China's economy contracted for the first time in nearly three decades last quarter as drastic measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic brought activity to a standstill, official data showed Friday. Gross domestic product shrank 6.8 percent in the January-March quarter from the same period a year earlier, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics. It was the first negative growth reported by the world's second-largest economy since it began logging quarterly data in the early 1990s. lld-bys/dma/gle