Reasons behind China's power shortage

Western press is so eager to pin down China as a failed state that the slightest sign is interprested as the imminent collapse of China. The result is routine fake news. Nobody is doing journalism anymore.

There're several reasons https://twitter.com/VOAChinese/status/1343890644431847425

2/ behind China's power shortage. None of them has anything to do with Aussie coal. Latter is destined primarily for the manufacture of iron and not for producing electricity. Up till August, China had already imported 90% of its usual volume of purchase of coal from Australia.

3/ This is in line with China's plan to cut back on its coal consumption for environmental concern.

The actual reasons are several. One and/or several may apply depending on the local particularity.

A/ This winter the weather of Southern China is particularly cold (winter is

4/ coming! ) which spiked up the consumption of electricity.

B/ Due to Covid19 out of control in many countries, China the world's factory not only has to accomplish its usual share of industrial output but must work on behalf of India and other countries where factories

5/ are closed due to Covid19. China's exports in November increased 20%. China's trade surplus to US grew 20% for the first 8 months. For the month of December, with the holiday season, China's industrial output continues to expand putting heavy pressure on electricity supply.

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C/ With the huge increase of demand in electricity, the need for coal goes up but
production, transportation and distribution haven't been able to adjust to meet the spiked up needs within a short notice.

D/ China's 5G deployment is extremely voracious of electricity.

7/ A complete pan-China 5G network would consume 9 times more electricity than a 4G network. That's why China's new information infrastructure program envisages the building of super high pressure cable transportation of electricity to reduce the attrition to the minimum.

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E/ Government has imposed draconian objectives of carbon dioxide release. Quota has been distributed to each province. Before, the criteria of performance evaluation of CPC local officials is primarily GDP. Now carbon release is an important criteria. To achieve the

9/ carbon objective for 2020, power limitation started in many provinces as early as August. The continued power cut in some places is within the scope of purposeful reduction of coal consumption to achieve the carbon release goal.

Given the current dire situation of the

10/ pandemic, looks like China will continue to remain the world's super factory in the next few years. The pandemic is likely to last 4-5 years and the after effects will stretch far beyond. In the mean time, as a realistic conjecture, it's not India which will replace China as

11/ the world's factory. It will be the other way around. China will take over the Indian factory orders.

China's electricity production must follow the expansion of its industrial output. China will need to further develop its new clean energy sector and expand the number of

12/ its nuclear power plants which contribute only 5% to its overall electricity supply currently.

So again, the power shortage doesn't point to China being a failed state. Rather the reasons behind the phenomenon are either neutral or positive.