Blood on the streets or freeze to death ? Maybe we should ask...

Blood on the streets or freeze to death ? Maybe we should ask shead / thomas he will have the answer,

“Unprecedented” power outages in China have triggered factory shutdowns and hampered production for companies supplying Apple and Tesla.

Surging prices for coal and gas — as well as strict orders from Beijing to cut emissions — are being blamed for the power supply shock.

Aluminium smelters, textiles producers and soybean processing plants have been ordered to slow activity or shut altogether, Bloomberg reports.

Some traffic lights in Shenyang, the capital of the Liaoning province, suddenly stopped working. Picture: Weibo

Many of China’s regions have missed energy consumption targets set by Beijing, including Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong.

And China’s thermal coal inventory – which is used to generate electricity – is at a record low.

China’s total coal inventory is at 11.31 million tonnes, according to South China Morning Post. That’s only enough to meet demand for only about two weeks.

The power outages are threatening to further disrupt strained global supply chains for semiconductors and other vital goods, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Goldman Sachs estimated that as much as 44 per cent of China’s industrial activity had been impacted. It lowered its annual economic growth forecast for China, forecasting a 1-percentage-point decline in annualised GDP growth in the third quarter, and a 2-percentage-point drop from October to December.

A man stands at a doorway below power lines in Beijing on September 28, 2021. Picture: AFP

Analysts at Nomura said on Monday a number of factories had been forced to cease operations due to either government mandates to meet carbon targets or surging prices and coal shortages.

It cut its annual GDP growth forecast to 7.7 per cent.

The power crunch comes amid reports Beijing has asked state-backed firms to pick up assets from the heavily-indebted Evergrande.

Beijing-backed state media Global Times called the power cuts “unexpected” and “unprecedented”.

The outages have sparked public anger, shut down traffic lights and cut phone reception in some areas.

“Power cuts eight times a day, four days in a row … I’m speechless,” a person from Liaoning wrote on Chinese microblogging site Weibo.

Another said shopping centres were closing early and a convenience store was using candlelight, Al Jazeera reported.

“It’s like living in North Korea,” they wrote.