China pushes factories to reopen, risking renewed virus spread

"Our factory is still missing quite a lot of workers, so we can only resume limited production," said Dong Liu, vice-president of a textile manufacturer in Fujian, south-eastern China, that employs more than 400 workers. Mr Dong said he applied to the government on Feb. 17 to restart and the inspector came the next day and gave permission."More and more factories are allowed to reopen this week," he said.

China's economy was likely running at about 50 per cent to 60 per cent capacity in the week to Feb 21, according to a Bloomberg Economics report. Official statistics showed that around 70 per cent of plants in provinces such as Shandong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu have now restarted, though most are running below capacity with as many as half their workers still missing.

"As the requirements to resume production in each region are rather different, even if we restart our factory, we still need to figure out a slew of issues ranging from upstream and downstream materials, to logistics, packaging, and storage," said Jacky Han, owner of a car parts factory in Qingdao, a city in Shandong province."Basically, every enterprise is freelancing on their own and using their own resources and networks to solve the puzzle.

About 80 million migrant workers have returned to where they work, and 120 million more will return by the end of February, according to a transport ministry official, Liu Xiaoming. Another 100 million will return from March onwards, Mr Liu said. Ironically, some Chinese factories already have plenty of space, thanks to the long-running trade war with the US.

In the longer term, the outbreak is likely to exacerbate the damage wrought on China's factories by the trade war. For some overseas customers in fast-moving industries like fashion, the factory shutdown amid the virus has been another wake-up call that may spur them to reduce their reliance on Chinese suppliers.

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