China is beginning to promote its management of the coronavirus as an endorsement of the authoritarian rule of the Communist Party. On Tuesday, Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, appeared in Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, and declared through official media that “we’ve achieved important interim results” but warned against easing containment measures too quickly.

Unquestionably, China has made progress starting up again. As supply chains in the West began to run dry, airfreight rates from China jumped suddenly last week, according to TAC Index, an air cargo pricing data company in Hong Kong.

“They need to be refilled now,” said John Peyton Burnett, the company’s managing director.

But factories in China are running at 50 to 60 percent of capacity, he said, and other measures show even less activity in many places.

Beijing has unleashed a series of top-down measures to get offices and factories humming again. Bankers describe almost daily phone calls from regulators, telling them to show leniency on debt repayments, particularly from smaller businesses. Insurers have been told to extend policies even when premiums are not paid on time.

The state-owned railway has halved a wide range of freight charges. The national education ministry has created 180,000 spaces at graduate schools next autumn for students graduating this spring with little prospect of a job. Shanghai alone says it has helped residents and businesses with more than $15 billion in loans and other credit assistance, mainly from the state-controlled banking sector.

Those measures face formidable hurdles. Local officials are under pressure to reduce new infections, making them nervous about allowing people to return to work.

Cash-strapped families may also be reluctant to spend. Household and corporate debts are huge after a decade of heavy lending by the state-controlled banking sector. Workers do not know whether their employers can pay them. Businesses do not know if other businesses will default on payments for goods and services.