Widespread Power Blackouts in China: Coal Shortage? Or the Need to Invade Taiwan?
Hello, everyone, welcome to “Inconvenient Truths”. I am your host Jennifer Zeng.
Recently there is another event in China that has had a very big impact on many aspects, and that is the large scale power shortage. Over 20 provinces out of 31 have experienced blackouts, and people joked about going back to the stone age in one night. So why would China, as the second largest economy in the world, suddenly suffer from this low-level problem that people think only exists in North Korea? Today I’d like to talk about some “conventional” explanations, as well as an “unconventional” view, which is, the blackouts happened because the CCP is preparing for war. I will discuss this view at the end, so please do stick around.
Tragedies Caused by Power Blackouts
First, let’s talk a little bit about some facts on how bad the situation is.
Notice from the water authority in Xinbei City in Jilin province
So this is a notice from the water authority in Xinbei City in Jilin province, saying that “According to the instruction of Northeast Electricity Authority and Jilin Energy Bureau about the orderly use of electricity, we will have irregular, unscheduled, unannounced power outages and power restrictions, which will last until March 2022, and power and water outages will become the new norm. ”
And they explained that the reason for cutting the water supply is because there is not enough power for the water station to work properly.
Right now this massive power shortage has not only affected factories’ production, but also affected people’s normal life, and even safety.
For example, on Sep 24, Liaoning Penghui Casting Factory had a gas leak due to equipment shutdown caused by power restriction. As a result, 23 people had to be sent to the hospital for treatment as they were exposed to the poisonous gas.
Now let’s see this.
A family of three in Northeast China almost died because of the power outage. This young man shared such a story on social media, saying that because of the cold weather, his family needed to burn coal to heat their home at night, and they used a fan to exhaust the waste gas out of the house.
However, due to a power outage, the fan stopped, resulting in carbon monoxide poisoning in the whole family.
Fortunately, because this young man’s mother had a heart attack in the middle of the night, and he woke up on time to discover the danger, and in a semi-conscious state, he called the ambulance, and saved the whole family.
When he posted this story on Sep 26, his parents were still in the hospital, and he himself also had to receive oxygen therapy every day.
He said he couldn’t help crying when he wrote about this experience, thinking about what a narrow escape they had. The whole family nearly died.
Some “Conventional” Theories
So, why, after experiencing decades of high speed growth-some people also call it an economical miracle-would China suddenly experience such a “low-level” problem and people need to burn candles in the night, and feel like they have gone back to the stone age?
These are the main reasons people listed:
Power plants are not generating electricity as they make no money. In China, there is a price cap on electricity, but no cap on coal price. So when the coal price rises, the power plants make no money, or may even lose money if they generate electricity.
Insufficient coal supply partly due to the CCP’s boycott of Australian coal
The CCP wants to cut carbon emissions to make the Biden administration happy
The CCP wants to force energy-intensive industries out of business and develop digital totalitarianism because big data centers need a lot of electricity to operate
Xi Jinping’s political enemies want to create chaos for Xi Jinping to handle
There is another one that I don’t put on the card, as that one is too out of the imagination. Some so-called little pinks-by the way, “little pink” is a term used to describe brainwashed young Chinese nationalists and socialists on the internet-so some little pinks claim that the CCP is playing a big game with the US and the West. By limiting power consumption, China will have to produce less products, and raise the prices of exported commodities. As a result, the US and the West will have to suffer inflation when they buy from China. So China will win in the end.
You think this is too ridiculous? But this “big game” theory had been so popular that even the CCP’s official media had to come out to say, no, there is no such a big game, it’s just that the coal price is too high.
Well, which one do you think is most likely?
Talking about the CCP’s boycott of Australian coal, let’s watch a short video that I translated.
Actually, it was reported that as many as 25 countries have been importing Australian coal and then selling it to China. Interesting, right?
Many years ago, when I was in Australia, I had always tried to tell Australians that don’t be afraid of losing the CCP’s business, as the CCP needed Australia’s good quality resources more than Australia needed the CCP’s business. To maintain a high GDP growth rate, the CCP had to buy Australia’s natural gas, coal, iron ore, etc.
On the other hand, if the CCP didn’t buy Australia’s products and natural resources, Australia would have no problem selling them to other countries.
Well, that was more than 10 years ago when I said these. Unfortunately, it seemed that nobody understood, or believed what I said, and people were so frightened about losing the Chinese markets that the CCP had always used trade as a weapon to bully.
The Fundamental Reason for China’s Massive Power Outage
Price change in this commodity world is a very normal thing, every country and every business has to deal with it every day. Why are China's power plants and coal supplies so vulnerable? This is the key problem we must talk about.
According to my contributor Guppy Dong’s research, up to now, 16% of China’s electricity comes from nuclear power and hydropower, 8% comes from the so-called “new energy”, including solar, wind, geothermal energy, etc, and 76% comes from coal. So the reliance on coal resources does exist in China.
As a matter of fact, China does not lack coal. Although it imports a lot of coal, it also exports it. For example, China exported 470,000 tons of coal in August 2021, up 168 percent year-on-year and 176 percent from last month. In terms of the value of the export, China earned 216% more than last year from exporting coal.
But right now China's coal price is twice the level of the international market. Why would it become so high? Because the government is controlling the prices, who can get the coal, and who can use how much of it.
There is a so-called “double priced system” in China. While state-owned enterprises and power plants can get low priced coal from the guaranteed supply system, other factories can only get the much higher priced coal from the so-called “free market”.
And how much is the price difference? The “basic price” for state-owned enterprises and power plants was only 430 yuan per ton, and has just risen to 700 yuan recently, while the “market price” for other factories is as high as 1580 yuan per ton.
So what will happen under this kind of circumstance? The coal companies found they can make more money by selling their product in the “free market” instead of selling it to the power plants; in the meantime, the state-owned power plants also found they if they bought coal at the lower, basic price, and then sold it in the “free market” at a much higher price, they could make more money than generating electricity. So why would they bother to generate power?
So what accompanies this double priced system is widely existing corruption, as it is very easy for officials who have the power to make money using the price differences between the two systems.
Recently, CCP’s Vice Premier Han Zheng issued an order to coal suppliers and power plants, and asked them to guarantee the use of coal for electricity in winter "at all costs”.
Whenever I hear "at all costs”, I feel terrified, as you don’t know what kind of new bottom line will be broken by the CCP to achieve its goals. This is actually the fundamental source of the CCP’s evilness. All means are justified if the goals are good in the CCP’s eyes.
And the CCP always adopts the most barbaric means to deal with any problem that arises. This is also the manifestation of its power and arrogance.
For example, when the CCP Virus hit, the CCP locked people at home, cutting off roads, nailing people’s doors, threatening to break people’s legs and teeth if they dare to go out. It also forced people to do dozens of virus tests. No matter what level of civilization humans have come to, the CCP will always remain at the level of barbaric mountain bandits.
A regime that always needs to control everything "at all costs" will always be an evil one.
So, the blackout in China, like all other evil in China, is a typical example of the CCP’s evil system!
Now, let’s move to the last theory:
Preparing for Invading Taiwan?
Is the CCP doing all these to prepare for a war?
Professor Frank Tian Xie from University of South Carolina Aiken thinks it is. His main arguments are:
China doesn’t have a power shortage.
According to China's National Bureau of Statistics’ own figures,
“738.3 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity was generated in August, up 0.2 percent year-on-year." "From January to August, 5,389.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity were generated, up 11.3 percent year-on-year and 11.6 percent over the same period in 2019, a two-year average of 5.7 percent."
So, the slowing down of the growth rate only happened in thermal, nuclear, wind and solar power sectors, but the total amount of power generation is still increasing!
2. The restrictions of power use only occur in coastal, eastern and northeastern regions. These cities are all the so-called “first tier” cities, which means they are relatively more politically important and economically developed cities. But in the less developed second and third tier cities, we haven’t heard about power usage restrictions.
So why would the CCP sacrifice first-tier cities that can produce more GDP and ensure the power usage of less developed second and third tier cities?
Frank Xie thinks it is because all the CCP’s military factories are in third tier cities, or hidden in remote mountain areas. And the CCP is ensuring power use for those big military factories that produce war related materials.
3. Also, western media have reported that satellite images reveal that China is building a second nuclear missile silo field, and constructing 120 missile silos in Gansu province.
Why is the CCP doing this? Of course preparing for war.
So the above are Professor Xie’s arguments.
I myself found another very interesting piece of news, that is, the CCP’s military, the People's Liberation Army, PLA, has purchased a large number of war merit badges recently.
So these are the samples of the medals the PLA has ordered.
This is a table about how many were ordered for 2021. You can see the second column from the left is the types of medals, the second column from the right is the quantities of the medals.
This table is a comparison of the quantities of the medals ordered for 2021 and 2022, and the increase of the quantities.
So you can see from the top to bottom are the quantities for different levels of medals. For the fourth class war merit medal, which is at the bottom, the quantity for 2021 is 200, but for 2022, the quantity is 24,000, so that is 120 times the quantity of 2021.
So if you add all the numbers for 2022 together, that is 36,310 medals, which means the PLA is planning to give out this many war merit medals in 2022.
So what does this mean?
One Chinese netizen said, this means the CCP is planning to launch a war against Taiwan, and if 800,000 soldiers are going to be involved in the war, on average, one soldier out of every 22 soldiers will be given a medal.
So, the fact that the PLA had ordered so many war merit medals can also be an indication that the CCP is preparing for a war.
Another fact that everyone might have noticed is that the CCP flew record fighter planes to harass Taiwan after its “National Day” on Oct 1, and Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen has given a very stern response to this by saying that “Taiwan stands united in our commitment to the values of democracy & freedom. And we will do whatever it takes to defend our values & our way of life.”
With this, more and more people feel that the possibility of a war between the CCP and Taiwan is increasing.
Also, since the so-called “reform and opening up to the outside world” policy made by CCP leader Deng Xiaoping, economic growth has been almost the only excuse for the CCP to stay in power.
But recently, not only has the growth slowed down, but many crises also emerged, such as the collapsing of China’s largest real estate property developer Evergrande, as well as the entire real estate industry. As a result, the financial security of banks and local governments is in great danger too.
So, under this kind of circumstance, Xi Jinping is in desperate need to create a new excuse for himself and for the CCP to stay in power. Unifying Taiwan could be his best option. Even if he successfully retains his power in next year’s 20th National Congress of the CCP, he will still need a big achievement to justify his lifelong power.
So when will the war break out? I think it depends on how desperate Xi Jinping is. So we do need to open our eyes and watch closely.
OK, that’s all for today. Thank you so much for watching. Please do subscribe to my channel, and share my videos as widely as you can. Truth is so important at such a time in such a crazy world.
Thank you. See you soon!
10/07/2021*
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