Economic indicators released Tuesday confirmed that the manufacturing and service sectors of China both grew this month after the coronavirus outbreak in February triggered a lockdown.
China's official Index of Purchasing Managers, issued by the National Statistics Bureau, showed a strong 52.3 point figure for the current month, a calculation in which 50 are neutral and a smaller number suggest a contraction.
Following growth in January, the index collapsed to 29.6 in February, as services ranging from transportation to retail were stopped by government and provincial steps taken to restrict the disease's spread.
Beijing had enforced stringent quarantine rules and travel restrictions at great expense to the economy to curb the spread of coronavirus that has killed more than 3,000 people in the nation.
However, as local infections are decreasing, most businesses have reopened and life for millions of people has begun to return to normal gradually. But Beijing's attempts to guard against a second wave of infections from abroad have restricted the speed of business resumptions.
Output rates in China's small and medium-sized enterprises, a major job market, were up 76 percent by Saturday, with employees returning to their jobs in the garment, automobile, and machinery industries, Vice Minister of Industry Xin Guobin said Monday at a press conference.
The report's manufacturing sub-index picked up to 54.1 in March from 27.8 February, but new export orders registered by Chinese factories were still mired in contraction, after ticking up 46.4 in February from 28.7.
The report showed that manufacturers are still facing significant operating challenges, with more than half of respondents reporting a lack of customer demand and 42 percent reporting financing problems, both up from the previous month.
On Tuesday, the news of a strong Chinese factory output propelled higher shares on Asian stock markets, especially in mainland China and Hong Kong, where the Hang Seng Index rose 1.2 percent to 23,455 by mid-morning.
Asia appeared to display signs of post-coronavirus life, with data released throughout the area showing some promising signs of a rebound, analysts said.
The findings are doubly satisfying as the recovery is widely focused across the region's main economies, and not just China, bringing a welcome break from months of virus doom and gloom, Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA for Asia Pacific, told the South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, transport networks in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, have restarted, but some restrictions remain in and around Beijing, and international air transport has been cut.
Wanda, which is both the world's largest group of cinemas and China's largest shopping mall operator, said Chinese customers are again starting to venture out of their homes.
