Coronavirus: Chinese economy shrinks 6.8% in first quarter

Beijing: China’s economy contracted for the first time in nearly three decades last quarter as drastic measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic brought activity to a standstill, official data showed Friday.

Gross domestic product shrank 6.8 per cent in the January-March quarter from the same period a year earlier, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

It was the first negative growth reported by the world’s second-largest economy since it began logging quarterly data in the early 1990s.