China’s electricity sector is in a crisis, made worse as winter approaches. Power outages, of course, have occurred in the past. But the disruption over the last few weeks has been the worst for more than 20 years, affecting millions of households and companies.
“Power cuts eight times a day, four days in a row… I’m speechless” was one of the comments from a netizen from Liaoning, a northeastern province, while another was furious that malls in his city were closing early. One convenience store was even relying on candlelight, it was reported. “It’s like living in North Korea,” he fumed.
How bad are the outages?
Provinces in the northeast have been some of the hardest hit, with rolling blackouts that have forced factories to close, turned off the traffic lights on city streets and left hundreds of thousands of households without power.
The crisis is also far from over, with Liaoning issuing its second-highest level alert on Monday, warning of a shortfall of as much as 20% of electricity demand.
The interruptions to electricity supply have been just as damaging for industrial production. The manufacturing hub of Guangdong saw shortfalls reach 10% in late September, for instance, forcing the authorities to ration power distribution to priority customers. The authorities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang – two more of the country’s industrial hubs – have also been forced into drastic action, ordering steel mills, aluminium refineries and textile producers to stop production.
What’s causing the outages?
Given ‘power shortage’ has become one of the most searched terms in social media, many web influencers have bought into various alternative explanations. A popular theory has been spreading that Beijing is worried about diverging producer prices and consumer prices, and therefore local governments have set out to curb industrial production. Some went as far as suggesting that China is trying to “export inflation” to the US.
Read More at https://www.weekinchina.com/2021/10/power-struggle-over-coal/
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