While the World Spends on Coronavirus Bailouts, China Holds Back

BEIJING — The world is opening its wallet to fight the effects of the coronavirus outbreak. The United States unveiled a $2 trillion rescue package. European countries have announced their own spending blitz, and Japan approved a nearly $1 trillion economic stimulus plan.

Then there’s China.

The country that famously helped kick-start the world economy after the 2008 global financial crisis with a half-a-trillion-dollar spending splurge has been relatively restrained this time around. While it is helping companies keep workers and pushing its state-run banks to lend more, China has held back from spending on big packages or flooding its financial system with money.

In an odd juxtaposition, the communist country has also mostly refrained from giving money directly to its people. By contrast, President Trump — who once denounced the prospect of growing socialism in the United States — signed into law a package that includes $1,200 checks for all but the most affluent American adults.

A growing number of people say China should do more. Prominent economists are calling on Beijing to get the country’s consumers spending again. At least seven provinces and cities are already distributing vouchers to empower spenders.

Justin Lin Yifu, an influential government adviser, called at a conference last week for China to rekindle economic growth by introducing vouchers nationwide that must be spent quickly or become worthless.

“Consumption vouchers are more effective” than distributing cash, he said. “People may not consume cash when they get it, so it will not be directly converted into demand.”

The aim is to help China’s growing ranks of college-educated employees like Huang Yihan, as well as the factory workers who largely powered the economy in the past. Ms. Huang, 24, lost her job at an eight-employee ad agency in Shanghai in early February, and received only two months’ pay as severance because she had been a recent hire.

Like many in her generation who grew up in a rapidly expanding economy, Ms. Huang did not expect to find herself unemployed. She studied hard in high school and attended a top-notch university in Guangzhou in southern China. But now she surveys a hiring landscape that has suddenly turned bleak for millions of young Chinese.