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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Adlots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

And I'm Joe Wycenthal. So Joe, it has to be said that there are many ironies to come out of

the coronavirus crisis, but one of the big ones has to do with the fact that the outbreak started

in China in early 2020 and yet China had the best performing economy that year.

Yeah, I think it was the only major economy that actually grew overall in 2020, which is

pretty extraordinary. And I don't really know if it's true or if it will be durably true,

but I do think there's this sort of meme out there that like China won 2020 in some way that

it came out ahead. And I don't actually, I'm not, I haven't yet necessarily been convinced of it,

but because of China's growth and the quick rebound and its successful suppression of the virus,

that is like a thing people say. Yeah, so China's GDP grew. I think it was 2.3% last year,

which means it was the only major economy as you mentioned to escape contraction,

which is pretty amazing. And then of course, people have been pitching China's experience in 2020

as sort of like proof of the benefits of a command economy. When you have something like an outbreak

in a country with a very strong government, you can control the population, you can put in place

restrictions and things that are ultimately going to make it easier to to fight the virus. And

of course, you can pull a bunch of levers to boost economic activity as well. So most people have

been talking about what an exceptional year it was for China sort of proves that their economic

model might be more resilient than some people think. But there are people out there who think that

actually 2020 wasn't as good a year for China as it's been portrayed. And that if anything,

...