With the virus spreading unchecked across the country, representatives from the services sector say frequent lockdowns have left them without money to expand.
Jordan Li, a restaurant owner in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, hopes desperately that next month’s Lunar New Year holidays will help him make up for business lost this year because of COVID-related travel and other restrictions.
Stung by the repeated pandemic-related disruptions to his business in the past three years, he does not want to hire staff until operations return to normal. They also must deal with a growing number of sick workers, especially ahead of and during the Lunar New Year next month, a peak travel period in China, when millions head home to celebrate with families.
“It’s hard to say how much demand there will be for travel during the Spring Festival because it depends on whether people can recover in time,” adds Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager at Spring Tour, the travel arm of Shanghai-based Spring Group.Retail sales, a key gauge of consumption, dropped 5.9% in November from a year earlier, and catering fell by 8.4% amid broad-based weakness in the services sector.
Standing in a small, empty restaurant this month after curbs on domestic travel were lifted, its owner, surnamed Wen, said business had been bad during the pandemic. There were little prospects for a revival, he said.
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