2.2 CHINA

The Chinese air conditioner market is projected to decline significantly in 2020, as the pandemic gradually spread to the whole world from March, coupled with global eco-nomic instability, the China-U.S. trade conflict, and the slowdown in real estate growth in the country. In the first half of 2020 in particular, the Chinese air conditioner market experienced a severe decline. At a production level, due to the ‘stay home’ policy applied across the country, workers couldn’t return to their factories, resulting in short supply of air conditioners and also their upstream products. Sales of air conditioners fell sharply in February, mainly due to stagnant offline sales. With price wars that flared up again in March and April, the market recovered significantly by May, and the sales volume returned to the 2019 level.