemployment and economic stats are reported to be two or even three times as bad, yet more stable than North America.

References:

“Asian Credit Enjoys a Bright Outlook beyond Pandemic.” Asia Financial, 23 Aug. 2020 https://www.asiafinancial.com/asian-credit-enjoys-a-bright-outlook-beyond-pandemic

M. Szmigiera, “GDP growth forecast: Asia, U.S., U.K. and Germany 2010-2026.” Statista, Apr 29, 2021
https://www.statista.com/statistics/369274/gdp-growth-forecast-asia-vs-major-economies

Ceri Parker, “World Vs Virus podcast: An economist explains what COVID-19 has done to the global economy” World Economic Forum, 25 Sep. 2020
An economist explains what COVID-19 has done to the economy | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

“54% Of Small Businesses Blame Extra Unemployment Benefit for Worker Shortage.” Small Business Trends, 2 June 2021, https://smallbiztrends.com/2021/05/survey-unemployment-benefits-worker-shortage.html.