Key question asked over financial firepower

Shan Saeed, chief economist at IQI Global, an investment company in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, believes that Chinese consumers could play a major role this time.

He said the power of these consumers can be gauged by their spending on overseas trips-$288 billion in 2018, double the $144 billion spent by US citizens.

"China's consumers still have further room to leverage their savings, having one of the highest ratios of savings to disposable income among the leading countries in the global economy," he said.

"Their savings amount to $2.5 trillion and most global banks are chasing those funds."

However, Zhu, from CEIBS, rejects any argument that China drove world growth after the global financial crisis, and suggests that the world should not be looking for a helping hand from the country this time.

"If China's growth is 10 percent, then mathematically it obviously contributes to global growth, but it is wrong to draw the conclusion that if other countries are growing at 5 percent, China is somehow contributing to that. There is not such a big correlation. Nobody is lifting anybody," he said.

Whatever impact China may have on global recovery, most economists fear the pandemic will trigger a major recession.