Targeted policies instill confidence Chinese economy can withstand test

The performance of large-scale industrial enterprises in May suggests that as long as China can prevent the novel coronavirus virus from staging a large-scale comeback in the country, its economy is capable of withstanding the test of the pandemic.

Industrial enterprises, whose annual main business revenue is more than 20 million yuan ($2.83 million)－China's statistical threshold for large-scale enterprises－saw their overall profit in May increase 6 percent from the same period last year, hitting 582.34 billion yuan, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

While that growth would have been viewed as mediocre in other years, it is clearly something quite remarkable given what has unfolded this year. Not only did that uptick put an end to the decline over the preceding four months, more importantly it was achieved while the COVID-19 pandemic was gathering pace worldwide.