Cargo ships pass through the Wuhan Junshan Yangtze River Bridge, Central China's Hubei Province, on Saturday. Wuhan, which was hard hit by COVID-19, started lifting outbound travel restrictions on Wednesday after almost 11 weeks of lockdown. China's Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday about 76 percent of domestic key foreign trade companies had resumed work using over 70 percent of capacity. Photo: IC

A total of 460,000 businesses in China succumbed to the novel coronavirus assault in the first quarter of 2020, among which 57 percent had been in operation for less than three years, according to a latest report released by big data service Tianyancha.

The majority of the deceased businesses were small-sized enterprises or micro businesses. 

Real estate and foreign trade industries were heavily affected during the coronavirus epidemic. 41,000 new real estate companies were registered in 2020, a decrease of 27.66 percent year-on-year. In Central China's Hubei Province only 519 new real estate companies were registered. 

Also, 142,000 foreign trade companies were founded since the start of 2020, a decrease of 16.26 percent. A total of 26,000 foreign trade enterprises have shut down.

However, mobile gaming and online education industries have picked up against the trend.

6,753 new online education companies were registered since the beginning of 2020, with Beijing leading the country with 1,904. And, 5,025 new game companies were founded in the first quarter, mainly across the Guangdong, Fujian and Shandong provinces.

In the first three months, more than 3.22 million new companies were registered, down 28.9 percent year-on-year and mostly in the Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces, of which more than 46.12 percent were in the wholesale and retail industries.

As of March 28, the average work resumption rate in large-scale industrial companies was 98.6 percent, and the average employee return rate hit 89.9 percent, according to data from the State Council.