Impact of COVID-19 on China's coal imports: effects and solutions

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on China's coal import trade. First , this paper makes a qualitative analysis of the status quo of China's coal import scale before and after COVID-19. Second, the impact of the pandemic on China's coal import was estimated by panel VAR model based on the confirmed global COVID-19 data and China's coal import data with Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering database and Wind database from January 2019 to June 2021. The result shows that the pandemic has a significant impact on both the supply and demand of China's coal industry in short term. There is a rebound in coal demand due to manufacturing industries having resumed work and production under the successful pandemic control in China. Finally, this paper analyzes the measures of China's coal import process during the COVID-19 and suggests how to deal with the global public crisis in the future.