The operator of the Alibaba shop in Ukraine, AliExpress, stopped the delivery of the purchases from China.

 

 

On Friday morning customers of the popular online shop, AliExpress, which is owned by Alibaba Group began to receive messages with a request to cancel their orders of products made in China. "Affected by the epidemic disaster, the goods could not be delivered", the author of the email stated in English and Ukrainian. "We will process the refund for you as soon as possible", the author concluded. The message did not inform for how long the shop cuts off the Chinese producers.

Alibaba Group did not issue any statement regarding the situation. The Ukrainian operator did not explain whether the ban on Chinese goods involves also the products made in Hong Kong.

 

The financial markets are already anticipating the catastrophe scenario. This week, prices went down on all major world stock exchanges.

The shares of all Asian corporations and the national currencies of Asian countries have fallen sharply, as the death toll is growing, and the blow to the Chinese economy will be a concern the whole world in the coming months. The list of the largest world companies that temporarily stopped all their operations and production in China includes Google and the Swedish IKEA. South Korean Samsung Electronics also partially suspended activities in China.

Authorities and industrialists have expressed concern that millions of Chinese workers, who have been so far celebrating the beginning of the Lunar New Year, may try to return to work next week, despite the radical restrictions on travel around the country imposed by Beijing, and thereby accelerate the spread of the epidemic. According to the Ministry of Industry of the PRC, in the first quarter of this year, the country's GDP growth may fall by 5 percent or even lower.

There is growing concern among experts that it could go this far. China is practically crippled: international flights have been canceled, trains no longer operate, shops are closed. The Chinese factories in many provinces are currently closed.

The major world airlines including El Al, Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, American Airlines and Air Canada suspended their flights to and from China for at least a month.

Some economist expressed hope that the consequences of the outbreak of the coronavirus will be less significant than after the SARS epidemic. "Should be obvious that the SARS parallels are of limited use in gauging economic impact given the much bigger containment effort involved", the Executive Editor at Bloomberg Ms Tracy Allowey stated.

 

Some economist are hopeful, investors do not trust

Confidence in the countermeasures also expressed authors of the JPMorgan report. Listing the key precautionary measures the authors indicated the significant difference in the counter-reaction against the coronavirus threat.

China extended the Lunar Year holidays, closed the borders, and suspended group tours. Hong Kong declared an outbreak "an emergency" and closed border with the Mainland. Macau followed. Taiwan suspended all the group tour to China and imposed obligatory quarantine for Chinese visitors. Singapore has been quarantining all of its citizens, who returned from China in the last few weeks. European states are evacuating its citizens from the most infected Chinese province of Wuhan and putting them under the 16 days quarantine.
Australia suspended all of the flights from and to China. The government is considering the relocation of Australian citizens evacuated from China to the islands that are about 2,000 kilometres from its border.

Investors do not trust in the efficiency of the countermeasures. Many of them doubt the data provided by the Chinese Communist Party. The most worrying is the fact revealed by the Wuhan government officials that nearly 5 m people had left the province and had not returned.