Widespread lockdowns were imposed to prevent the spread of omicron-variant outbreaks. Both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing gauges released by the National Bureau of Statistics tumbled into contractionary territory in March. As China takes a strong stance on its Zero-Covid policy, implementing lockdowns in major manufacturing hubs, supply disruptions in PC market will occur. The official manufacturing PMI fell below the 50 mark, which separates activity expansion from contraction, after four months of activity expansion. Lockdowns have also suspended work at electronics factories in the south and a wide variety of industrial companies in central China. India’s biggest supplier of intermediate goods, has revived fears of potential disruptions in the availability of key raw materials and intermediate goods. In some sectors, especially electronics, up to 25% of production could get hit in the short term, some of them said, cautioning that exports of various products, too, will be adversely impacted. Many Chinese manufacturing hubs, including Shenzhen, Shanghai and Changchun, implemented widespread lockdowns this month as daily COVID-19 infections rose to their highest levels since the initial outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in early 2020. The widespread lockdowns and quarantine measures also made manufacturers short-staffed while lengthening their delivery time.





Stronger demand is expected from SMBs and enterprise customers, as the number of Covid-19 cases falls, vaccination rates surge, and businesses and schools return to normal. China’s Covid lockdowns are putting the economy under strain and threatening to disrupt global supply chains, prompting Beijing to call for more contingency plans to deal with the risks. The emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant has made controlling outbreaks harder and increased uncertainty for business operations. Local governments across China have attributed the latest wave .