Name: What China's Pollution Says About Coronavirus and the Economy | WSJ
Uploaded: 2020-03-12T02:56:24.000Z
Duration: 4 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is China covered in pollution last year.

Transition words & phrases

had brought much of the country to a standstill

for several weeks causing a huge drop in pollutants

a harmful gas that's emitted when burning fossil fuel.

Compared to previous years it's below typical levels.

- If you close down factories or reducing the amount

And from that we can deduce that the economic activity

Xi Jinping publicly declared a people's war

that extreme measures like shutdowns have prevented people

should not jeopardize economic development.

Now a dramatic change in pollution over the country suggests

that striking that balance could be difficult.

to become the world's largest coal consumer.

Its large manufacturing-based economy burns 95&00:01:10,310 --> 00:01:11,750 of the country's coal,

making it the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses.

Usually during the Lunar New Year most industries wind down

for a week and power plants burn a lot less coal.

Coal consumption usually rebounds after the week-long break

which means pollution levels pick up too.

in China are so high we can easily detect that from space.

the epicenter of the coronavirus usually looks like

The city is a key producer of automobiles,

for coal hasn't immediately rebounded since many workers

have been stranded at home in locked down cities,

at other industrial powerhouses in China.

This is what Shandong and Hebei usually look like

from textiles and metals to petrochemicals.

While skies were clear in many parts of China,

some cities like Beijing are still shrouded in smog.

The city has recorded high levels of air pollutants.

during the chemical reaction of gasses generated

major steel makers around the capital don't stop production

during the holiday because going offline is costlier

So during the city shutdown some factories continue

- Because of the outbreak all the normal pattern

has been broken so the construction sites are still

that's why their steel consumption slow down and delayed.

- [Narrator] Steel inventories are now at record high levels

because buyers in the construction industry

Home sales were already cooling before the virus,

- Whenever you're not so sure about your national economy

you're not so sure about your job security,

People definitely will be reducing expenditure

- [Narrator] In recent days Xi has been touting efforts

to meet economic targets while containing the virus,

like heavy stimulus to support banks and tax cuts

But analysts say it's not clear whether these measures

Some factories are slowly resuming production.

- So pollution levels that we're observing from space

are beginning to increase which may indicate

that economic activity could be resuming.

- [Narrator] Beijing recently put out the first full month

of economic data after the virus hit China.

The index tracks business sentiment among manufacturing

An increase in the number of infections overseas

could also put China's economy at greater risk,

complicating efforts to meet Xi's economic goals

Subtitles ListPlay Video

What China's Pollution Says About Coronavirus and the Economy | WSJ

pattern

epidemic

extreme

strike