On March 13, 2020, more than 30 students from the Belt and Road Initiative EMBA Program Cohort 2018 joined in remotely to discuss the regional COVID-19 epidemic situation and its impact on local economy. These students were from 9 countries and regions across Asia. “The virus cannot block our friendship, and it cannot stop us from learning and thinking” opened Ms. Jing Zhu, Class Coordinator of Cohort 2018, as she kicked off the online symposium.

As colleges and universities across China have been bracing for major disruptions to the traditional classroom teaching model, Tsinghua University took the lead in moving classes online. This convening is the first “Cloud Class Sharing” of Tsinghua PBCSF’s BRI EMBA Cohort 2018 since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. John Aryananda, Managing Partner, Synergy Capital Asia, Wallace Guo, Managing Partner, TH Capital, Leland K. Kwee, Managing Director, Pontiac Land Private Limited, Sam Lin, CEO, 9F International, and Joon Sung Park, Managing Director, Legend Capital each gave a summary and analysis of the epidemic situation and economic and business impacts of coronavirus on their own respective regions. Based on their presentations on Indonesia, China Mainland, Singapore, China Hong Kong, and South Korea, and through a series of dynamic exchanges led by MC, Yipin Ng, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Yunqi Partners, students acquired a deeper understanding of the regional epidemic situation from both a political economy perspective and a business perspective.

John Aryananda began by talking about the current state of the Indonesian economy. He pointed out that despite being in the midst of global uncertainty, the country reported strong GDP growth in 2019, with private consumption and investment being the main drivers of the economy. Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, domestic sectors that are expected to be impacted include manufacture, international trade, services (tourism, retails, entertainment, and transportation). The Indonesian stock market is also expecting volatility due to negative market sentiment, which can lead to decrease in investment as well as price hike for commodities. John remarked that in addressing the COVID-19 epidemic, the Indonesian government is taking measures to increase consumption, and pump ample liquidity into the system. It is planning on releasing four fiscal stimulus packages to boost local economy.

Wallace Guo followed John by drawing attention to the impact of COVID-19 on different industries in China. He stated that a great deal of behaviors are changing from offline to online and that pressure from the coronavirus has provided tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs in the online education, online gaming, online fitness and online grocery industries, giving them a time advantage of around 2-3 years. “One sector that surprisingly gained much attention is high-tech and enterprise services”, Wallace said, “Even though the stock market is crashing, Zoom is still holding its price.” In contrast, industries including travel, hotel, transportation and offline retail and services have been suffering as a result of the coronavirus. Wallace expressed that many restaurants for example, with their 3-month cash flow, might run into trouble in the long run if they have not already. In terms of opportunities, Wallace identified “5 new’s”: new ways to grow, new business opportunities, new environment, new infrastructure, and new strategies. As enterprises actively look to adapt and transform their businesses, and consumers start to aggregately change user-end behaviors, we will transition into a different business environment supported by new policies from the government. Considering also the expected industry upgrading and new M&A strategies, Wallace emphasized that he’s sanguine on the recovery and growth prospects of China.

Leland K. Kwee gave a quick summary of the current situation in Singapore. Overall, hospitality and retail are the sectors feeling the greatest impact from COVID-19. The country’s Ministry of Trade & Industry has revised its 2020 GDP growth forecast to 0.5% to 1.5%, and the government acted swiftly by introducing stabilization and support packages to support workers and enterprises. Hotels, the sector which Leland is in, will receive a 30% property tax rebate, while retail properties will get 15%. An additional package to further help businesses is also on the government’s agenda. So far, hotels have been the worst impacted as visitor arrivals plummet and events being cancelled. Leland remarked that hotels have devised measures in payroll, sales & marketing, operations, repair & maintenance, and CapEx in order to combat the effects of public health crisis. Based on the SARS experience, companies are planning for a recovery for the second half of 2020 and are trying their best to sustain businesses until then. However, Leland pointed out that since we are only 2 months into the epidemic, it’s too early to be sure about the length of outbreak. “If the outbreak goes on longer than the next few months,” Leland commented, “then the impact is going to be even more significant triggering much more drastic measures.”

Sam Lin shared his views on the COVID-19 epidemic in terms of its impacts on the Hong Kong SAR’s economy. Since the SAR’s economy is closely tied to that of mainland, Hong Kong has been sensing waves of repercussions from the rapid spread of the virus. Sam stated that compared to what we have experienced during SARS, the scale of the coronavirus can easily be over tenfold. For Hong Kong, sectors feeling the most impact include logistics, hospitality, retail, food and beverage, offline entertainment and other tourism-related businesses. With tourist arrivals plunging almost 99% year-over-year in February, businesses are closing while workers are being laid-off or forced to take no-paid leaves. In response, local banks are rolling out temporary relief measures to targeted customers, offering interest only loan products for a specific period of time. On the area’s economic outlook, Sam commented that the social turmoil and anti-government protests since last June have not only damaged the international image of Hong Kong but have also put tremendous pressure on the economy. Now with COVID-19 reaching other parts of the world, the epidemic spillovers and externalities will continue to affect world economies as financial markets, world trade, supply chain, consumption are disrupted. “As a result, Hong Kong will see some unprecedented challenges across industries and sectors,” Sam remarked, “but I think it will stay resilient,”

Joon Sung Park focused his presentation on the COVID-19 impact on the South Korean economy. After briefly summarizing the background of the coronavirus situation in South Korea, Joon looked at ways in which different industries are dealing with the crisis. An economy that is highly dependent on exports, it has seen major factory shutdowns and supply chain disruptions in manufacturing, The entertainment industry in South Korea is also trying its best to cope with the large number of k-pop event cancellations and movie theater closings. “From K-pop to cars, the coronavirus has hit Korean businesses hard,” Joon commented. The country recently cut its 2020 growth outlook to 2.1 percent from 2.3 percent, citing the impact of the coronavirus. However, several industries such as online/mobile education, e-commerce, and gaming have displayed positive movements. Joon dove into three representative cases of such industries including Mathpresso, Coupang, and NCSOFT and discussed their growth potential. With respect to government response, he talked about South Korea’s reserve plan, emergency budget, mask procurement support, while touching on Korea’s innovative drive-thru virus screening process.

Throughout the online symposium, other participants actively engaged with the presenters by putting forward questions and exchanging ideas, some of which include opinions on the recent circuit breakers in the US stock market and on the oil price plummet, currency predictions, as well as specific industry development expectations.

This “Cloud Class” series of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) EMBA Program will continue to be a place for students and lecturers to share ideas during this special time. With almost 70% of the students enrolled in the BRI EMBA based overseas, remote learning and online class meetings could actually benefit students in terms of time and location flexibility. The Center of Finance EMBA has also been organizing a number of other online exchanges for students of the Chinese EMBA Program. Prior to the virus outbreak, the Center had already been in a process of transforming traditional classroom pedagogy and finding new mechanisms of student-teacher interaction,

Since its inception in May 2017, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) EMBA Program has attracted more than 180 high-level enterprise decision-makers from 22 countries and regions, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the United States, Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan. A number of students from Southeast Asian Countries hold Tan Sri, Dato' Sri, Dato’, Tengku and other honorary titles. Nearly 40% of the students graduated from world-renowned universities such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London.