China’s Economy Shrinks for the First Time in Decades Due to Coronavirus

China’s gross domestic product in the first three months of 2020 dropped 6.8 percent compared to a year earlier, the first time it has dropped since Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics began announcing the figure in 1992, the The Wall Street Journal reports. The contraction of the world’s second-largest economy—some 9.8 percent compared to the previous quarter—offered a stark assessment of the economic devastation wrought by the new coronavirus. Economists who spoke to the The New York Times said they expected similar effects to ripple outward to the rest of the world, though they said if China’s effort to restart its economy is successful, it may accelerate global recovery. The April drop ended nearly 50 years of uninterrupted growth, according to the Times.