China’s Covid-19 restrictions threaten economic recovery

HONG KONG — China’s tough Covid-19 restrictions, which for two years helped the country’s recovery from the pandemic by keeping the virus outside its borders, are now emerging as the biggest threat to its growth.

There are mounting signs that the economy has been cooling rapidly in recent weeks as the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads to dozens of Chinese cities, leading to the harshest lockdowns since the pandemic’s early days in 2020 .