Poverty contagion

Besides the threat of further spread of the virus, the pandemic is plunging more people into poverty.

According to the World Bank, it's estimated COVID-19 pushed an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty around the globe last year, with the total expected to rise to as many as 150 million this year. The bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.90 a day.

Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University in New York and one of the world's leading experts on the fight against poverty, said that ending poverty is feasible with the right strategies and investments. However, there needs to be a strong system of global development financing and more public spending on infrastructure.

"The Belt and Road Initiative can play a big role in ending poverty," he said, adding that it should be pursued diligently, with a focus on green and digital technologies.

Sachs praised China for meeting its target of ending extreme poverty last year. "This is a great historic accomplishment. It is also an inspiration and role model for other regions of the world," he said.

Penny Goldberg, a professor at Yale University and former chief economist at the World Bank, warned of the negative impact of COVID-19 on accelerated digitization in areas such as e-commerce, online education and remote work.

"All this will cause further disruption to our economic system, amplifying existing inequalities, especially between those who have the skills required to take advantage of digital technologies and those who don't," she said.

"Policies addressing such inequalities will be more important than ever," said the economist, who has dual Greek and US citizenship.

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy. The International Monetary Fund in October predicted the global economy to grow by 5.2 percent this year. But following the contraction last year, the level of global GDP this year will be only 0.6 percent above that of 2019.

Goldberg said the pandemic has caused a major worldwide recession. "We will be dealing with its implications for the next couple of years at least," she said.

Jim O'Neill, a British economist and former chairman of Goldman Sachs, is more optimistic, saying this year will be "a year of significant relief".

He said the vaccine rollout around the world will help bring the crisis under control and global economic growth will spring back sharply. "I think we will have a stronger recovery in 2021 than the consensus thinks," he said.

O'Neill said China is likely to witness its strongest GDP growth for many years in 2021, perhaps even more than 8 percent, and its share in the global economy will rise even further.

"It is really quite remarkable," said O'Neill, who is also the chairman of the UK think tank, Chatham House. "Hopefully, Chinese consumers will play a bigger and bigger role, which also means the rest of the world will benefit more."

Lian Weiliang, deputy chief of the National Development and Reform Commission, told a forum in late November that China will overtake the US as the top consumer goods market very soon.

O'Neill also pointed to major problems, such as fairness of growth, its distribution, global governance and huge levels of government debt.

But he said "these are issues for future years, not 2021".