It's kind of difficult to do well when half of the workforce is out due to covid.

>...despite Beijing's loosening of Covid restrictions at the beginning of the month

A possible reason: "China Covid: experts estimate 9,000 deaths a day" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/30/china-covid-experts-estimate-9000-deaths-a-day-as-us-says-it-may-sample-wastewater-from-planes

>UK-based health data firm Airfinity said about 9,000 people in China were probably dying each day from Covid, nearly doubling its estimate from a week ago.
>
>Cumulative deaths in China since 1 December likely reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6m, Airfinity said in a statement on Thursday. It used modelling based on data from Chinese provinces before the recent changes to reporting cases were implemented, it said.
>
>Airfinity expects deaths to peak on 23 January with about 25,000 a day, with cumulative deaths reaching 584,000 since December. Since 7 December, when China made its abrupt policy U-turn, authorities have officially reported just 10 Covid deaths.

Due to the fear of new variants coming from China to other countries (only the same variants are being found so far), the US is considering testing aircraft wastewater:

>The United States is considering sampling wastewater taken from international aircraft to track any emerging new Covid-19 variants as infections surge in China.
>
>Airplane wastewater analysis is among several options the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering to help slow the introduction of new variants into the US from other countries, a spokesperson for the agency, Kristen Nordlund, said.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 74%. (I'm a bot)

> Beijing - China's manufacturing activity contracted sharply in December for the third month in a row, according to official figures released Saturday, despite Beijing's loosening of Covid restrictions at the beginning of the month.

> On December 7, Beijing abruptly loosened pandemic restrictions, but despite that, the country is still struggling to recover due to a surge in Covid cases.

> "In December, due to the impact of the epidemic and other factors... China's economic prosperity has generally declined," NBS senior statistician Zhao Qinghe said in a statement.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: China^#1 December^#2 Beijing^#3 epidemic^#4 month^#5

“Despite” or “because of”?

You can loosen all the restrictions you want but it don’t matter if people are hospitalized or at home from COVID.

For some it’s because this is the first time they can leave work in almost 2 years 🤷🏼‍♂️

Good!

We need more countries adopting a degrowth mindset like this if we're going to have any chance of keeping ourselves from going extinct due to climate change.