In this mentorship immersion program at Vanderbilt University, I focused on incorporating economic ideas to the covid 19 pandemic, that was pervasively, and severely affecting people’s lives in Shanghai and New York City. Besides focusing on the manufacturing industries, I also addressed how the pandemic has impacted the service industries, food industries, and the economy, including trade activities and the stock market. Most importantly, I was capable of discovering the common ground between economics and humanities, which is the role politics, humanity play during the pandemic, and how it may differ among nations, thus placing on in a relatively more advantageous and liked spot than the other.

To begin with, Shanghai had 2 severe outbreaks, they were in the early months of 2020 and the later months of 2022. In this research paper, information and statistics from both time periods would be referenced, as they share a considerable amount of resemblances in the policies, actions and responses. First and foremost, the manufacturing industry in Shanghai was hit one of the hardest. For instance, “Output of Shanghai's industries, located at the heart of manufacturing in the Yangtze River Delta, shrank 61.5% in April from a year earlier, the local statistics bureau said”(Reuters). Within the city, the Yangtze River Delta was where all the major factories are located, supporting the great amount of manufactured products in Shanghai. However, with the lockdowns that comes with the pandemic, area were shut down, allowing little
to no production of products. Therefore, the supplies of companies, both domestic and International, could not meet the demands of the customer overseas: 80% of manufactures in Shanghai experienced shortage. “The lockdown is affecting several thousand large-scale suppliers. Almost all leading global automotive suppliers have factories in Shanghai and surrounding cities, including Bosch, Aptiv, Borg Warner, ZF, Magna, Continental, and Valeo. More than 20,000 small and micro-suppliers are also impacted.” Moreover, “Shanghai, where plants of companies including Tesla (TSLA.O) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (0981.HK) are based, accounts for 30% of China's key auto components manufacturing and 40% of its chipmaking capacity... Shanghai's April retail sales nosedived 48.3%, significantly steeper than the 11.1% drop nationally and the city's largest decline since at least 2011.That

dragged down overall retail sales in the Yangtze River Delta, which plunged over 30%.Property sales by floor area decreased 17% in January-April versus growth of 4.0% in the first three months. In April alone, sales sank 88%, according to Reuters calculations based on the four- month data.” As a result, foreign forms that funded the factories for cheap and intense in the rural areas of Shanghai were concerned about their presence in the country.
Besides the manufacturing industry taking 24.8% of Shanghai’s GDP, other major components contributing to the annual GDP of Shanghai is construction, financial industry and sectors such as
transportation and retail.
Service industry, including
restaurants, hotels, and
entertainment for people’s
daily lives were also
severely impacted. All the
restaurants are shut down all
of a sudden: with minimal
and barely sufficient food
supplies brought by government officials for every house hold. According to local residents, the food scarcity was a pervasive concern throughout the lockdowns: people were merely able to prevent themselves from starvation with the government food supplies. With the shutdown of restaurants and local food markets, malnutrition, starvation was common among the people in Shanghai, who merely rely on weekly food deliveries, that are mostly vegetables.

Furthermore, basic living needs were unable to be fulfilled of the Shanghai residents. Hospitals were solely taking in patients of COVID. Therefore, considerable amount of elderly patients of cardiac arrest, diabetes, organ failures...would be left to death, without receiving proper treatments. Another sector of the economy, hotel, and housing industries were hit hard. Hotels were occupied by the government, changed into quarantine hotels with little subsidies,
and temporary buildings are made to provide shelter for forced quarantine patients. Despite jobs of construction workers and covid testers were fairly well paid during that period, most people remained unemployed, and most industries remained stagnant. Overall, “Shanghai’s economy shrank almost 14% in the second quarter when a two-month lockdown in the financial and trading hub shuttered factories, curbed consumer spending and disrupted operations at the world’s largest port”(Xiao). In other words, there was merely little trade deficit experienced in those ports with stagnant economic activities.

The common ground between humanities would be perfectly expressed when addressing the government interference with the pandemic. Compared to the United States, and especially New York City, the monopoly of multiple industries that government put their hands on, differs from the approach of the U.S. governments. Government officials would compete for their political powers while costing people’s lives. They’d neglect the sufferings people are going through merely to keep themselves apart from those allegedly incurable issues. The absolute dominance that the government has no matter in the selected region or the country as a whole provides them with the freedom to carry out orders with little to no disobedience. Due to the fact that violent oppressions would be utilized otherwise. As a result, food industries, housing industries, construction industries, were upon the orders of the government. Starvation, torture, death were neglected. In particular, people in Shanghai, who were mourning and peacefully protesting for a number of innocent civilians killed in a fire, who were physically unable to escape due to the locks on the doors of their apartments and buildings were violently arrested or sent back to their living places.
When it comes to the global market, Shanghai plays a main role in the negative impacts brought to the world. The ports are being clogged with a supply chain chokehold present while “industrial materials, components, chips, and related goods, impacting the automotive manufacturing, electronics, medical equipment, and other key industries” relied on the ports that were clogged. Moreover, the stock market, influenced by the depreciation of shares of multiple well known medicine company, technology and biology research companies, affected the global economy as well.

Nevertheless, New York City has undergone a relatively different process during the outbreaks of the pandemic, despite the resemblances that those two major cities share, in certain approaches to counter the outbreaks.

To begin with, “Five industries accounted for over half of the decline in the State’s overall economic activity: accommodation and food services; healthcare and social assistance; arts, entertainment, and recreation; professional, scientific, and technical services; and retail trade. The only industry sector that did not contribute to the decline in GDP in the second quarter was finance and insurance, which increased by 1.7 percent in the State”(office of new york). Out of those major industries, ones that most notably
affected New York City would be the food industry,
housing industry, and entertainment. Among those
industries 30% of businesses claimed that they needed
financial assistance and 48% of employees that were
laid off since the outbreak peak of the pandemic had
not been employed and had to withstand the soaring
prices of daily supplies. In particular, the prices of daily food supplies soared during the pandemic: chicken increased by 300%, flour increased by 115%, soy bean oil increased by 110%, eggs increased by 100%, and avocados increased by 120%. There are multiple factors that would possibly contribute to the surge of prices. First and foremost, the agricultural industry of fertilizer production caused inflation with the low supplies and the high demands of the raw materials and thus fertilizers. For instance, liquid nitrogen, red potash, anhydrous ammonia, averaged an increase in price of approximately 109%, thus making it more expensive to apply them to fruits and vegetables. As a result, the prices of those food increases. According to research, “Over the year, food prices rose 9.7 percent. Prices for food at home increased 13.0 percent since a year ago. Price increases across food at home expenditure categories ranged from 6.4 percent for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs to 20.8 percent for other food at home. Prices for food away from home increased 5.8 percent.” Another factor that led to the inflation in the NYC area, including parts of New Jersey to its proximity, are the “shortages of supplies and workers, heavy doses of federal aid, ultra-low interest rates and robust spending of the customers.” Despite there are periods of times where restaurants were open during the covid outbreak, Restaurant industries are undergoing a surge of food prices that leaves little revenues for the owners and requires customers to spend more of their money on food. In other words, despite having an advantage over Shanghai—where government determines the quality and quantity of the food citizens receive—having restaurants available and steady food supply, people are still struggling to afford the surging prices of groceries and food, to prevent themselves from starving.
Meanwhile, the housing industry was influenced by the pandemic as well. The old office towers, that cost millions of dollars to repair, were vacant and unused during and after the COVID-19 outbreak. “The implications of obsolete buildings stretch across the local economy. Empty offices have led to a cascade of shuttered restaurants and other street-level businesses that depended on daytime worker traffic. And falling building values mean less property-tax revenue for city coffers”(Murray). Such vacant buildings in a tightly packed city, would only apply pressure upon the landlords. Since they rely on the rental payments to support themselves, vacancy in the buildings means less revenue, and less flow of money and funds. However, the housing industry was not merely negatively influenced financially but helped out a considerable amount of homeless individuals seeking for shelter. With the government fundings, the nonprofit organizations located in the city, provided rooms for people that are in desperate need of shelters, regardless of their situation: homeless, impoverished, or unemployed.

Overall scattered data are presented such as “41% of small business were severely impacted, effecting the daily life standards of employees due to unemployment...One-quarter have seen operating capacity (maximum amount of activity possible under realistic operating conditions) decline by half or more from a year ago...18 percent of
respondents reported having either no cash on hand for business
operations, or only enough for two weeks or less. Another 17 percent
reported having enough for three to four weeks; and 24 percent had
cash adequate for one to two months.” In those cases, its is obvious that
economic stagnancy and difficulties are undoubtedly faced by the
merchants, landlords, workers in the City, but definitely not as severe
as to the city lockdowns and 0% activities in Shanghai. A good amount of freedom, and human rights is proved to be a relief during hard times like the pandemic. However, government not monopolizing the industries during outbreaks would give people chances of fraud, of millions of dollars. Unlike Shanghai, where all vaccine companies, virus research companies, and nonprofit organizations are somewhat ran under the supervision and control of the government, the lack of government interference in NYC led to false fundings and considerable amount of frauds. For instance: “In Stamford, Conn., a 46-year-old resident pleaded guilty after putting a portion of $4 million in coronavirus aid toward the purchase of a Porsche. And a Mercedes. And a BMW.

In Somerset, N.J., a 51-year-old woman allegedly invented employees, inflated wages and fabricated entire tax filings to collect $1 million in loans.” With the lack of supervision and lack of loan tracking, millions of dollars were lend to those allegedly useful companies working to fight against the pandemic. In other words, freedom, which would encourage economic activities, would also cause financial loses in some way.

When it comes to the global market, New York City does a way better job in recovering from the impacts of the pandemic. Since it recovered fast, economic impacts, and stock market fluctuations were not as severe as the ones of Shanghai. Several phases and zones were evaluated and separated within NYC, and most of the companies and industries were able to gradually return back to natural living style within couple months.

Overall, the common ground between the pandemic, politics, and the economy of the two major cities in the city is that a moderate approach should be taken when dealign with devastating events and widespread issues. Neither monopoly nor free market would do the job in
controlling the spread of virus and issues. Therefore, both cities have their advantageous actions as well as possible improvements.