The World UN forecasts fall in global economic growth to 1.9%

By Edith M. Lederer The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS—The

Painting a gloomy and uncertain economic outlook, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs said the current global economic slowdown “cuts across both developed and developing countries, with many facing risks of recession in 2023.”

“A broad-based and severe slowdown of the global economy looms large amid high inflation, aggressive monetary tightening, and heightened uncertainties,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the 178-page report.

The report said this year’s 1.9 percent economic growth forecast—down from an estimated 3 percent in 2022—is one of the lowest growth rates in recent decades. But it projects a moderate pick-up to 2.7 percent in 2024 if inflation gradually abates and economic headwinds start to subside.

In its annual report earlier this month, the World Bank which lends money to poorer countries for development projects, cut its growth forecast nearly in half, from it previous projection of 3 percent to just 1.7 percent.

The International Monetary Fund, which provides loans to needy countries, projected in October that global growth would slow from 6 percent in 2021 to 3.2 percent in 2022 and 2.7 percent in 2023. IMF Managing Director

Kristalina Georgieva said at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos that 2023 will be a difficult year, but stuck by the projection and said “we don’t expect a global recession.”

Shantanu Mukherjee, director

Dubious Covid treatments explode on social media as China cases rise

CHINESE are turning to social media influencers and celebrities for tips about treating Covid, after the country’s whipsaw reversal in virus strategy undermined trust in government advice and health officials. China’s rapid dismantling of pandemic restrictions over a matter of weeks at the end of last year led to a quick surge in infections, with Covid spreading through cities and towns that have had little experience with the virus until now. With the government hastily retreating, people are increasingly looking to social media for answers, resulting in a corresponding increase in misinformation and even dangerous advice.

Search queries about treating common Covid maladies, from whether the XBB sub-variant causes diarrhea to how best to treat pneumonia, throw up a raft of responses on the Chinese Internet: adopt a vegan diet, take multiple antibodies, or even ways to buy illegal enzymes from online celebrities. Throughout the pandemic, people in many countries—particularly those where the government’s approach to the virus was questioned or was ineffective—also turned to untested remedies and online advice. The US craze for Ivermectin, which is primarily approved to treat diseases caused by parasites in livestock and humans, is a prime example.

What makes China’s rush different is that it’s being accompanied by corresponding backlash against the government.

News stories and social media posts on Covid advice from Chinese health officials are being regularly lambasted with comments questioning their credibility, after many went from warning about the dangers of Covid to downplaying its seriousness within mere weeks, as policy completely shifted away from the stringent Covid Zero approach.

Backlash against officials

of the economic analysis and policy division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, highlighted the growing income inequality in the world at a news conference launching the report.

Between 2019 and 2021, he said, average incomes for the top 10 percent rose by 1.2 percent while the incomes of the lowest 40 percent fell by 0.5 percent.

“The top 10 percent now earns on average over 42 times what the lowest percentiles” earn, Mukherjee said.

According to the UN report, this year “growth momentum has weakened in the United States, the European Union and other developed economies, adversely affecting the rest of the world economy.”

In the United States, GDP is projected to expand by only 0.4 percent in 2023 after estimated growth of 1.8 percent in 2022, the UN said. And many European countries are projected to experience “a mild recession” with the war in Ukraine heading into its second year on February 14, high energy costs, and inflation and tighter financial conditions depressing household consumption and investment.

The economies in the 27-nation European Union are forecast to grow by just 0.2 percent in 2023, down from an estimated 3.3 percent in 2022, the UN said. And in the United Kingdom, which left the EU three years ago, GDP is projected to contract by 0.8 percent in 2023, continuing a recession that began in the second half of 2022, it said.

With China’s government aban - doning its zero-Covid policy late last year and easing monetary and fiscal policies, the UN forecast that its economy, which expanded by only 3 percent in 2022, will accelerate to 4.8 percent this year.

“But the reopening of the economy is expected to be bumpy,” the UN said. “Growth will likely remain well below the pre-pandemic rate of 6-6.5 percent.”

The UN report said Japan’s economy is expected to be among the better-performing among developed countries this year, with GDP forecast to increase by 1.5 percent, slightly lower than last year’s estimated growth of 1.6 percent.

Across east Asia, the UN said economic recovery remains fragile though GDP growth in 2023 is forecast to reach 4.4 percent, up from 3.2 percent last year, and stronger than in other regions.

In South Asia, the UN forecast average GDP growth will slow from 5.6 percent last year to 4.8 percent this year as a result of high food and energy prices, “monetary tightening and fiscal vulnerabilities.”

But growth in India, which is expected to overtake China this year as the world’s most populous nation, is expected to remain strong at 5.8 percent, slightly lower than the estimated 6.4 percent in 2022, “as higher interest rates and a global slowdown weigh on investments and exports,” the UN report said.

In Western Asia, oil-producing countries are benefiting from high prices and rising output as well as a revival in tourism, the UN said. But economies that aren’t oil producers remain weak “given tightening access to international finance and severe fiscal constraints,” and average growth in the region is projected to slow from an estimated 6.4 percent in 2022 to 3.5 percent this year.

The UN said Africa has been hit “by multiple shocks, including weaker demand from key trading partners (especially China and Europe), a sharp increase in energy and food prices, rapidly rising borrowing costs and adverse weather events.”

One result, it said, is mounting debt-servicing burdens that have forced a growing number of African governments to seek bilateral and multilateral support.

The UN projected economic growth in Africa to slow from an estimated 4.1 percent in 2022 to 3.8 percent this year.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the UN said the outlook “remains challenging,” citing labor market prospects, stubbornly high inflation and other issues. It forecast that regional growth will slow to just 1.4 percent in 2023 from an estimated expansion of 3.8 percent in 2022.

“The region’s largest economies—Argentina, Brazil and Mexico—are expected to grow at very low rates due to tightening financial conditions, weakening exports, and domestic vulnerabilities,” the UN said.

For the world’s least developed countries, the UN said growth is projected at 4.4 percent this year, about the same as last year but significantly below the UN’s target of 7 percent by 2030.

UN: Myanmar opium cultivation has surged 33% amid violence

By David Rising

Associated Press

The

BANGKOK—The production of opium in Myanmar has flourished since the military’s seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by a third in the past year as eradication efforts have dropped off and the faltering economy has led more people toward the drug trade, according to a United Nations report released Thursday.

In 2022, in the first full growing season since the military wrested control of the country from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, Myanmar saw a 33 percent increase in cultivation area to 40,100 hectares (99,090 acres), according to the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

“Economic, security and governance disruptions that followed the military takeover of February 2021 have converged, and farmers in remote, often conflict-prone areas in northern Shan and border states have had little option but to move back to opium,” said the UN office’s regional representative Jeremy Douglas.

The overall value of the Myanmar opiate economy, based on UN estimates, ranges between $660 million and $2 billion, depending on how much was sold locally, and how much of the raw opium was processed into heroin or other drugs.

“Virtually all the heroin reported in East and Southeast Asia and Australia originates in Myanmar, and the country remains the second-largest opium and heroin producer in the world after Afghanistan,” Douglas said. “There is no comparing the two at this point as Afghanistan still produces far more, but the expansion underway in Myanmar should not be dismissed and needs attention as it will likely continue—it is directly tied to the security and economic situation we see unfolding today.”

The so-called Golden Triangle area, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, has historically been a major production area for opium and hosted many of the labs that converted it to heroin. Decades of political instability have made the frontier regions of Myanmar, also known as Burma, largely lawless, to be exploited by drug producers and traffickers.

Most of the opium exported by Myanmar goes to China and Vietnam, while heroin goes to many countries across the region, Douglas said.

“It is really where the value is for traffickers,” he said. “Very high profits.”

The cultivation of opium had been trending downward in recent years before the military took control of the government in 2021.

Production estimates hit a bottom of

400 metric tons (440 tons) in 2020. After rising slightly in 2021, that spiked in 2022 to an estimated 790 metric tons (870 tons), according to the report.

Since it took control of the government, the military’s use of deadly force to hold on to power has escalated conflict with its civilian opponents to the point that some experts describe the country as now being in a state of civil war.

The costs have been high, with 2,810 people killed by government forces to date and 17,427 detained, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

The violence has meant that the government has been unable to reach some areas to carry out drug eradication raids, and has also had to divert its resources elsewhere. Consequently, eradication efforts appear to have decreased substantially, with 1,403 hectares (3,467 acres) reported eradicated in 2022—some 70 percent fewer than in 2021.

At the same time, as the conflict continues to take its toll on Myanmar’s economy, an increasing number of rural households have been pushed into relying more on opium cultivation for income, the UN said.

THE pushback has become so strong that the slogan “we advise experts to stop giving advice” was one of the top trending topics on Chinese social media platform Weibo earlier this month.

The result is that some Chinese are increasingly relying on influencers and others online who lack medical expertise for advice on how to treat or not contract the virus. A Weibo search for “preventing Covid” points people to nasal irrigation and “angong niuhuang” pills—traditional Chinese medicine typically used for stroke that’s made of cattle gallstones and buffalo horns, and contains arsenic and mercury.

The lack of accurate, accessible health information has already led to at least one tragedy. China has seen widespread shortages of fever medications like ibuprofen since its reopening wave took hold. Unable to find such drugs, one family of four in Inner Mongolia, a region in China’s north, ingested veterinary medicine to treat Covid in mid-December. Their two children ended up with major liver damage.

Control of the narrative

ALTON CHUA, an associate professor of communications and online information at Nanyang Technological University, said the backlash against government advice set a dangerous precedent.

“If the credibility of public experts were to be repeatedly undermined in future high-profile incidents, then I think it’d be difficult to regain confidence,” he said.

China has used its almost total control of domestic media and the Internet within its “Great Firewall” to validate the nation’s abrupt shift from quashing all Covid cases to letting the virus loose.

Officials have refuted claims the about-turn was triggered by damage to the economy and protests against Covid Zero, saying it was all part of the wider plan. Censors have vowed to curb online speculation about Covid over the Lunar New Year holiday, an apparent effort to prevent further anger and confusion over Beijing’s reversal on its virus policy.

Yet the shift in rhetoric was so pronounced in some cases, it couldn’t go unnoticed. One top medical official, Zhong Nanshan, went from claiming the more contagious Omicron variant validated China’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid, to saying the strain caused little more than a “cold.”

Yoga guru peddling cures

THE rise of misinformation comes as China’s reopening outbreak continues to swell, with the country saying it recorded more than 12,600 virus-related deaths the week before the Lunar New Year holiday, which is seeing many travel home to their home villages and towns. The unleashing of Covid has seen millions infected in China for the first time.

One of those people was Lisa, a resident of Shanghai in her sixties. Anxious about catching Covid as the outbreak spiraled, to try and ward it off she spent the equivalent of thousands of dollars on enzyme drinks and eye drops touted by Yi Heng, a celebrity yoga guru who has more than a million followers on Douyin, China’s version of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok video-sharing app.

The fact that the enzymes had no visible manufacturing date, certification or label of production origin didn’t faze Lisa, who declined to give her last name. Though she eventually became infected with Covid, Lisa believes the enzymes—coupled with Yi’s advanced breathing exercises—boosted her recovery.

“I’ve never felt better,” she said. “I’m strong as a bull.”

Yi didn’t respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg News. Chinese social media companies have taken some steps to curb the spread of Covid misinformation, though their efforts remain limited compared to platforms popular abroad.

Last year, Weibo removed more than 82,274 pieces of content that it labeled as misinformation, though it didn’t specify how many were Covidrelated.

That’s lower than other international social media networks: TikTok removed more than 250,000 items for Covid misinformation, while Twitter culled 97,674 such posts in the first nine months of 2022.

Some Chinese are also trying to combat rumors proliferating online. Hetty Liu, a 33-year-old public relations manager in Shanghai, created several groups on the WeChat messenger app alongside friends with medical backgrounds to fact-check and dispense accurate health advice.

Common myths Liu’s tackled in chat rooms with some 4,000 members include that plant-based diets lower the risk of getting Covid, and the effectiveness of so-called “virus shut out” lanyards, which can contain pesticides that cause breathing issues. The lanyards have notched tens of thousands of sales on Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo.

For Liu, the mission has become personal: Some of her family members have put their trust in fake Covid cures.

“I can’t stop them from believing what they want,” she said. “People are more susceptible now because everyone’s really anxious about Covid. Everything is scary, everything is unknown.”

With assistance from Chris Kay and Helen Yuan/Bloomberg