There are claims china's factory output is returning to normal. Elon Musk appears to have confirmed this to a degree. Musk claims tesla has 7,000 employees living in china with not a single one of them having issues with corona virus. He also claims factories in china, which tesla relies on to produce parts, are supplying at their normal output.
We may still have a shot at a quick V shaped recovery.
You're ignoring the second half of that graph, and the point of the article. Producers can scale back up all they want but it doesn't mean consumer demand will return to previous levels, and that's the true driver of any recovery.
The stagnant Chinese consumer recovery is probably a glimpse of things to come in the west. High unemployment and economic fear is reinforcing low consumer demand, which will likely promote price deflation and cause producers to scale back down, which in turn will reinforce high unemployment......
Not that I take this too seriously, but I've seen some quiet speculation from people I respect about Tesla cooking their books. "The next Enron" they say. The SEC's open investigation into the company's finances, the unexpected need to issue $2 billion in stock for cash recently, and Musk's raging urgency to restart production, do smell slightly fishy all taken together.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tesla-discloses-sec-regular-financing-arrangements/story?id=68986518China's liquidity situation is IMO completely different from america's.
China constructs ghost cities with zero residents capable of housing more than 1 billion people to artificially inflate its GDP. Many of china's major banks have defaulted within the past 2 years. They have major issues with capital flight and their average appearing economic projections not panning out. Despite china adopting solid policy such as petro yuan for gold exchange, they still struggle with growth far more than one might expect for having a highly deregulated and low tax business environment.
The united states by contrast still has a central bank with liquidity which could be utilized to successfully stimulate markets. The polar opposite of china's situation.
In theory, china utilizes a "capitalist system". In reality, their approach is far more socialist with the state owning and operating everything. This heavily centralized approach could be reflected in chinese billionaire Jack Ma being forced to step down from Alibaba so that the communist party could take over. The state having to own and operate everything could be one underlying and neglected reason behind relatively china's low growth, innovation and liquidity.
The news media was cool with Elon Musk up until it was discovered that Elon Musk was a major donor to the republican party. Ever since then it seems as if everyone has been encouraged to publish a million different attack hit pieces on Space X and Tesla. For the crime of donating funds to republicans. (I think Donald Trump heard about hydroxychloroquine directly from Elon as well.)