Friends in China who operate in various manufacturing fields say the economic outlook is bleak. Orders for foreign production goods have stopped for a few of them and they have production running until end of May. It's not all as rosy as you have described. Goodwill, public relations, and general sentiments of common people matter more than most will give them credit. China has lost the war of words. This attitude isn't limited to Anglo nations.
I think CCP gambled a lot on using capital to buy favours and political influence where they can but they didn't account for racial/national/cultural biases. Perhaps they should have focused as much effort on winning over the little guys. I think all the consequences of this will become more apparent towards the end of this decade.
To give an example of how badly China is hated now, there's never been anywhere close to this much fuss over even more egregious and direct proven faults and cover ups such as Fukushima or the US gov intentionally spreading syphilis to non-consenting African American groups. These were both in the recent past. No furore over all the millions of lives lost and atrocities committed in the US empire's illegal wars. No anger over Swine flu and H1N1 variant outbreaks started in the US and spread to the world. Or Ebola (although that was relatively contained). But even an unproven "guilt" of COVID-19 originating in China, even if it was purely a natural accident (there are more countries that have "wet-markets" than countries without plus continue to operate), a great deal of voices are crying for reparations and the destruction of the CCP, if not more extreme and racist attitudes. There must be more to this than "commie dislike". It's really a manifestation of 50 years of active brainwashing combined with some truths and half-truths. They've orchestrated this perfectly and weaponised every aspect of Chinese "failure" to weave this tapestry which today is working close to full force against both the CCP and by association, the Chinese peoples (citizens and diaspora). China has very little power over this and the bullshit self-congratulatory head in the sand propaganda like Italian officials being "influenced" to record a town playing the Chinese anthem, does not help the real situation one bit. It's not a minority who have been turned anti-CCP (CCP has become a much more well known and used acronym now).
I do not see the world recovering from this and going back to pre-COVID attitudes towards China as a political and industrial entity. No doubt most business will dry up and China will have to increasingly rely on domestic and developing world. This is going to slow economic progress which means science and tech. Hopefully the investments into science and tech will pay off. And you can bet after all the contracts dry up, Chinese people and businesses will continue to buy up those fancy Italian cars, Swiss watches, French perfumes, American planes, American phones until they run out of money.
I know I come across very cynical about the situation but Chinese do lack a national pride and unity almost every other tribe has in spades. Look at how easily much of HK was coerced into working against their own interest. Look at Miles Guo, the Shen Yun FLG cult, many liberal Chinese diaspora. Without a forced unity, even China itself will eventually fall apart. And it appears the faceless powers would rather decouple and lose China's business by impoverishing it eventually, than to make money off the Chinese market while knowing it may need to deal with a competing threat. I for one am not as optimistic all will be fine after this. If and when the world recovers.
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