Economy

The profits of the main Chinese industrial companies plummeted 36.7% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020 due to the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic.

Data released today by the Chinese National Statistical Office (ONE) indicates that earnings in the first quarter of the year were 781.45 billion yuan (102.34 billion euros).

China and mega-constructions are often synonymous. For example, the Asian country has the longest bridge in the world ever built and now they are looking to repeat the feat with the highest capacity soccer stadium in the world. As if that were not enough, it will also have the shape of a gigantic lotus flower.

China has started 2020 with a boost to investment in Spain, after in 2019 the figure contracted by 95%, going from 1,170 million dollars (1,061 million euros to the current change) to 80 million dollars (72, 5 million euros), according to a report by Baker McKenzie. The state-owned China Energy Engineering Group, known as Energy China, recently signed the acquisition of several Iberdrola, Naturgy and Técnicas Reunidas engineering companies focused on the energy field and, especially, the nuclear one. Also, in the coming weeks, two other relief operations agreed to last December will be closed: the purchase, by two construction companies of the Asian giant, from Aldesa, on the one hand, and Bridges and Roadways, on the other.

China is effectively creating a new culture of consumption behind protectionist walls, as a tool of political control and an engine of economic growth.

Recently I landed in Shanghai and found myself in the middle of a remarkable technological revolution in terms of scope. The passport scanner automatically communicates with visitors in your language. Digital payment applications have replaced cash. Foreigners trying to use paper money meet the confused looks of shopkeepers.

China will lower tariffs on more than 850 products with the aim of "expanding imports and promoting coordinated trade development," state news agency Xinhua reported.

Among the products that will be affected by the rebate are frozen pork, high-tech components such as semiconductor test equipment and memory chips, and medicines to treat diabetes and asthma.

For quite some time, Chinese society has established itself as the one that most uses the online channel for the acquisition of goods and services, taking years of advantage to any other country in this field. Only one fact: the number of online buyers in China exceeded 1,000 million people in the last year.

ICEX Spain Export and Investments and the Alibaba Group have signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim of helping Spanish companies, SMEs and brands to take advantage of Alibaba's platforms and ecosystem, with the purpose of growing in China and throughout the world.  

The world economy is being played on a chess board in which the United States goes with Black and China with White. The commercial war that maintains the first and second power of the planet covers all areas and gold, as a classic pattern of the monetary system, could not be left out. In fact, it begins to become a strategic asset in the battle and proof of this is the sharp increase in the gold reserves of the People's Bank of China.