Virtually every company based in the people's Republic is affected by the virus outbreak. Especially quarantine makes your business to create.

do not Act with masks: the stock exchange in Shanghai photo: Aly Song/reuters

BEIJING taz | Surprisingly, the bad news for the European company with the seat in China is not, after all, the economic malaise in the people's Republic itself remains hidden to the naked eye: Still, the streets in the Chinese capital are closed and deserted, almost all the shops, the traffic even during commuting times, is absolutely minimal. Now, the European chamber of Commerce in Beijing has elicited, however, for the first time in detail the effects of Coronavirus on companies from the EU and came to a sobering result.

"Virtually everyone is affected, even severely affected," says Stephan Wöllenstein, the head of Volkswagen in China and head of the German chamber of foreign trade in North China. Expressed In Figures: Nearly 60 percent of all 577 companies surveyed expect "severe" consequences for the own business, another third of "medium-heavy" consequences. Around half expects to suffer in the first half-year profit declines of 20 percent or more.

This has mainly to do with the drop in demand. "This is not surprising. Most of the Chinese have spent the February, exclusively in their own homes and only Necessary as food to be bought“, says the VW Manager Wöllenstein. The automotive industry, with the most affected: In China, the world's largest market for the industry, broke the sales since the beginning of the Virus crisis to about 90 percent.

According to the Chinese automobile Association in the first 16 days of February, were sold only 4.909 Cars. "We are trying to in the supply chain, where possible, to have a second provider of Europe. But if only a part of over 8,000 individual is missing parts, then you can't build the whole car to the end,“ says Wöllenstein.

Joerg Wuttke, President of the European chamber of Commerce in Beijing, is going to change the crisis, many global businesses. "Diversification is becoming a theme, rather than from a single source-dependent", says Wuttke on the phone from Germany. After Beijing, BASF can not enter the Board of Directors for China currently, as planned, to go without for 14 days in their own home under quarantine. Such logistical restrictions make the company to create. Almost each province has rules of its own Rule, resulting in many European as well as Chinese firms complain of shortage of staff and transport interruptions.

According to an analysis of the Japanese financial services provider Nomura a third of the Chinese population, the dangers for the Chinese new year a month ago to be with their families in the provinces, in the economic metropolises such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing returned are not at all migrants – including a lot of work, without the factories and services work.

How bad is the economic performance of the country has not yet finally assessed. Until the middle of March, the government holds back the most current economic figures, but from the empirically available data, a rough picture about the Status Quo is at least: According to Goldman Sachs, the coal consumption is the major company in the country is only 60 percent compared to the same period last year, sales of real estate, even at only around a quarter. For the first quarter, experts expect that the Virus has brought destroyed all of the growth in China, and maybe the country a Minus.

President Xi Jinping would, however, stick to the ambitious growth targets. To the members of the Politburo Xi gave the Order, that China's economy would double within the coming decade itself. The local governments in the provinces this is a hard to solve Dilemma: on the one Hand, you have to the restrictions on the freedom of movement as possible to loosen to get the economy rolling again. At the same time, however, they fear that in the last two weeks, flattening of the growth curve of Coronavirus-could increase Infected again.