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Shinzo Abe's approval rating slides amid coronavirus, prosecution scandal

According to a poll conducted on Saturday and Suday, Abe's approval rating now stands at 29 percent, down from 41 percent on April 18-19. The latest poll numbers are the lowest since Abe assumed office.

By Elizabeth Shim WORLD NEWS  MAY 25, 2020 / 2:40 AM


Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's approval rating has dropped amid the global coronavirus pandemic. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

May 25 (UPI) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's approval rating has dipped by double digits in the wake of his administration's response to the global coronavirus pandemic.

According to a poll conducted by local paper Asahi Shimbun on Saturday and Sunday, Abe's approval rating now stands at 29 percent, down from 41 percent on April 18-19. The latest poll numbers are the lowest since Abe assumed office, according to the report.

Tokyo's declaration of a state of emergency came after the postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics. Medical professionals have criticized the administration for under-testing for COVID-19.

According to the Asahi poll, 48 percent of respondents said their confidence in Abe has waned, while 5 percent said their confidence has risen following the coronavirus response.

Abe is also being evaluated based on his decisions on prosecutor appointments. The poll showed 68 percent of respondents hold the prime minister responsible for attempting to extend the retirement age of Hiromu Kurokawa, head of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office.

Kurokawa, Abe's choice for prosecutor-general, was to succeed Nobuo Inada, who may have been planning to retire this summer, the Mainichi Shimbun reported last week.

When Inada refused to resign as suggested, Abe's office proposed extending the retirement age so that Kurokawa could still serve as prosecutor-general. Kurokawa's closeness to the prime minister also came under criticism, according to the Mainichi.

Kurokawa was eventually forced into resignation this month, when it was revealed he had been gambling during coronavirus quarantine.

Japan ended a state of emergency in some of its major cities last week.

The Nikkei reported Monday the coronavirus alert for Tokyo is being lifted, allowing movie theaters, commercial facilities and private academic institutes to reopen in the city.

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Footage of the full gig from Eventim Hammersmith Apollo in November 2019, a date on the Souvenir Greatest Hits Tour

Taiwan vows 'necessary assistance' to Hong Kong residents

Protests reignited in Hong Kong over the weekend against Beijing's move to pass national security legislation, resulting in at least 180 arrests, police said.

Police charge down the street during clashes with protesters in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo

May 25 (UPI) -- Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen has promised "necessary assistance" to the people of Hong Kong after protests reignited in the semi-autonomous region over the weekend against Beijing's move to pass controversial national security legislation.

On her Facebook page late Sunday, Tsai said the people of Taiwan stand with those of Hong Kong in their struggle against China's introduction of a new security law.


"If the law is implemented, the core values of Hong Kong's democratic freedom and judicial independence will be severely eroded," she said, stating it "seriously threatens Hong Kong."

Late last week, China announced it was planning to pass legislation that would criminalize treason, secession, sedition and subversion against the central Beijing government and permit central government security forces to perform national security duties in the region.

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The legislation's announcement followed months of often violent pro-democracy protests that rocked the semi-autonomous region starting last summer but have simmered for months amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Following the law's announcement, protesters returned to the streets over the weekend, resulting in police firing tear gas and water cannons at demonstrators.

Police said at least 180 people were arrested, mainly for participating in an unauthorized assembly, unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. In a statement, police said "rioters" damaged stores and smashed windows, built barricades along roads and attacked officers and those they disagree with.

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"Some injured victims have been hospitalized for treatment," police said in the statement.

The law has attracted international condemnation as it is widely viewed as in violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that returned Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule in 1997. The agreement states Hong Kong must exercise a "high degree of autonomy, rights and freedoms" for 50 years after returning to Beijing rule.

A Hong Kong government spokesman disregarded the criticism on Sunday as smacking of hypocrisy to suggest China "does not have the right to legislate to protect national security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region."

RELATED China warns of countermeasures after Pompeo congratulates Tsai

"The proposed law will only target acts of secession, subversion, terrorist activities as well as activities interfering with HKSAR's internal affairs by foreign or external forces," the spokesman said in a statement. "The vast majority of law-abiding Hong Kong residents, including overseas investors, have nothing to fear."

In her statement Sunday, Tsai said in the face of the protesters' demands for freedom, the answer is not bullets and repression by security forces but "the real implementation of freedom and democracy."

"This is the only way that Beijing and the Hong Kong government will regain trust and return Hong Kong society to freedom and calm," she wrote.

Foreign governments, she said, have extended "a helping hand" to the people of Hong Kong amid the protests and Taiwan will do the same.

Taiwan will "provide the necessary assistance to the people of Hong Kong," she said, without elaborating.

Tsai was inaugurated for her second term as Taiwan's president last week, stating in her inauguration speech that she rejects Beijing's demand for Taiwan to reunify with China.

Like Hong Kong, Taiwan is claimed by China but many on the island state, including Tsai, say it is an independent country.

Appeals court upholds California order keeping places of worship closed

AMERICAN PROTESTANTS FORGET THEIR HISTORY
WORSHIP IN CHURCH IS PAPIST SAID CROMWELL
https://youtu.be/30wnEFouh5k
California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom speaks on day three of the Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 27, 2016. Hillary Clinton claims the Democratic Party's nomination for president. Photo by Ray Stubblebine/UPI | License Photo

May 24 (UPI) -- A federal court upheld California Gov. Gavin Newsom's restrictions on church services as part of the state's stay at home order as President Donald Trump has called governors throughout the country to reopen places of worship.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to keep the provision of the order that keeps churches and other places of worship closed in place, denying a request by the Sout Bay United Pentecostal Church.
In their decision late Friday, Judges Jacqueline Nguyen and Barry Silverman wrote that the state's decision to close places of worship amid the COVID-19 pandemic does not "infringe upon or restrict practices because of their religious motivation" nor does it "impose burdens only on conduct motivated by religious belief" in a selective manner.

"We're dealing here with a highly contagious and often fatal disease for which there is presently no known cure," the judges wrote.

Judge Daniel Collins wrote a dissenting opinion stating that Newsom's order "illogically assumes that the very same people who cannot be trusted to follow the rules at their place of worship can be trusted to do so at their workplace."

The South Bay United Pentecostal Church filed an emergency motion on Saturday calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released guidelines for places of worship to reopen, including requiring that they provide hand sanitizer, encourage the use of facial coverings and enforce social distancing.

On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that he believes places of worship should be able to hold in-person services as long as they are taking "appropriate precautions."

"You sign up so that they don't get overcrowded. You get screened for temperature as well as symptoms as you come in, you socially distance among family units in the church," he said.

Trump on Friday identified churches, synagogues and mosques as "essential places that provide essential services, while also threatening he would override governors that do not take steps to reopen places of worship over the weekend.

Reclaiming "freedom" in the age of coronavirus: Don't allow Trump and the right to claim it

Conservatives think they control the concept of "freedom." But progressives have a deeper, richer tradition

FREEDOM IS A LIBERAL IDEAL

(Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

PAUL ROSENBERG
MAY 23, 2020

On May 6, Anand Giridharadas set off a bit of a firestorm in a "Morning Joe" preview of his "Seat at the Table" monologue:

There is a primordial American tradition going back to the Founders of being freedom-obsessed, even though we are a country founded on slavery and genocide, being freedom-obsessed to the point that we're always so afraid of the government coming for us that we're blind to other types of threats, whether it's a virus, whether it's bank malfeasance, climate change, what have you.

He went on to note how Ronald Reagan had intensified the fear of government, how neoliberal Democrats after him had distanced themselves from government, and how Donald Trump has epitomized the logic of "Government doesn't work — elect me and I'll prove it" that's now the icing on the cake. But it was that initial formulation that really grabbed people's attention.

Fox News ran a story about this, as did the conservative site Townhall. Giridharadas tweeted his thanks for their amplification of his ideas, to which I added:

Not just obsessed with the idea of freedom, but with strangely perverted versions of it, defined by slaveholders at nation's birth, defined by settlers claiming others' land before & after, defined as "market freedom" by neoliberal theorists, the list goes on & on. "Free for me!"

The right is always appalled that anyone would ever say anything remotely critical about "freedom," because conservatives have spent decades trying to brand the word and the concept as their private property. Efficient branding is pretty much the opposite of critical understanding. Yes, liberals may care about equality, right-wingers may acknowledge, but in doing so they trample on freedom! This is why, for example, Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act, and why Sen. Rand Paul struggled incoherently when Rachel Maddow asked him how he felt about it half a century later, and never owned up to where he stood. The ghost of slaveholder freedom is not easily laid to rest.

Of course progressives do believe in freedom, of a very different sort: The freedom sought by slaves and their descendants, most starkly, echoed in freedom songs and an explosion of liberation movements in the 1960s. Now, in the age of coronavirus, what could be more pressing than to be free of the virus — not just individually, not just nationally, but globally, as a species?

It's not government tyranny that's keeping us from living normal lives. It's the virus that's doing that. Those who are demanding their freedom to spread the virus are just prolonging its tyranny over the rest of us. They are furthering our oppression, and endangering our lives.

Two models of freedom

There are many ways you can slice this, but perhaps the simplest comes from George Lakoff in "Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea." He explains that abstract notions of freedom all derive from physical, bodily ones. The physical experience of being able to move freely is the foundation of all ideas of freedom.

Liberals and conservatives may have different ways of shaping their concepts of freedom, based on different worldviews, but this is what they have in common — making freedom an "essentially contested concept," as first described in an essay by W.B. Gallie. It's vital to understand what these two concepts of freedom have in common, as well as what they do not, and the reasons for both. Otherwise conservatives will continue to wield "freedom" as a sword, blinding us to what's actually going on as they imperil the freedom of all.

"The central thesis of this book is simple," Lakoff writes. "There are two very different views of freedom in America today, arising from two very different moral and political worldviews dividing the country. The traditional idea of freedom is progressive. One can see traditional values most clearly in the direction of change that has been demanded and applauded over two centuries."

He provides a wealth of examples, starting with the expansion of voting rights and citizen participation, from white male property owners to all white men, then to formerly enslaved men, then women, then younger voters. Lakoff goes on to cite the expansion of economic opportunity, working conditions and workers' rights, public education and "the expansion of knowledge," public health and life expectancy, consumer protection and so on.

These popular examples might not immediately seem like instances of freedom, at least partly because progressives haven't used that term nearly as much as conservatives have — even when talking about the black freedom struggle. Indeed, conservatives have used the term far more often to invoke rolling back those expansions of freedom.

But if freedom is at least partially about having the capacity to realize your dreams, then everything Lakoff lists above surely belongs in that realm of freedom — as progressives could and should claim, if they used that language more robustly. As we struggle to free ourselves from this pandemic, that's exactly what we should be doing.

"Progressive freedom is dynamic freedom. Freedom is realized not just in stasis, or at a single moment in history, but in its expansion over a long time," Lakoff writes. "You cannot look only at the Founding Fathers and stop there. If you do, it sounds as if they were hypocrites: They talked liberty but permitted slavery; they talked democracy but allowed only white male property owners to vote. But from a dynamic progressive perspective, the great ideas were expandable freedoms."

The opposite is true of conservatives, he concludes:

What makes them 'conservatives' is not that they want to conserve the achievements of those who fought to deepen American democracy. It's the reverse: They want to go back to before these progressive freedoms were established. That is why they harp so much on narrow so-called originalist readings of the Constitution — on its letter, not its spirit — on "activist judges" rather than an inherently activist population."

A common core — and contested views

Despite these deep differences in how freedom is viewed, there is a common core meaning and logic involved.

"Freedom is being able to do what you want to do," Lakoff writes, "that is, being able to choose a goal, have access to that goal, pursue that goal without anyone purposely preventing you. It is having the capacity or power to achieve the goal and being able to exercise your free will to choose and achieve the goal." In addition, "Political freedom is about the state and how well a state can maximize freedom for all its citizens."

This represents the uncontested core of what simple freedom and political freedom are all about. And the underlying physical foundation is straightforward:


We all had the experience as children of wanting to do something and being held down or held back, so that we were not free to do what we wanted. These bodily experiences form the basis of our everyday idea of simple freedom — for reasoning about freedom as well as for talking about freedom.

"Freedom is being able to achieve purposes," Lakoff summarizes, which in turn is "understood metaphorically in three fundamental ways of functioning with one's body." First, "Reaching a desired destination (by moving through space)." Second, "Getting some desired object (by moving one's limbs)." Third, "Performing a desired action (by moving one's body)."

He goes on to make two important points. The first is about freedom as a visceral concept, "tied, fundamentally via metaphor, to our ability to move and to interference with moving. There is little that is more infuriating than interference with our everyday bodily movements."

The second is about its cultural significance in America:

Part of being an American, culturally, goes beyond achieving isolated purposes to having a purposeful life. Thus, life itself becomes structured in terms of space — goals you want to reach (where you want to be in life), things you want to get (rewards, awards, things that symbolize success), and things you want to do or achieve. Dreams are seen as lifetime purposes. "The American Dream" is based on this metaphor.

All the above applies to the uncontested core meaning of freedom, Lakoff explains. But liberals and conservatives differ sharply on how that uncontested core is fleshed out. Conservative talk a great deal more about freedom, he notes:

The radical right is in the process of redefining the very idea. To lose freedom is a terrible thing; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse.

The constant repetition of the words "liberty" and "freedom" by the right-wing message machine is one of the mechanisms of the idea theft in progress. When the words are used by the right, their meaning shifts — gradually, almost imperceptibly, but it shifts.

What distinguishes the progressive from the conservative version of "freedom" is the underlying worldview that in both cases fill in the contested areas in metaphorical logic. Lakoff first characterized these competing views in "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think" (my review here) as metaphorically structured by two distinct parenting styles, first distinguished by Diane Baumrind: that of the nurturant parent ("authoritative" in Baumrind's typology) vs. the strict father family ("authoritarian"), as Lakoff calls them.


Lakoff's terms underscore their differences, while Baumrind's capture something critical about their more nuanced relationship. Authoritarian parenting is often justified by the false assumption that the only alternative is indulgent, "permissive parenting," a third alternative that Baumrind described. (A fourth alternative, "neglectful parenting," was added later.) But authoritative parents combine permissive parents' nurturing, responsive approach with the authoritarian parents' willingness to set high standards — albeit sometimes quite different ones.

As Lakoff notes, authoritative parents are more successful in raising children to be the autonomous moral agents, capable of acting freely and responsibly, that authoritarian parenting is supposed to produce. So there's a valid argument that progressives have a better grasp of freedom than conservatives do.

Threats to freedom and the role of security

One part of Lakoff's discussion involves interference with freedom, specifically in the form of harm, coercion, or limitations on property — each of which is also a contested concept. These lay the foundations for understanding the fundamental role that security plays in protecting (and thus advancing) freedom. There is, in short, a common logic, which gets filled in differently by progressive and conservative worldviews.

By harm, Lakoff means something serious: "sufficient to interfere with normal functioning." For example: "If someone breaks your leg, she is interfering with your freedom to move. If someone kills you, he is interfering with your freedom to live your life."

Metaphorical harm — such as economic harm — can be trickier. What counts as harm? As Lakoff notes: "Many conservatives believe that social programs harm people because they make them dependent on the government, while progressives tend to believe that they help people."

This is a direct consequence of Lakoff's characterization of progressive and conservative worldviews: that of nurturant parenting vs. the strict-father family. It's also an empirically testable question: Only a tiny fraction of social spending goes to people who could even conceivably fit the conservative stereotype of the "welfare cheat" — people who could work but do not, for whatever reason.

In contrast, recall that Giridharadas spoke about "other types of threats," and mentioned the pandemic, financial mismanagement and climate change. These are all forms of harm that can limit our freedom. As Lakoff explains, such limits must come from human actions — someone breaking your leg, not having a tree fall on you. But if government fails to protect you when it should — as happened with Hurricane Katrina, for example — that malign neglect certainly qualifies as interfering with your freedom.

Coercion is being forced to act against your will, which has a straightforward physical foundation: "One of our major metaphors for the freedom to engage in purposeful action is the freedom to move to a desired destination," Lakoff explains. "Coerced action is, metaphorically, forced motion to an undesired location." What's more, "Further metaphors map physical coercion onto economic coercion, social coercion, and religious coercion."

Property is linked to freedom in two ways. As Lakoff puts it, "the freedom to achieve one's purposes is, metaphorically, the lack of any interference in getting and keeping desired objects." Second is the literal fact that "wealth can buy many kinds of freedom." So property means freedom, literally as well as metaphorically. But as Lakoff cautions, "[I]t is often contested whether certain property is properly yours."

In a nation built on land dispossessed from its native inhabitants, whose vast wealth was in large part created by slave labor, this is a touchy subject. Lakoff takes a less confrontational approach:


Take the issue of taxes. Conservatives say, "It's your money. The government wants to take it away." But almost everyone gains part of his or her income through the use of a government-supplied infrastructure (highways, the Internet, the banking system, the courts). Is there a moral debt to pay to maintain that system?

Thomas Paine certainly thought so. Here he is, from "Agrarian Justice":


Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich…. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

While the Tea Party movement, funded by the Koch brothers, tried to give its anti-taxation agenda a patriotic Boston Tea Party gloss, America's anti-tax tradition actually stems from the Southern slaveholding economy, as Robin Einhorn explained in "American Taxation, American Slavery."

"What I found is that in early American history, slaveholders in particular were terrified of majorities deciding how to tax them," Einhorn told me in an interview. "So they came up with strategies of how to stop that. There is a long tradition of denying majorities the right to decide how to tax wealth in this country." You can call that tradition anything you want, but it's strange to insist that it's quintessentially about "freedom."

Finally, Lakoff discusses the crucial role of security:


If harm, coercion, and limitations on property interfere with freedom, then security is a guarantee that such freedom will be preserved. Just as physical harm and physical coercion are the prototypical forms of harm and coercion — what we first think when we think of harm and coercion — so physical security is the prototypical form of security. Physical security of oneself and one's property is central to the concept of freedom.

Security is central to the Anglo-American idea of freedom in another way. It lies at the very foundation of John Locke's legitimation of government in Section 123 of his "Second Treatise on Government." Rights are God-given, enjoyed without limit in a state of nature, Locke argues. But the "enjoyment" of the property a person has in this state "is very unsafe, very unsecure," he argues. "This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers," so governments are formed voluntarily, surrendering absolute claims to all rights in order to secure what is most fundamental. Locke's thinking was echoed as well in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, with its declared purpose to "promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

The role of security is thus fundamental to any conception of freedom in modern liberal democracies. It is the very reason why we form such political orders in the first place, and it is also why Donald Trump and his fellow authoritarians, from Vladimir Putin to Jair Bolsonaro to Viktor Orbán and so on, revel in making us all so existentially insecure.

When Giridharadas spoke about "other types of threats," including the virus, "bank malfeasance" and climate change, those are threats to our freedom in a fundamental sense, because they undermine the social foundations on which all our freedoms rest. Not the abstract, theoretical foundation of "God-given rights," but the pragmatic, real-world foundations that secure them for us in the here and now.

Final points

I've only scratched the surface of Lakoff's book, tracing a few consequences of the simple core message: Freedom is an essentially contested concept rooted in physical experience, and its liberal and conservative versions derive from very different worldviews. Three more points Lakoff touches on are worth noting.

First, political conservatives often want to live in nurturant communities too. As Lakoff observes, "Fundamentalist communities can be nurturant and loving toward members who fit in." There's an underlying sense in which "liberal" values — grounded in nurturance and empathy — are universally recognized, although conservatives perceive them as conditional, only for those who are deemed worthy.

For example, there's significant conservative support for large government programs like Social Security and Medicare, and Donald Trump made a point in 2016 of pretending he would defend them, while accurately noting that other Republicans would not. Now, with the coronavirus pandemic having claimed nearly 100,000 American lives, Trump's lack of empathy and abdication of nurturant leadership are painfully clear.

Second, Lakoff notes a difference in understanding causation in moral and political disputes, "where the progressives argue on the basis of systemic causation (within a social, ecological, or economic system) and the conservatives argue on the basis of direct causation (by a single individual)."

This helps explain why progressives see moral harm in environmentally destructive practices like mountaintop removal mining, for example, while conservatives "tend to argue that your coal mine would not directly cause any known particular deaths or illnesses, and so you — and others — should be free to mine your coal." If the government prevents you from maximizing potential profits, that specific, individual restriction of "freedom" is the only one they claim to see.

That's similar to how the "reopen" demonstrators seem to think. They don't recognize the systemic risk posed by the virus, and claim not to believe that their activities make it easier for the virus to spread. They only see government action — which they mistakenly blame for shutting down the economy — as an act of tyranny or spiteful malevolence.

Third, Lakoff argues that political freedom has a common, uncontested core:


Political freedom begins with the idea of self-government: Tyrants and dictators can be avoided if we choose those who govern us and make sure that none of them has overriding power. The attendant concepts to simple political freedom are self-government and its democratic institutions — within the national government: Congress, the administration, and an independent judiciary, with a balance of powers and similar structures at lower levels; within civil society: free elections and political parties, a civilian-controlled military, a free market, free press/media, and free religious institutions.

At this level of oversimplification, all of this is uncontested. The details are, however, thoroughly contested….

At least that's how things stood in 2006, when "Whose Freedom?" was published. That's no longer the case 14 years later, with severe democratic backsliding underway in America. If Donald Trump is leading the way, he's by no means alone. The "contested" details of the past have prepared the way for our current crisis, and there's considerable continuity over the decades, as I've discussed in previous articles about "constitutional hardball," for example. But it is clear that Trump has utter disregard for any balance of powers that would curb his own, and we're now in a qualitatively different place than before the 2016 election. It's no longer the case that progressives and conservatives both believe in the uncontested core of political freedom. The American right appears to have turned its back on that shared assumption once and for all.

"Whose Freedom?" is not the only guidebook to our current situation, but it helps delineate major aspects of the task before us: First, not to let conservatives claim to be the only ones who care about freedom, as if it had a simple, uncontested meaning. Second, to articulate a more robust progressive model of freedom, and make clear how it applies in the current moment. Third, to prioritize combating the most grave and substantial threats to freedom — threats like the coronavirus that is killing thousands of us every day, and like the climate catastrophe that may devastate our world for centuries to come.

If we can preserve ourselves and our freedoms from these threats, we will have time and opportunity for legitimate debate on the contested aspects of the idea of freedom. In other words, we will have the freedom to shape a better future for everyone.

PAUL ROSENBERG

Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News, and a columnist for Al Jazeera English. Follow him on Twitter at @PaulHRosenberg.

THIRD WORLD USA
Study projects homelessness will rise 45% in just one year due to coronavirus unemployment

“This is unprecedented. No one living has seen an increase of 10% of unemployment in a month," the researcher said

A homeless person walks on San Julian Street in the Skid Row area in downtown Los Angeles, California on March 19, 2020 (APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images)

IGOR DERYSH
MAY 23, 2020

The rash of layoffs sparked by the coronavirus pandemic and statewide lockdowns are expected to increase homelessness by up to 45%, according to a new analysis by an economist at Columbia University.

The analysis estimates that about 250,000 people could be left homeless as a result of skyrocketing unemployment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that there were 568,000 homeless people in the country in January, before the outbreak.

Dr. Brendan O'Flaherty, a professor of economics who has studied homelessness for decades and conducted the analysis, said the projected rise would be "unprecedented."

"No one living has seen an increase of 10% of unemployment in a month," he said.

O'Flaherty's model relied on homelessness data in an earlier study published by the Journal of Housing Economics in 2017, which found that every 1% increase to the unemployment rate corresponded with the homelessness rate rising by 0.65 per 10,000 people. The analysis used unemployment projections from the Economic Policy Institute, which predicted a 15.6% rate by July, and the Congressional Budget Office, which similarly projected a 16% unemployment rate by the summer.

"If the projections of unemployment being made now turn out to be accurate, and the relationship between unemployment and homelessness follows the historical pattern, and no other major changes occur, that's what we can expect to happen," O'Flaherty said.

But the unemployment rate could be far worse than those projections predict. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate hit 14.7% in April, a level unseen since the Great Depression. That number hardly tells the whole story, as another 2.4 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims this week — suggesting that the economic shock caused by the virus is far from over.

More than 38 million people have now filed for unemployment since the lockdowns began in March, representing nearly a quarter of the nation's entire workforce.

In California, which already has the largest homeless population in the United States, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state projects the unemployment rate to hit 24.5% this year.

The job losses have been worst among workers who already earned well below the national average.

"Among people who were working in February, almost 40% of those in households making less than $40,000 a year had lost a job in March," Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week, citing a Fed survey. "This reversal of economic fortune has caused a level of pain that is hard to capture in words, as lives are upended amid great uncertainty about the future."

A rising homelessness rate will exacerbate the health crisis, since many will be left without a home in which to isolate.

"We're supposed to shelter at home. We're supposed to wash our hands," O'Flaherty told the Los Angeles Times. "We're supposed to do all these things the homeless people can't do. It's not only a tragedy for the people involved. It's a way of feeding the COVID fire a little bit more."

O'Flaherty's analysis dovetails with what homelessness advocates are already seeing on the ground.

"I think we're going to see a huge rise in displacement, homelessness, evictions — people who are already on the border, who are going to be stretched to the limit," Andrea Henson, the lead organizer of the homeless outreach group Where do we go? Berkeley, told the San Jose Mercury News.

Congress has spent billions to boost unemployment benefits and help small businesses continue to pay their employees through the Paycheck Protection Program. But many small businesses, and the vast majority of minority-owned businesses, have been left without aid. Many laid-off workers have had difficulty navigating state unemployment systems that have been overwhelmed by claims. Republican lawmakers are already planning to cut off federal unemployment benefits when they expire in July — even though the latest unemployment claims show that the problem has not gone away even as all 50 states move to reopen.

House Democrats approved a $3 trillion bill last week that would extend the unemployment benefits, boost funding for minority-owned businesses, and provide $100 billion in emergency rental assistance. The bill would also allocate $11.5 billion to homelessness prevention programs and $75 billion to help homeowners pay off mortgages.

Republicans said they are not interested in discussing another phase of relief until well into June and said the Democrats' bill was "dead on arrival" in the Senate.

States like New York and cities like Los Angeles have announced eviction moratoriums but these are expected to expire within months.

"There will be a day of accounting," Dan Flaming, the head of the Economic Roundtable, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, told the Los Angeles Times. "When someone has three or four months rent due, what happens then?"

Flaming said there is clearly a "powerful connection between unemployment and homelessness" but the full effect won't be felt for some time.

"People do everything in their power to hang on to shelter and complete destitution is a lagging outcome," he said. "Recovery from complete destitution lags even more, so the increases in homelessness that we see are likely to be with us for a while."

If homelessness skyrockets by mid-summer as the Columbia University analysis projects, it could have devastating results in the fall, when researchers expect a second wave of coronavirus infections to hit.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the coronavirus spread aggressively through homeless shelters in major cities, especially those with severe outbreaks, according to a report published last month. Researchers found that homeless shelters that reported as little as two coronavirus cases in the preceding two weeks saw up to 66% of residents and 30% of staff infected.

"In some respects, the issue in shelters is similar to those in nursing homes or prisons," Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told Reuters. "The findings are … another example of how the epidemic has highlighted our shortcomings in terms of being able to protect some of our most vulnerable citizens."


Igor Derysh is a staff writer at Salon. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.

The pandemic is sending India's poor into the abyss
Already rife with inequality, the pandemic has distributed suffering unequally among India's underclass





Homeless women wearing masks sit on a hand cart in Mumbai, India (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

MOUSHUMI ROY - TIRTH BHATTA
MAY 24, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)

The pandemic has brought misery and suffering to thousands around the world, much of which has nothing to do with disease and everything to do with the social aftermath of the pandemic. To wit: an expansive human tragedy unfolded in India on May 5th, when thousands of migrant workers across metropolises staged a national highway blockage. These protesters — migrant workers and day-wage laborers — were detained from going back to their villages during the government lockdown. The protest was the outcome of desperation and despair, as many state governments did not meet their promises to provide free transportation to reach poor workers in their villages, nor provide rations for taking out their allocated share of food. The despair has led to several tragic deaths of migrants who were looking to find a way back home.

Risk of hunger, uncertainty of future employment, and poverty-related suicide are imminent threats for many Indians. It seems that post-pandemic India has brought massive pain and suffering among people living in extreme poverty, particularly disadvantaged caste and religious groups, transgender people, women, and rural residents.


On March 24, the Modi government in India imposed a strict and stringent lockdown to avert the coronavirus's spread. The 21 days of lockdown (which was set to end on April 14, but has been extended to May 3) was imposed with only a few hours of notice, and has aggravated and compounded the existing divides across caste, class, gender, religion and location in India. Given the looming possibility of further increases in the cases of coronavirus (currently over 100,000) in India, the pandemic is likely to intensify the pain and suffering experienced by the most disadvantaged groups.

The people that have experienced immense pain and suffering — expected to be in the millions — are poor migrant workers, daily wage laborers, women, lower caste individuals, sexual, and religious minorities in India.

The case of India's migrant workers

Migrant workers in India disproportionately hail from historically marginalized and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Migrant workers move in numbers from rural areas to metropolises, eking a living out of daily wages. The extreme suffering of the underprivileged groups proves that people who have been assigned low caste status; living in dreadful poverty; self-identify as transgender or women; and permanently live in rural areas bear the utmost brunt of COVID-19 exposure and effect.

With a population of over 1.3 billion people, a significant proportion of India's population is either working poor or living in poverty. The data released by the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (a project of the United Nations Development Program) indicate that 46.7% of those employed earn below $3.20 a day and 27.9%. Marginalized groups, such as lower castes (or Dalits), scheduled tribes (or Adivasis), Muslims, and transgender people fare the worst in terms of socioeconomic status. COVID-19 threatens the recent reductions in MPI, creating even more dire living social and economic conditions for the working poor, including migrant workers, in slums.

Migrant workers are mostly employed as wage laborers in industries like construction, housekeeping, cleaning, and laundry. Most of them have their extended family, friend or in-group connections rooted in villages and migrate to the cities. Some are also likely to leave their immediate family members behind at the time of migration and send money back to their families left behind in villages. Many also bring their families along with them in the hopes to gain multiple sources of income that eases their poverty. Likely to comprise a large proportion of daily wage migrant workers, Dalits (or the untouchables) migrate to urban areas to escape economic and cultural oppression in rural areas.


Considered filthy by higher castes, Dalits are forced to work in jobs such as cleaning and manual scavenging. Among 5 million people employed in sanitation and cleaning work, 90% come from lower castes (including a significant number of Dalit women). Higher caste women in urban areas also likely to hire Dalit women for household work. The loss of daily wage jobs puts lower castes in economically precarious situation. Their employment in essential service jobs such as sanitation leaves them vulnerable to coronavirus exposure.

The caste system in India, which began around 2000 years ago, has its origins in vernacular ideology embodied by the Sanskrit word Varna. As described by D.L Sills in 1968, "Varna" means type, order, color or classes – the characteristics used to classify people into different social groups. Under the Indian caste system, people are divided into four varnas: Brahmins (priestly class), the Kshatriyas (rulers, administrators or warriors), Vaishyas (artisans, merchants, tradesmen, and farmers), Shudras (laboring people) and Untouchables (cleaners and tribes).


Constitutionally abolished in 1950, the caste system and cultural practice of untouchability is still very much part of India. Albeit more overt and brutal in rural areas, the untouchability is also practiced in urban areas. People who were considered untouchables are still forced to live segregated and socially isolated from higher caste. They face an increased likelihood of contracting the coronavirus due to their disproportionate employment in essential services — a situation that may lead to further marginalization.

Neoliberal class segregation

India's nostalgia with the caste based geographic divide of the past has lingered into today's neoliberalized cosmopolitanism of urban spaces. The drivers of neoliberal reforms in making of this policy claim the mantle of "rational thinking" derived from technologically advanced global societies. Such reforms have brought many poor class and low caste people from villages to live closer to the potential high caste-class people without reservation.


Yet said neoliberal reforms, which call for deregulatory fiscal policies and privatization, have remade Indian society to favor a small portion of the wealthy class. This small proportion of affluent Indians, who have chosen to live in gated communities, are in constant need of service work from the lower class-caste poor, who generally live in shanty slums.

Usually, these burgeoning shanty slums are found in the rising upscale suburbs, albeit next to affluent gated high-rise buildings, in the large metropolis of Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, and Chennai. An example of high-rise buildings meeting the poverty-ridden dilapidated slums is clearly seen in Mumbai – the high-rises standing next to slums of Dharavi – the spatial inequality as captured by Johnny Miller's camera. Dharavi is now inhabited by second-generation migrant workers, while many other slums are inhabited with first-generation migrant workers and their families. These resident low-wage and migrant workers make ends meet through their daily earnings — though since the COVID-19 lockdown, tens and millions of migrant workers have been left unemployed.

The lockdown has also commenced a nonessential travel ban that includes trains, buses and modes of public transportation. Meanwhile, the slums are ideal conditions to spread diseases like COVID-19: defined by small quarters, close contact, shared bathrooms and narrow alleys, constructed slums are not a safe place to be in a pandemic. Often these slums lack basic amenities, such as running water, toilets, and food, which makes living there impossible for social distancing and isolating for amid COVID-19. The dismal living conditions of the slums forbids migrants to continue with living there during lockdown that expects people to maintain safe distance. Closing of businesses and construction works has displaced the migrant workers out of their wages. Lockdown-created job losses compelled migrant workers like Chandra Mohan — a 24-year-old plumber worked in Delhi suburb — and his group to return to their village, 680 miles away, for survival. Amid agony, fear, and hunger, these repatriates — protesters and non-protesters — set out to walk tens or hundreds of miles back to these home villages. They are not alone in this journey.


Women and children are also part of this risky walk, carrying all their belongings, some barefoot, braving the COVID-19 threat. They do so with the hope that the end will justify the pain. The obligation to follow social distancing directives carried a valuable meaning for them, a promise of safety.

Indeed, when it comes to social distancing orders, the primary political issue is not whether one acquiesces (or doesn't) to the rules. The call to follow orders has given us the space to ponder the social condition of the people for whom it is difficult to follow the directive of safe distancing — namely, India's vast underclass.

Women and gender minorities face a greater burden

Much of India's migrant population consists of women and children who live in shanty towns, generally built next to high rise buildings. These women and children work as maids, cooks, nannies, cleaners, and in other housekeeping roles for affluent urbanite households living in said high rises. Indian households don't have equal sharing of housework even when both men and women are working from home, as many are during the pandemic. Domestic workers share some of the workload of wealthy women. For many upper-middle class and upper-class Indian women, their husbands may be working from home during the pandemic, but the women are still expected to manage the household — perhaps with the help of maids.


Following social isolation orders, many migrant workers and low-wage laborers (including women and children) returned to their villages. The sudden disappearance of maids and house care workers has exhausted the more independent, well-to-do, middle-class women, many of whom have reverted to traditional gender roles — becoming disempowered without the extra hands of maids and care workers.

Likewise, the COVID-19 situation has further aggravated the condition of victims of domestic violence, most of whom are women. Many women, like a 45-year old from the Indian city of Chennai who has lost her cooking job and has to contend with an unemployed husband, have seen their abusive relationships exacerbate. Restrictions due to physical distancing and vanished economic opportunities have spatially confined these couples in their homes. Hence, a significant surge in the number of domestic violence cases against women has been documented. Recent report from India's National Commission for Women (NCW) suggested 48% increase in reported cases of domestic violence against women. The economic insecurity and uncertainty due to job loss, coupled with an existing patriarchal mindset, is fueling the rise in domestic violence against women.

Sexual and religious minorities, too, face unprecedented economic difficulties, overt harassment and physical violence, also exacerbated by the pandemic. The erosion of economic opportunities to earn a daily living has pushed many transgender individuals to the brink of poverty. The housing discrimination they experience forces many them to live in areas such as slums where social distancing is not feasible. That leaves them at high risk of exposure to the coronavirus, further intensifying the stigma attached to their identity.

Amid the pandemic, the right pushes an Islamophobic agenda


Likewise, the pandemic has further intensified anti-Muslim sentiment in India. The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing paramilitary volunteer group that is ideologically allied with the Modi government, maintains Islamophobic rhetoric to deepen anti-Muslim sentiments. Generally, such rhetoric is a tool to divert people's attention from the Modi government's own administrative failures. RSS saw a groundswell of support after a Muslim religious movement called Tablighi Jamaat held a gathering that was determined to be responsible for a large number of cases in India. Though an unintentional accident, the public at large, social media, and word-of-mouth directed their communal rage against Muslims, fingering them for the coronavirus's spread. The spear of the word was not limited to media exposure, as The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan notes. "It isn't just Hindu nationalist politicians or mobs" blaming Muslims for COVID-19, he writes. "The country's respectable press have joined in too."

COVID-19 has shined a light on the plights of India's ultra-disadvantaged who lie at the nexus of class, caste, gender, religion, and space. An increasingly polarized India faces challenges within and across class (rich and poor), caste (low and high), gender identity, and location (rural and urban), all of which intersect — leaving some experiencing cumulative vulnerabilities. At this juncture, Indian democracy has an opportunity to ask itself if it will mirror America's shrinking economy, defined by overarching privatization; or if it will choose to reform into a socially and economically equitable post-pandemic society.

MOUSHUMI ROY
Moushumi Roy received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. She currently teaches Sociology at Delta College, University Center, Michigan. Broadly, her research interests lie at the intersection of structural inequality, social condition, and population health among different groups of people in the US and India. She studies the way structure and systems of different societies change the experiences of different groups of people –i.e., immigrants, migrants, race/caste, ethnicity, gender, older people – to produce inequality (e.g., advantaged, disadvantaged, and ultra-disadvantaged) and health disparity among populations. MORE FROM MOUSHUMI ROY

TIRTH BHATTA
Tirth Bhatta is an Assistant Professor in the department of Sociology at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Bhatta is interested in issues of social and economic justice in the Global North and the Global South. His research seeks to understand how cumulative life course socioeconomic status intersects with other forms of stratification (especially race and gender) to shape later-life health disparities in the U.S. and internationally.MORE FROM TIRTH BHATTA

Coronavirus has hit China’s migrant workers harder than Sars and the financial crisis, but worst yet to come
China’s army of 290 million migrant workers has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, but most are unable to access unemployment support

Covid-19 is having a deeper impact on employment in China than the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak and the global financial crisis


Cissy Zhou
Published: 25 May, 2020
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3085904/coronavirus-has-hit-chinas-migrant-workers-harder-sars-and

VIDEOS AT THE END

A woman walks by a message boards filled with ads for jobs, flats to rent and business services in Little Hubei village of Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Photo: EPA-EFE

In early January, when a mysterious “new pneumonia” started to ripple across parts of China, domestic worker Zou Lan caught a cold.

Though authorities had yet to announce the unprecedented threat the coronavirus posed, her employer asked her to take some rest. She has been unable to return to work since.

Penniless and with three kids to support, the single mother – who had worked in Nanjing for more than 10 years – has been trying to find a job for four months. After multiple failed job applications, she is getting increasingly desperate.


“My former employer treated me well. She asked me to wait for her call in January, telling me that they would like me to go back when the outbreak is brought under control. I’ve been waiting for months and am getting pessimistic about it,” the 41-year-old said.

Like most of China’s 290 million migrant workers, her jobless status has not been recorded in China’s official unemployment statistics and she has been excluded from state support.


Compared to the United States’ record-high unemployment rate of 14.7 per cent in April, China’s official jobless rate was 6 per cent in the same month, up from 5.9 per cent in March.

Only about 2.3 million people had received unemployment benefits by the end of March, a fraction of the estimated tens of millions who have lost their jobs as the pandemic has lashed the world’s second largest economy.

China’s unemployment situation is a potential crisis for the Communist Party, whose ability to provide relief and jobs for people like Zou matter not just for arresting flagging growth, but also social stability.

Chinese students grapple with first economic downturn of their lives
14 May 2020


At China’s National People’s Congress, the annual parliamentary gathering that began in Beijing last week, officials omitted any mention of an annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth target for the first time, and reiterated employment was the government’s top priority.

But despite its importance, China’s real jobless picture is blurred. Research from Shandong-based Zhongtai Securities in late April put the real unemployment rate at 20.5 per cent, or some 70 million people out of work.

Already, the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on employment in China is deeper than the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2002-03 and the global financial crisis in 2008, according to Li Tao, a founder of Beijing Social Work Development Centre for Facilitators, a non-governmental organisation that helps migrant workers.

The Sars outbreak didn’t lead to a global pandemic, and the financial crisis hit the export-oriented factories most but had limited impact on the service industryLi Tao

“The Sars outbreak didn’t lead to a global pandemic, and the financial crisis hit the export-oriented factories most but had limited impact on the service industry,” Li said. “But Covid-19 has severely weakened global demand and the service sector.”

The effect of Sars on China’s growth proved short-lived as the Chinese economy entered a boom cycle from the summer of 2003, when the outbreak was brought under control. The global financial crisis, meanwhile, caused some 20 million migrant workers – mainly in coastal areas – to lose their jobs.

In the latest wave of unemployment, China’s migrant workers are not only facing job losses but deep cuts to their salaries. Nearly 80 per cent of them had returned to work as early as April, though most had their wages reduced, according to a survey by Li’s organisation last month.

China’s domestic economic recovery may encourage consumer spending and create more jobs in coming months, especially temporary work in decoration and service industries, Li said.

It has not reached the inflection point yet as most the factories are still working on the orders that were placed before the pandemicLi Tao

“However, it is still too early to tell the full picture of the impact,” he said. “It has not reached the inflection point yet as most the factories are still working on the orders that were placed before the pandemic.”

Wang Guang is one of the lucky ones that held onto his job at a plant operated by a US contract manufacturer in Zhuhai.

But the 39-year-old’s salary has been slashed by about 40 per cent, from more than 4,000 yuan (US$561) a month to less than 3,000 yuan, despite his 10 years of service at the company.
The electronics factory suspended part of its manufacturing operation last year after it pared down business deals with a major Chinese telecoms giant.

The slowdown in production due to lack of orders has meant reduced work hours for Wang, who usually sent back 2,000 yuan each month to his wife and two kids, who live in his hometown, a small village in central China.

Coronavirus backlash further fraying China’s ties to global economy

Migrant workers typically rely on overtime work to increase real income to a level of at least 4,000 yuan, about double the average minimum wage.

“We are currently working on the orders that were placed before the virus, I don’t know what will happen when we finish these orders,” Wang said.

In February, when China was worst hit by the deadly virus, Wang and his colleagues were asked to mop the factory floor because there was so little work to do.

The pay cut prompted many of Wang’s younger colleagues to leave, and his department has gone from a 200-strong workforce to just a few dozen, with most that have stayed in their 50s.

Many of China’s migrant workers rely on overtime work to supplment their wages. Photo: EPA-EFE

China’s labour law stipulates that any work performed after the 8-hour workday limit must be paid at 1.5 times the employee’s normal working wage, and overtime hours at weekends must be compensated at double the hourly rate.

While others have left to find factories with more overtime hours, Wang decided to stay because looking for a new job would be “a waste of time” when most firms were downsizing.

In the past, young migrant workers were able to hop from factory jobs to the rapidly expanding services industry. But service jobs are also drying up during the pandemic.

An early April survey of 5,451 restaurants conducted by China Hotel Association showed that about 80 per cent had reopened, but average revenue was less than a fifth compared with a year earlier, forcing more lay-offs than new hires.

Migrant workers have been a driving force in China’s infrastructure boom and rapid urbanisation since the 1980s. Remittances from cities to rural areas also help narrow the wealth gap and lift people out of absolute poverty – one of President Xi Jinping’s top policy goals.

“When disaster occurs, some migrant workers would choose to go back to their hometown to reduce living costs. However, as long as there are any chances in the city, 80 per cent of the migrant workers will go back to the city, because there are no jobs in their rural hometown,” said Li, from Beijing Social Work Development Centre for Facilitators.


FOR MORE ON THIS SERIES 
https://series.scmp.com/grim-outlook-chinese-unemployment/

China may become one of many hubs as companies diversify manufacturing after coronavirus shock

CNBC PUBLISHED MON, MAY 25 2020


Evelyn Cheng@CHENGEVELYN

KEY POINTS

The coronavirus is “a wake-up call for pretty much every company,“ said Gerry Mattios, expert vice president at Bain. “The number one item on the agenda is, ‘how do I build resilience in my supply chain?’”

“China is still a very attractive total supply chain solution,” said How Jit Lim, a managing director with consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal. “There are very few countries in the world where you can find almost everything you need to build something.”

Exports are still important for China’s economy, which contracted by 6.8% in the first quarter amid the height of the coronavirus outbreak within the country.


Workers assemble vehicles primarily for the domestic market at a factory operated by Daimler-BAIC Motor’s joint venture, Beijing Benz Automotive (BBAC).
Evelyn Cheng | CNBC


BEIJING — For many businesses, adjusting supply chains in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic means expanding from China, not necessarily leaving, some analysts say.

Since the disease Covid-19 first emerged late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan, lockdowns on business activity that began in the world’s second-largest economy have have highlighted just how significant a role China plays in the production of global goods ranging from children’s toys to pharmaceutical drugs.


“It’s been a wake-up call for pretty much every company,“ Gerry Mattios, expert vice president at Bain, said in a phone interview last week. “The number one item on the agenda is, ‘how do I build resilience in my supply chain?’”

A key component of that strategy is building flexibility — the ability to switch quickly from different production sources in response to future challenges, Mattios said.

“We’re not going to see China drying up on manufacturing all of a sudden,“ he said. “A big (portion) of the exporting manufacturing capacity that China had could potentially be shifting out of China, but a lot of the capacity for internal consumption in China will stay in China.”

The Asian nation accounts for 35% of global manufacturing output, McKinsey Global Institute pointed out in a report last summer. The country has also become the largest market in the world for many products such as automobiles, luxury goods and mobile phones, accounting for roughly 30% or more of their consumption worldwide, the McKinsey report added.

Ultimately where we’re heading to is more fragmented manufacturing — many small factories of the world.Gerry MattiosEXPERT VICE PRESIDENT AT BAIN

Covid-19 has infected more than 5.4 million people and killed at least 345,000 people, including more than 4,600 in China. The pandemic disrupted the global flow of goods, which in some industries was already shifting in light of U.S.-China trade tensions and cheaper labor costs in countries outside China.


In an effort to control the virus, more than half of China extended the Lunar New Year holiday by at least a week. Those regions accounted for 90% of the country’s exports, according to CNBC calculations of data accessed through Wind Information.

From a business perspective, building resilient supply chains in the wake of the coronavirus also means recognizing that a pandemic could happen anywhere, said How Jit Lim, a managing director with consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal. Lim is based in Shanghai and focuses on supply chain management.

He pointed out that a decision to move production requires long-term planning and commitment, and is not something that can happen overnight, especially as businesses try to conserve costs as they struggle in an economic downturn.

“China is still a very attractive total supply chain solution,” Lim said. “There are very few countries in the world where you can find almost everything you need to build something ... The labor force maturity and the talent pool around is still very attractive in China.”

Still, a key factor that could affect supply chains is politics, Lim said, noting such changes do not necessarily result in greater business efficiency.
Political drivers on all sides


Just as some countries are pressuring companies to leave China and return to their home countries, Beijing is building its case for why companies should stay.

In press conferences this month, Chinese officials have emphasized the attractiveness of their market to businesses.

China’s economy contracted 6.8% in the first three months of the year, with exports plunging 11.4% in yuan terms. The secondary, or manufacturing, sector accounted for 27.6% of jobs in 2018, at more than 214 million, according to official data.

Authorities did not share a growth target for the year at a highly anticipated annual parliamentary meeting on Friday. A day earlier, spokesperson for the congress, Zhang Yesui, said that foreign businesses have not been leaving the country in a major way, and that the U.S. and China should work together for open supply chains and global growth.

In April, exports unexpectedly rebounded more than 8% in yuan terms as reopened factories rushed to fulfill orders, particularly for medical supplies.

Cross-border financial payments platform Payoneer, which works with e-commerce sellers, saw an “explosion” in business activity in March that has trickled into May, according to James Huang, Payoneer vice president and country manager for Greater China.

Huang expects shifts in consumer behavior will drive more online purchases. He said he’s still cautious in the short-term, but quite confident about growth for the medium term.
Challenges for growth ahead


While China may be the first economy to emerge from economic lockdown, other countries may not be ready to buy in a big way. Even Chinese officials remain cautious.

“With the global spread of the virus, international market demand has declined sharply, and China faces unprecedented challenges in overseas trade,“ Commerce Minister Zhong Shan told reporters last week, according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

Political pressure on businesses’ international operations also looks only set to grow, and greater scrutiny on China’s role in global markets could accelerate diversification. The rest of the world has become more dependent on China, while the country has become more self-sufficient as it tries to rely more on domestic consumption for growth, the same McKinsey report last summer found.

“We will start seeing new areas around the world, new locations around the world, starting to grow manufacturing capacity … that they didn’t have in the past,” Bain’s Mattios said, pointing to Europe in particular.

“Ultimately where we’re heading to is more fragmented manufacturing — many small factories of the world,” Mattios said, rather than the idea of the “factory for the world.”