Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Glenn Profile picture
@GlennLuk
Dec 7 • 11 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Because:

(1) it's actually ~57% today (2025)
(2) it was ~81% in 2011
(3) at the current trajectory it is headed to sub-20% over the next decade

China has found a way to grow its economy without incremental emissions, which have plateaued.

This may not be especially titilating for Robin, but I think it is exciting for policymakers in many countries, especially developing ones for whom lack of access to fossil fuels has historically been a growth constraint.
(1) Robin's chart doesn't have a source, and I don't know how he's calculating 65%.

What I do know is that China's power grid will generate ~10.6 PWh in 2025 and solar/wind/hydro/nuclear will account for ~4.6 PWh. This is up from 10.1 PWh and 3.4 PWh, respectively, in 2024.
My suspicion here, given that this is a monthly series, is that Robin is drawing from the NBS monthly data series which he may not know excludes small-scale plants.

These figures are adjusted for in the annual numbers.

(2)
Here is China's historical power development that shows ~81% fossil fuel contribution in 2011

(3)
Here is my forecast for China's generation profile development two years ago based on continued deployments of solar/wind at ~338 GW p.a. installations per year (which has already been exceeded in '25)

(4) On peak emissions plateauing

Coal-fired generation is the primary driver here.

(5) On solar (and wind) as the great equalizers in energy resource distribution

(6) Given the above, kind of a no-brainer why many in the world would be excited about this.

And they are voting with their wallets. Developing countries like Pakistan going buck wild with rooftop solar installations.

Correction: 10.1 PWh total and 3.8 PWh of solar/wind/hydro/nuclear in 2024.
Robin says quite a few dumb and ignorant things here (and in the subsequent thread) but perhaps the most pertinent one is the thought about leaning into fossil fuels to “win the AI race”.

Solar and wind are now less expensive than even the cheapest fossil fuel, coal. So any strategy to win the AI race would involve *more solar/wind, not more coal.
Also David’s in-thread reply

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Glenn

Glenn Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @GlennLuk

Glenn Profile picture
Nov 19
Nice tale, but one not supported by data measuring socioeconomic inequality.

Gini coefficient for wages peaked in the late 2000s under Hu.

For a broader version incorporating capital income, it did not peak until 2019 when multi-year efforts to rein in (i) corruption and (ii) uneven land appreciation started to take effect.Image
Gini coefficient for wages peaked in 2008.

See this 🧵 from last year + follow-on discussion below explaining how.
Gini coefficient incorporating wealth effect (my own analysis) peaked in 2019 👇.

In the following posts I will also explain why and provide further context.
Read 11 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Nov 1
There are multiple potential explanations for why trade between China and certain developing countries like Morocco are growing robustly beyond the narrowminded explanation Robin offers below (and consistently, in other threads).

Indeed, the most obvious one is that this is simply a continuation of a multi-decade trend of increasing trade between the two countries.

Often the most obvious explanation is the correct one, and I think that is the case with Morocco (and developing economies in general) as I will explain here in this 🧵.
To prove his "transshipment" hypothesis at this level, Robin needs to provide more than just unsupported assertions.

The obvious approach would be just looking at the key categories that the U.S. imports from China and compare to the large import growth areas in a country like Morocco.

OEC is a nice place to start.Image
Image
Cursory review of recent growth drivers suggests minimal correlation between the categories that are driving export growth in Morocco (cars, cranes, iron blocks) vs. declines in the U.S. (packaged medicaments, telephones and computers). Image
Image
Read 9 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Oct 31
Free cash flow is a measure after capital expenditures and incorporates fluctuations in working capital.

Since founding, BYD's modus operandi has been to re-allocate every dollar of operating cashflow + as much capital as it can raise — as non-dilutively as possible — to support the needs of a rapidly growing business.

Frankly, it is financially illiterate to describe re-investment back into a growing business as "losses". Negative cashflow is a cashflow item and — especially if related to CapEx and working capital fluctuations (which I will address below) — is conceptually different from "losses" which is an income statement term.
A better approach is to consider how much long-term capital the company has raised an compare it to the scale of operating capacity that capital has enabled.

We can look at this from BYD's latest balance sheet, which I have summarized here: Image
To date, BYD has taken in a total of ¥340B in debt and equity funding.

This number includes ~¥82B of ST/LT borrowings and ¥258B of equity (or equity-like) funding.

The equity funding includes ¥107B of "undistributed profit" which is similar in concept to retained earnings (we'll get back to this point in a bit).Image
Read 13 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Oct 30
For all the flak about "lack of a social welfare safety net", China has one of the lowest pension/retirement ages in the world.

Further, it's hard to imagine that China — a "loud and proud" socialist country — not investing significantly into its social welfare programs in the coming decades, especially as it has officially crossed the "high income" threshold.
The problem with the "China does not spend enough on social welfare" narrative-pushers is in part a data one.

A large part of its social welfare spending comes in the form of social transfers in kind (STIK) (~6-7% of GDP).

In this 2024 paper, the World Bank highlighted how "in-kind" health & education transfers are the main form of socioeconomic redistribution in China.

Any social welfare comparison that ignores STIK should be questioned.

Read 12 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Oct 24
Jonathon highlights what I thought was the most interesting point out of the recent communique.

I tend to look at things from a company/sector perspective, and for me this represented the CCP's effort to adapt the vast administrative bureaucracy to align with the operational and realities of shifting sectoral priorities.

Allow me to explain below in this 🧵
Property and infrastructure development were two of the key economic development priorities from the mid-2000s to the early 2020s.

Both property and infrastructure (especially "traditional" infrastructure like highways and bridges) were highly localized in nature. Land is central to both efforts, and land use falls under the jurisdiction of local governments.

Thus, it made sense for executive power to be decentralized to the local governments: Beijing simply cannot effectively manage land development in Guizhou.
This leads to a whole other set of issues, as there is a wide variation in local government competence. The manifestation of these issues has been widely discussed (e.g. LGFVs) but that is not the scope of this thread.

The question here is now that economic development priorities have shifted, how should the bureaucracy adapt from a centralization vs. de-centralization perspective?

And to do that again we need to understand how the differentiated nature of the new priority sectors map against this question of centralized vs. de-centralized administration.
Read 19 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Oct 23
From 4th Plenum communique:

Just want to just emphasize here that Chinese policymakers still highlight domestic *demand* not *consumption*
This is important because there is a group of people that insist on confusing/conflating demand with consumption in the China context.

These are meaningfully distinct terms: Consumption is just one component of demand, alongside gross capital formation. The distinction is driven by GDP accounting definitions.
To further clarify, this is what I mean about the distinction between demand (in the context of supply) and "consumption" in the context of GDP accounting-driven split between gross capital formation / "investment" and expenditures / "consumption"

Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(