I've just wrapped a 10 days on the North Yunnan loop route, hitting Dali, Lijiang, Diqing/Shangri-la, and Nujiang. Some of the most beautiful places I've seen in China.

Lots of essay content from the trip coming soon, but here's a summary of the route first, 1 tweet per city.🧵 ...oh, and I'm writing this partly as a travel report/guide for others who might like to do a similar tour in the future, and partly as a foundation for the essay content that's coming next.

So I'll try to provide both travel details and some background info for each spot...

I've already seen many helpful summaries of Xi's announcements at the UN Climate Summit regarding China's new emissions goals, so I won't repeat them here. Go read them!

I will focus my analysis on the power item specifically; namely: 3600 GW of wind and solar by 2035. 🧵 This was described as a 6x escalation over the 2020 numbers. This is basically correct.

China had roughly 535 GW of wind and solar at the end of 2020 so 6x would be 3210. So actually, 3600 GW is 6.7x the 2020 numbers.

China today has roughly 1600 GW of wind and solar.

A fun thing about Chinese rivers I learned from my research last week:

This map shows the ancient courses of the Yellow River (in blue) and the now-disappeared Ji River (in red). The upper blue line the Yellow route during the Western Han. The lower is its modern path. 🧵 Actually, the Western Han route of the Yellow is one of the MANY known routes it has taken over the last 2000 years, as you can see from this image.

From 1128-1855, the Yellow spent 700+ years flowing in an entirely different direction - southeast. During that period, it merged with the Huai River near modern-day Huai'an in Jiangsu, and then traveled northeast again to dump into the ocean. The silt deposits around its estuary pushed the coastline out dozens of kilometers over those 700 years.

Involution 内卷 or 卷 doesn't have to be a hard word, but I keep seeing it misused in China commentary, e.g. this article, which I also have mixed feedback on.

Simply: Involution is the state of intense competition AND the symptoms of that competition.🧵
csis.org/blogs/trustee-… Quick history lesson:

内卷 (nei juan) is the original word for involution used today to describe a state of intense and fruitless competition. It literally translates as "inward coiling" and was borrowed from the anthropology field.

It began to see its new use in China around 2019-2020, initially as a noun. Students and young people feeling exhausted by intense competition in school, for jobs, and society in general described those environments as having 内卷.

China's National Computing+Energy Strategy:

This is the layout for China's national computing strategy. Under the "East Data, West-Computer" 东数西算 slogan, high-priority tasks are handled by local clusters, while lower-priority tasks are outsourced to the energy-rich west.🧵 According to China's renewable consumption quota policy, all new data centers in these hub regions must buy at least 80% of their power from renewable sources.

This should be no problem for the blue hubs, located in renewables-rich regions. Might be trickier for red hubs.

Oh no...🤦‍♂️

This op-ed on Chinese cleantech overcapacity and competition was in The Wire China a few days ago. Unfortunately it contains many huge errors about Chinese cleantech sectors I can't ignore.

Paywalled. I'll provide screenshots and comment. 🧵
thewirechina.com/2025/08/31/bei… [Oh, and this will be another long thread. It probably should have been a long-form essay instead, but I already wrote more than half of it before I realized how long it had gotten. Sorry in advance.]

This piece has problems immediately in the second paragraph, starting with:

"China's domestic demand for green tech has also peaked given the massive frontloading of installed capacity during the last few years, fueled by subsidies."

This has two big errors:

1. Chinese demand for green tech has not peaked, as evidenced by the steadily rising annual installed capacity figures for wind and solar. In fact, the installed capacity isn't just rising each year, but even the volume of new installs in a single year has grown every year from 2020-2024. Last year saw 277 GW of solar PV and 80 GW of wind.

Even now in 2025, with the offtake policy reforms starting from 1 June, it looks like solar is going to at least match the capacity growth from last year, while wind is actually going to EXCEED the capacity figures from last year. Domestic demand is strong. As for next year, we'll see what the market reforms bring.

2. Chinese newbuild solar and wind farms have not been subsidised for several years already now (since 2021). Over the past few years (until 1 June 2025) they were built on a feed-in-tariff (FiT) basis, which means they earn a fixed on-grid price from the gridco, independent of what's happening in power markets.

If market prices are high, the FiT may be less than the market rate. If market prices are low, the FiT may be more than the market rate. In a power market context, this is very different from a subsidy (although it could be construed as/look like a subsidy if market prices end up lower than the FiT rate for long periods).

This is funny and sad. Secretary Wright's post is so silly and unsophisticated, and yet Twitter's Community Noters managed to find a way to miss the argument entirely and "rebut" with an even more unsophisticated response. It's just all so tiresome. 😞

But let's break it down🧵

https://twitter.com/SecretaryWright/status/1962861731174097195

First, this this broader idea about not conflating energy with electricity is fine, even good and necessary. 💯

Electricity is what's called "secondary energy", a specific kind of energy that has been transformed from "primary energy" sources like coal, oil, sunlight, etc.

Okay. Here we have a boldly stated series of ideas about Chinese solar. They are unsupported and wrong.

But it's a good opportunity to talk through some issues re: how we integrate solar, and some of the important and hotly-debated considerations. So I'll try to make this educational, not merely critical.

Let's dig in...

1.
"local solar prodution numbers are based on models, not measurements"

No. Models are typically forward-looking, used for forecasting, not describing the past. No matter whether the solar generator is offtaking to a power user, a power retailer, or the gridco itself, there's a business transaction going on there. The generator is being compensated based on how much electricity they generate, so you need measurement (i.e. metering). Without metering each kWh of power, how could you run a power business? 🤨

In China, the grid companies (e.g. State Grid and Southern Grid) and their subsidiaries have a monopoly over installation, maintenance, and reading of metering infrastructure. They report monthly, quarterly, and annual data to the NEA/NBS (or to the China Electricity Council, which compiles data on behalf of the NEA and NBS). That's the source of the generation stats. You could find always find a way to criticize the measuring and reporting methodology I suppose, but it's definitely a measurement approach, not a modeling approach. 2.
"Industrial solar production numbers aren’t backed by enough batteries to match consumption curves..."

The claim I think being made here is China's daily power consumption demand curves are not matched to the generation profile of solar, thus solar production would need to be time-shifted to a different time of the day with batteries for those production numbers to be realistic. But since China doesn't have "enough batteries" to do this, then the solar production data must be fraudulent.

This is speculative nonsense. I know OP pulled this argument out of thin air, because it's a fairly complex argument that would necessitate validation via datasets, models, or market access he doesn't have. Are China's 95 GW/222GWh of batteries installed nationwide "enough"? How would anyone besides a Chinese power trader, regulator, or market dispatch modeler know? You need to have a robust, data-backed argument here, because you're seeking to overturn/debunk reported data from State Grid.

But even without a quant-based argument, it's just a weird argument for solar.

Solar produces power during the day, aligning with human activity, as we are generally diurnal creatures. So solar already produces when humans tend to consume power. At low penetration levels for solar (say, <10%) you hardly even need batteries to time-shift solar to another part of the day because solar's production can be fully absorbed by the typical daytime rise in power usage.

At higher penetration rates for solar, you actually will get to the point where production can't be absorbed by the daytime consumption spike and thus storage becomes not just "nice-to-have" but necessary to avoid wastage - unless you have very flexible generators that can easily ramp up and down (more on this later). This issue can arrive earlier for wind than for solar, because wind tends to produce more when humans are asleep and power loads are lower, but we're talking about solar here.

There are a few provinces where daytime overproduction of solar is a real problem, like Shandong...and they are indeed installing storage rapidly, as you would expect from what I have just described. But Shandong is a frontrunner. Nationwide, solar provided just 8% of China's generation mix last year, so its ability to be disuptive is muted, paradoxically both massive, but also mostly absorbed with only a few ripples by the overall vastness of the Chinese power sector.

Translation of key portions of the public statement from China's National Energy Administration (NEA) July press conference re: power supply and demand during the 2025 summer peak.

I'll add comments inline [like this] and after.
Translation next post. 🧵
nea.gov.cn/20250731/d34b8… These comments were from Deputy Director Liu Mingyang of the NEA's Electric Power Department:

"Friends from the media, good morning. Next, I will introduce the power supply situation during this summer's peak demand period.

First, power loads during the summer peak repeatedly set new record highs. In July, peak temperatures were seen, with most provinces experiencing average temperatures 1-2 degrees C higher than the same period in the past. Together with the end of the rainy season in the south, the weather has been hot and humid.

GDP grew by 5.3% YoY in the first half of the year, rapidly driving power loads higher, increasing by over 200 GW versus the end of June. The national peak power load successively saw new records on July 4th, 7th, 16th, and 17th, exceeding 1500 GW and finally reaching a peak of 1508 GW, which is 57 GW higher than the peak load record last year. To date, 19 provinces have seen record-high peak loads, including Jiangsu, Shandong, and Guangdong, breaking records 46 times."

⚡️China Power Consumption Update July 2025 ⚡️

Wow.

Chinese power consumption soared to a staggering all-time high of 1,023 TWh (or over 1 petawatt hour) in July 2025.

This blows the previous one-month consumption record out of the water. 🧵 Industrial power consumption was up 4.7% YoY, rising to almost 600 TWh in the monthly of July.

Industrial sector performance continues to strengthen after weaker growth in previous months due to the tariff threat, but still a touch sluggish. Movement in the right direction tho.

Ok, I was asked by 5+ people to weigh in, so here we go.

Quick answer: This is wrong. China currently has much more dispatchable capacity (MW) than peak load AND much more capability to generate power (MWh) than is consumed by customers, both by large margins.

Longer Answer:🧵

https://twitter.com/michaeljmcnair/status/1959134225447182439

Installed Capacity vs. Peak Load:

At the end of 1H 2025, China had roughly 2071 GW of dispatchable capacity (thermal, hydro, nuclear, batteries).

Meanwhile, national peak load on 17 July 2025 hit a new high of 1508 GW.

Thus, reserve capacity margin during the recent annual demand peak was ~37%. That's dispatchable capacity...not counting intermittent generators. Of course, in reality, the demand peak arrived at a period when solar generators WERE available (afternoon on a sunny, hot, midsummer day). China now has over 1000 GW of solar (and 650 GW of wind). So some of them were performing at this time, but it's a good conservative practice to not include them in a reserve margin estimation.

Most of the time, load is WELL below 1508 GW and effective reserve margins are higher. In mild evenings of shoulder seasons with no particular heating or cooling demand, reserve margins are at their highest, probably over 100%(?) But in the context of considering a data center that needs to operate 24/7/365, we might as well look at the annual peak as our limiter.

Chongqing is once again all over my timeline, for the thousandth time, once again for a silly reason.

But why does Chongqing seem to break statistical brains?

Let's talk about it, so it becomes clearer why this place is confusing and hopefully make it easier next time.🧵 So...Chongqing is huge. It's a direct-governed municipality covering 82,000 sqkm /31,000 sqm, roughly the size of Austria or Czechia or Panama.

It has a total administrative population of 31.9 million people spread across the region, including urban, suburban, and rural areas..

"There are currently almost 20,000 men under the ground, right at this moment, all digging coal?"

Mr. Qi smiled and nodded. "Yes that's right".

In Off the Beaten Track this week, I visited a coal mine in China's famous Ordos City in Inner Mongolia. Here's what I found.🧵 The way most people have heard about Ordos, a small city in central Inner Mongolia close to Shaanxi, is to see it referred to as a "ghost city".

It's not, and it never was, but that's the unfortunate reputation (more about this topic another day).

Ordos is a major energy hub. Not does only have excellent wind and solar resources, but also (and probably most famously and importantly for its economy) Ordos sits atop massive coal deposits.

Ordos is one of the 3 key coal-producing regions of China, one of three with its own domestic price index (Ordos 5500). The other two are Yulin (Shaanxi) and Datong (Shanxi).

⚡️China Power Consumption Update June 2025 ⚡️

In June 2025, China's power consumption grew 5.4% year-on-year to 867 TWh in one month (or 867 billion kilowatt hours, as China likes to report).

This is roughly equal to June or July's monthly consumption from 2023... 🧵 Industrial power consumption rose 3.2% YoY in June, reaching 549 TWh. Still slower growth than GDP, but at least a slightly recovery vs May, which was truly poor at just 2.2% YoY growth. Looks like manufacturing is readjusting to the tariff impacts and picking up again.

A thread of other things from Yiwu I thought were cool but didn't have space to put into my bigger thread:

These kebabs at Afghan restuaurant Ariana. These braised lamb trotters at the halal night market.

Off the Beaten Track: Yiwu City, Procurement Paradise

I recently visited Zhejiang's Yiwu for the first time.

Yiwu is the small commodities wholesale procurement Mecca of the world, but it's still relatively unknown outside of certain sectors. So, let me tell you about it. 🧵 I wasn't actually sure if I should include Yiwu in my "Off the Beaten Track" series. To be sure, the smallish county-level city of Yiwu IS actually pretty well-known in the supply chain and sourcing sector. And most Chinese people would know it too. Sure, it's not famous like Chengdu or Wuhan, but you can find people visiting in a ton of videos on YouTube, and international media likes Yiwu as well, especially Yiwu International Trade City, the largest wholesale light products marketplace in the world. So, I wondered, is it really off the beaten track?

In the end though I decided it indeed qualifies after mentioning it to a few non-China people and getting blank stares. Plus, although Chinese people know it, it probably wouldn't be in the top 50 cities for domestic or international tourism, or even top 100...

Honestly, this is a shame, because if you have any kind of interest in international economics, trade flows, or globalization, Yiwu might be one of the most educational places you'll ever visit.

So! China released its new renewable power consumption quotas yesterday and added heavy industry into the list of obligated entities. A Big Deal!

I last wrote a thread about China's RPS ~4 years ago, but things have changed since then, so it's time for a commentary refresh. 🧵 But first, the basics. An Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is a mandate for a company to consume a certain minimum % of renewable power in its electricity mix.

Different countries handle this in different ways. In China, it varies on a provincial basis.

"Nail Houses" in Shanghai Old City - Interview With a Local

You know Chinese "nail houses" - those local residents whose properties (and their demands for compensation) impede developers' aspirations, sometimes for years. I've tweeted about it before:🧵

https://x.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1859909682720018882

The most famous stories are often in rural areas, where standalone nail houses are striking and obvious, requiring highways or trains to make awkward detours.

But anyone could become a holdout, including someone in an apartment in the Shanghai old city.

China Taxicab Chronicles: Mr. Liu Can't be Fired

Pretty interesting ride last night...I don't often encounter drivers who are just so ambivalent and unbothered as Mr. Liu.

He picks me up in Pudong. First we drop off my colleague at his hotel, then head to my home. 🧵 Mr. Liu seems a little older than I am. He has short spiky black hair and glasses, with a round face covered in old acne scars. He speaks with an unemotional, low, raspy voice, like he's smoked heavily his whole life. He doesn't seem like he's bothered by anything.

China Taxicab Chronicles: Mr. Le offers Career Advice

Mr. Le picks us up at the entrance to the Zeng Cuo’an tourist area in Xiamen. We’re going to the ferry and it’s the middle of the day, so we’ve got a bit of a ride ahead of us.

I'm immediately struck by his unique vehicle. It's a BYD EV, but I’ve never seen one like it before. It’s shaped like a smaller SUV crossover but has sliding doors and a somewhat boxy roof that offers lots of headspace like a minivan.

"Hey shifu, what is this car model? I’ve never seen it before. The BYD what?"

The Urban Village of Xiamen

In the north of Xiamen's main island in Huli District, just west of the airport, is Dianqian Community, one of Xiamen's last urban villages (and its largest).

Urban villages are called 城中村 (literally: village in a city) or sometimes 村子. Urban villages can be found in large cities in southern China especially, and are often described as China's "ghettoes" or "slums".

This is not quite correct in my opinion, and the topic deserves a separate thread. But they are indeed generally home to people with lower incomes.