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The year 2020 will be a very unusual year for the world economy. Widespread blockades, battered industries such as air travel, record government subsidies and huge economic rescue packages posed challenges for economic policymakers around the world last year.Germany, Europe's economic bellwether, has also had an extremely difficult year. Recently, the German Federal Statistics Office released the macro-economic data for 2020: GDP of Germany in 2020 will decline by 5% compared with that of 2019, and 10 consecutive years of economic growth in Germany will be ended by the Covid-19 epidemic.All sectors of the economy were hitAn analysis by Germany's federal statistics office showed the outbreak had hit almost all sectors of the economy, with manufacturing and services particularly hard hit. Manufacturing, which accounts for a quarter of Germany's GDP, fell 9.7 per cent last year, with processing companies down 10.4 per cent, the data showed. The service sector has been hit hard by a series of government blockade measures, with trade, transportation and catering sectors falling by 6.3% compared with 2019, significantly higher than the overall decline of the macro economy.From the data, Germany's economic decline in 2020 is basically within the forecast range of the government, research institutions and the central bank. According to experts' estimates, the German economy will continue to decline slightly in the first quarter of 2021.To help companies survive, the German government launched a series of hefty economic bail-outs last year. The federal finance ministry estimated last October that the total cost of fighting the epidemic in 2020 and 2021 would be €1.5 trillion, from lower thresholds and higher wages for short-time workers to lower value-added tax to boost consumption and huge subsidies for businesses. With the arrival of another outbreak and a second round of blockade measures that began late last year, the expenditure has continued to increase. But the German government has run fiscal surpluses for years and kept its public debt strictly low. Thanks to years of healthy fiscal health, the German government can afford to bail out companies on such a large scale.Life in the "severe winter" of the epidemicAlthough the economy is still facing huge downward pressure, manufacturing and foreign trade continue to pick up, bringing vitality to the German economy in the "severe winter" of the epidemic. Since last summer, with the easing of the epidemic and the lifting of the blockade, Germany has been back to full production. German manufacturers continue to order more as demand picks up around the world. Experts predict that Germany's manufacturing sector is expected to grow 4-6 per cent quarter-on-quarter in the fourth quarter of 2020.The auto industry, a barometer of German manufacturing, also had a good fourth quarter. Data showed that the number of new car registrations in Germany rose 9.9% in December from the same month in 2019, indicating a gradual recovery in domestic car consumption. This is not only a positive signal from the German automobile industry in the face of the epidemic, but also reflects the gradual positive development trend of German residents' personal consumption and business investment after the epidemic lasted for nearly a year.At the same time, in the new wave of the epidemic, the German government took relatively loose prevention and control measures to keep the economy running as far as possible. Except for the service industry, there was basically no "shutdown" in other industries, and the manufacturing industry, as the pillar industry of the German economy, continued to rebound against the trend. Experts say Germany's economy will continue to improve this year.Trade with China has bucked the trendThere is no doubt that Germany's economy has been hit hard over the past year. But thanks to a long period of steady growth, a healthy fiscal position and stable debt levels have given the government plenty of room to do its bit in the economic rescue, maximising German companies and ensuring stable employment. However, it should be noted that with the world economy in recession, the German economy, with foreign trade as an important pillar, will be faced with the dilemma of global demand decline and market contraction for a period of time, which will be the most severe challenge for the German economy.Remarkably, while Germany's trade with its major trading partners has shrunk, the volume of trade between China and Germany has grown steadily. In November, Germany's exports to China rose 14.3 percent year on year, bucking the trend, according to Germany's Federal Statistics Office. German enterprises have great hope to deepen their efforts in the Chinese market under the epidemic situation, and many German enterprises regard China as the hope of their economy under the epidemic situation.Entering 2021, Germany is still under pressure to prevent and control the epidemic. The German government is now considering stricter prevention and control measures, and there is little hope that the blockade will be lifted anytime soon. Most parts of the world are still under the shadow of the epidemic, and the world economy is still facing high downward pressure and uncertainties. The German government and society as a whole need to make greater efforts to strictly abide by the epidemic prevention measures and speed up the vaccination schedule, so as to control the epidemic as soon as possible, and the social and economic normal order can be restored.