The coro­n­avirus is now in­fect­ing much more than hu­mans.

The virus has got­ten in­to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem and much like the spread from hu­man to hu­man, such is the in­ter­con­nec­tion be­tween economies around the world—it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore one af­fect­ed econ­o­my im­pacts an­oth­er. Trinidad and To­ba­go is not ex­clud­ed from this.

Chi­na, where the virus orig­i­nat­ed, has many in­ter­ests in this coun­try, and this is not new. Since T&T recog­nised the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na in June 1974, the East Asian coun­try has played a piv­otal role in the in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion.

In the last two decades, it was Chi­nese com­pa­nies that built the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (north and south), the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome and Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre as T&T jumped on the “Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive.”

The spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19), how­ev­er, has raised con­cerns about the present slate of projects be­ing un­der­tak­en by Chi­nese com­pa­nies on­go­ing across the coun­try, and there are many.

Chi­nese com­pa­nies are the con­trac­tors for projects such as the new 540-bed Cen­tral Block at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, the Phoenix In­dus­tri­al Park and the Curepe High­way In­ter­change.

How­ev­er, con­cerns about whether these projects will stall and go in­to cost over­runs in the wake of the coro­n­avirus out­break have been quelled, with a Chi­nese jour­nal­ist telling the Busi­ness Guardian all the projects are mov­ing ahead at their nor­mal pace, as most of the man­pow­er on these in­fra­struc­tur­al sites are lo­cal labour and do not de­pend on im­port­ing Chi­nese work­ers.

Fur­ther to that, Chi­na Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion cor­re­spon­dent Peng Zhe, who vis­it­ed T&T this week, said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries will not be af­fect­ed be­cause of the coro­n­avirus. He said, how­ev­er, that the pop­u­lar “Made in Chi­na” stamp has tak­en a hit dur­ing the out­break and how fast it re­cov­ers is left to be seen.

Chi­na is the largest ex­porter of goods in the world fol­lowed by the Unit­ed States.

“This shouldn’t be a prob­lem be­cause the ‘Made in Chi­na’ prod­ucts ac­tu­al­ly have been mak­ing progress over the last decade,” Zhe said.

“This has been com­mon­ly known in the in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness are­na so I think that should not be a con­cern and I don’t think that there is any sign that the coro­n­avirus could bring the ‘Made in Chi­na’ prod­ucts down es­pe­cial­ly the qual­i­ty of it.”

This coun­try im­ports a lot of prod­ucts from Chi­na, in­clud­ing elec­tron­ic equip­ment, ma­chin­ery, iron, steel, plas­tics and fur­ni­ture.

On a glob­al lev­el, Zhe told CNC3’s View­Point one on one show that he doesn’t ex­pect that Chi­na’s re­la­tion­ship with its glob­al part­ners to change much be­cause of the coro­n­avirus.

“From my per­spec­tive, I would be very op­ti­mistic about the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween econ­o­my and trade be­tween Chi­na and T&T,” Zhe said.

He went fur­ther to ex­plain: “I think the part­ner­ships won’t re­al­ly change but the busi­ness­es and the trade deals could per­haps be af­fect­ed in one way or the oth­er be­cause some busi­ness­es will re­al­ly slow down the progress of projects, or some com­pa­nies are re­al­ly short-staffed at the mo­ment, so I think that can be a chal­lenge for the com­pa­nies and it brings chal­lenges to the cor­po­ra­tion. But I wouldn’t say that would af­fect the part­ner­ship as a whole in Chi­na and in any oth­er coun­try.”

While the num­ber of cas­es has been ris­ing in Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States, this week Chi­na record­ed its slow­est dai­ly in­crease in coro­n­avirus fig­ures in six weeks.