The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's economic structure: An input–output approach.

• Sectors and linkages in economic system can be viewed as nodes and edges in network. And in this paper, network analysis method is adopted into input-output tables to evaluate the structural change of Chinese economy. • The modelling results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates the undergoing structural transformation of Chinese economy. • Traditional strong sectors like petroleum and finance are severely attacked by pandemic and lag behind in structural status. • Sectors of digital service industries and scientific research expand their activities rapidly under social distancing policies. • Development strategies for China in the post-pandemic era regarding old and new growth engines are proposed. Recognizing the impact of COVID-19 on economic structure is an urgently required task for the post-pandemic era. However, studies have been hampered in undertaking this task by a lack of current data and the use of inappropriate methods. This paper fills the gap in the literature by applying a network analysis method using the newly released input–output tables of China and evaluating the structural impacts on the economy, including the changes in the sectoral closeness, betweenness, risk condition, and network backbone. The modelling results demonstrate that the pandemic has accelerated the structural transformation process of the Chinese economy: the traditional growth engines, such as the petroleum and finance industries, have lagged, whereas new growth engine sectors, including the digital services and scientific research industries, have expanded rapidly. Accordingly, we propose that the government formulate policies to stabilize old growth engine industries and foster new drivers to promote a sustainable economic recovery in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]