Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all sectors of the economy and society. To understand the impact of the pandemic on rms in China and suggest responding public policies, we investigated rms in Guangdong Province (a Province with the highest Gross Domestic Product in China). Methods: The survey sample included 524 rms in 15 cities in Guangdong Province. We chose these rms from list published by the government, considering the industrial characteristics of Guangdong province and rm size. The questionnaire comprised of four categories and included 17 questions was developed based on previous studies carried out by OECD. The executives of rms were contacted by phone or WeChat, and were invited to answer self-administered questionnaires through an on-line survey platform. The data was analyzed by SPSS. Results: The following ndings are worth to be noticed: (1) 48.7% of rms maintained stability, and 35.1% of the rms experienced a halt in operation or faced closure; (2) Nearly 70%-90% of the rms are or are willing to transform to online marketing, remote o ce work, and digital operations. (3) 46% of rms believe that there will be a certain loss this year, and 83.5% expected a decreasing trend of the city's GDP growth. Conclusions: rms in Guangdong Province have faced great challenges in the epidemic. The rms' production and operation activities are limited, and risks are faced. It is necessary to effectively implement supporting policies to profoundly lower production costs for rms, and help rms survive the di cult period, and even gradually transit to normal business operation status. Background The current COVID-19 is a rapidly evolving global challenge and like any pandemic, it weakens health systems, costs lives, and also poses great risks to the global economy and security [1, 2, 3, 4]. According to the data from WHO (World Health Organization) and Johns Hopkins University, till the middle of June 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic has con rmed more than 7.5 million cases, causing nearly 420 thousand deaths in around 215 countries (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html). COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency. It's a sudden outbreak that causes or is likely to cause serious public health damages including major infectious diseases, mass unexplained diseases, major food and occupational poisonings or other serious public health issues [5]. Global economic growth is expected to decrease continually on account of the epidemic impact throughout the world [6, 7]. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s forecast, the global GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth rate will drop to 2.4% in 2020 [3]. The current continuous worldwide spread of COVID-19 has greatly increased the risk of uncertainty and global recession [8, 9][1]. Supply chain disruption, shrinking demand for consumption and investment, signi cant weakening of economic activities, and damaged market con dence have put more severe tests on the resilience of relevant economies, the level of...

The digital divide first emerged as an important social and human rights issue in the 1990s. With the rapid development of wireless network technology (e.g., Wi-Fi and cellular networks) and mobile terminal devices (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and tablets), this issue has shifted to concern mobile Internet access. The three main Chinese telecom operators (China Mobile Communications Corporation, China Unicom Communications Corporation, and China Telecom Communications Corporation) have recently promoted unlimited data plans (UDPs) to reduce information usage costs and increase mobile data use. However, assessments of the impact of these policy changes on the mobile digital divide are limited. This study therefore offers insights into how a reduction in information costs can eliminate this divide. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach based on a monthly panel of system-generated mobile app data for subscribers, we find that the UDPs have various effects on promoting the use of mobile Internet and on the digital divide, depending on whether subscribers are of high or low socioeconomic status (i.e., urban versus rural and rich versus poor). We show that the relative differences are alleviated, but the absolute difference further increases after the implementation of a UDP subscription. In addition, a UDP subscription has heterogeneous effects on lifestyles. For the poor or those in rural areas, only promoting UDP does not effectively narrow the mobile digital divide because of insufficient cognition about and persistent weaknesses in the use of information technology.

Sudden, large-scale, and diffuse human migration can amplify localized outbreaks into pandemics. Rapid and accurate tracking of human population mobility using reliable mobile phone data could therefore be helpful for policy responses. Here, we examine mobile phone geolocation data for all 18,514,920 counts of individuals egressing or transiting through the prefecture of Wuhan, China, between January 1 and 24, 2020. First, we document the efficacy of quarantine measures in ceasing population movement.Second, we show that the distribution of population outflow from Wuhan accurately predicts the relative frequency of, and geographical distribution of, COVID-19 infections through February 12, 2020, across all of China, up to two weeks in advance. Third, we present a risk model that not only predicts confirmed cases, but also identifies high- transmission-risk locales at an early stage. Fourth, we develop a mobility-data-driven modeling framework to statistically derive the growth pattern of COVID-19 and its spread; this model can yield a benchmark trend and an index for assessing COVID-19 risk for different geographic locations (290 prefectures). Prefectures above the index’s 90% confidence interval are likely experiencing more local transmissions than imported cases; prefectures below the 90% confidence interval are controlling the spread of the virus more effectively (or, alternatively, are at greater risk of information inaccuracy). This approach can be used by policy makers in developing nations, which typically have mobile phone infrastructure but limited healthcare capabilities, to make rapid and accurate risk assessments ahead of second-wave outbreaks in order to overcome resource and logistics limitations.

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