"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.

Yicai released its influential 2025 China "Rank of City Attractiveness" list last week. This is the source of the "1st Tier, 2nd Tier" etc. labels.

I went through the list and compared to the 2024 rankings, finding interesting items to comment on. 🧵
yicai.com/news/102638963… But before we get started, if you're unclear what I'm talking about, you'll want to review my thread from last year where I introduce the Yicai city tiers and ranking system, how it's calculated, and what it's good for (and what it isn't!)

https://x.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1843519118718447895

Chinese carbon emissions indeed appear to have leveled off. A peak into a plateau, perhaps, but a peak nonetheless.🥳

As highlighted in the thread, this is a *structural* decline. It's NOT caused by power usage decreasing (which naturally allows less coal use) like in the past.

https://twitter.com/laurimyllyvirta/status/1922891687212282068

All the major fossil-fuel consuming segments are now consuming less than they did last year, with the exception of the coal-to-chemicals segment.

But for the sake of completeness, what are the counterfactuals we must be aware of? What could cause emissions to grow again?

The social commentary on China in this thread is ~90% wrong.

I rarely wade into cultural affairs, but this was too egregious (and was seen by too many people) to just ignore.

Long thread...(sorry in advance)🧵

https://twitter.com/ErikKaiser/status/1917223054561644902

"The Chinese want to get rich. All of them."

No. Some Chinese want to get rich. Some want to make art, or start a climate NGO, or be in a rock band, or help rural farmers sell honey, or join the navy. They want to improve themselves, provide a better life for their children and take care of their aging parents. They could be motivated by personal dreams and ambitions, familial or social obligations, nationalism, a virtous desire to "do good", or a hundred other things besides "wanting to get rich". Just like everyone else on the planet. It's irresponsible misrepresentation to talk like this.

The pure accumulation of material wealth to sustain certain lifestyle was a more prevalent motivator in decades past, when the society was at a lower rung on Maslow's ladder, but the times have changed.

"Their work ethic is correlated with their desire to succeed. This is a primary threat to anyone competing with them."

They do this not because they're Chinese, but because they're human, and that's what humans striving to win in success-limited conditions do. Making out this out to be some kind of Chinese cultural trait is just orientalism.

"I harnessed it and improved the lives of many"

This comes across as some kind of savior complex. OP employed Chinese people in factories to make goods that he sold for profit. He brags in the replies to his thread that he made good money doing this. Apparently that means he "harnessed" their work ethic to improve their lives. I hope he doesn't pull any muscles, straining so hard to pat himself on the back.

Last week, I presented orally at a hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Comission on China's efforts in the clean energy transition, focusing on industrial electrification.

Testimony and recording in link. This is a summary thread. 🧵

uscc.gov/hearings/china… China has already achieved dominance of the current "big three" pillars of cleantech: solar PV, batteries, and EVs.

To these, add wind turbines and ultra high-voltage transmission, and China's 2030 carbon emissions peaking target seems quite assured.

But what then?

Broadly speaking, the USA's China strategy as informed by guys who did a stint in the country 15-20 years ago has been so ineffective and incoherent that it's quite likely you could get sharper China policy and advisory from people who have never been here at all.

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1909811149329039699

IMO, being an expat in China 15 yrs ago grants NEGATIVE effectiveness as a source of insight for policymaking/advisory in 2025.

Similar to HK or TW expats, their knowledge is worse than ignorance. They actively misinform, usually to the detriment of their OWN objectives.

China Taxicab Chronicles: Mrs. Mi Will Buy a House in Kashgar

I'm heading to a meeting in Pudong. Mrs. Mi picks me up in a new GAC Aion Y and confirms my phone number.

Her accent sounds like me in Chinese class 15 years ago. Mandarin is clearly not her first language. 🧵 "You...you're not Chinese, right?" she asks.
"No, I'm American. Do I look Chinese?"

"You look Arabic, or from Afghanistan. But you sound Chinese"
"I've been here a long time"

"How long?"
"13 years"

"Oh, longer than me"
"How long have you been in Shanghai?"

"Over one year"

While everyone was busy freaking out about the Trump tariffs, China released a new list of its major low-carbon demo projects for 2025

This is Batch 2 - the first batch was announced last year.

All of them are important and ground-breaking projects...101 of them in total.🧵 Remember, the title of National Demonstration Project is a powerful designation with many practical benefits to project owners, including direct financial and fiscal support, policy and approval advantages, increased access to technology and talent resources, prioritization in government procurement events, and long-term institutional backing from local authorities (for example, being written into the province's five-year plan).

This list of projects is basically a direct summary of what national energy stakeholders think are the most important cutting-edge items in furthering the national low-carbon energy agenda, and a promise to support those projects to achieve success.

When they teach about the rise of China in textbooks someday, I hope there's at least a section about how USA institutions psy-opped themselves into utter helplessness by meticulously sourcing all their primary insights from copium vendors. This could be a thesis. No need to actually write the thesis yourself though; DeepSeek's got it covered.

"Institutionalized Copium Networks" I'm gonna borrow that one for the future.

I found the thesis of this article peculiar and the intention flawed.

The authors are so alarmed over the potential for China's policies on climate being mislabeled as virtuous that they felt the need to pen an article to refute this view...why? 🧵

foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/20/chi… It’s not even a stretch or oversimplification to characterize the thesis as: “China not good; actually, China bad”.

This makes for tedious reading, as it is an article focused exclusively on the litigation of China’s morality re: climate issues.

There is no attempt to rationalize or contextualize...no effort to examine the nature of, or motivation behind the “sins”, or a consideration what precedent is set by treating fossil-fuel driven energy expansion as such an explicitly moral issue.

One thing I haven't seen discusssed yet is how new wind and solar capacity additions in China in 2025 are almost definitely going DROP vs last year.

If you're used to always seeing number go up, time to reset expectations in advance. Here's why.🧵

https://x.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1897600484761887230

The key driver is the new renewables compensation scheme from last month.

Previously, new wind and solar projects had policy assurances their generation would be bought by the grid at a fixed rate (the provincial coal-fired benchmark price). The new policy removed that.

China Power Sector 2024 Fundamentals Summary/Teaser:

Capacity:

Total installed capacity hit ~3350 GW, pumped up by high volumes of new solar (+277 GW in 2024) and wind (+80 GW).

Coal capacity rose by about 35 GW, hydro by about 14 GW, gas by 10 GW, and nuclear by about 3 GW. Generation:

Generation rose by roughly 600 TWh YoY, crossing the 10 petawatt hour threshold.

The large new additions of solar capacity translated to 44% YoY generation growth. Wind's performance was less impressive, rising just 13% YoY. Hydropower recovered 10% versus its poor performance in 2023, but was still down versus a "normal" year (e.g., hydropower's operating hours in 2024 were still 9% lower than in 2021).

Thermal power generation ticked up 1.7% YoY, thanks to subpar hydropower performance and the suspicious disappearance of solar and wind generation at the end of the year (especially November). It *should* have been possible to keep thermal power generation flat last year, considering the massive growth in renewables capacity and the weak power consumption growth at the end of the year, but it didn't happen. Disappointed I am.

I haven't been able to confirm this, but my suspicion is grid operators found themselves overcontracted for power in the last few months of the year because of the weak consumption growth and high renewables growth, and so chose to break their renewables offtake contracts (and pay the associated penalties) in favor of the thermal power contracts (which were perhaps more expensive to break). Just a guess though.

First, I'd like to say a big thanks to Chris for having me on the pod - it was a great conversation and we only got through about half of the things we'd like to discuss, so maybe they'll be a continuation someday.

That being said, I'd like to supplement a few points here. 😁

https://twitter.com/Dr_Keefer/status/1884340433070833687

I think there are more motivations underlying China's electricity-heavy growth, rather than just concern over vulnerabilities in the Straits of Malacca, although when it comes to the energy security driver, this is certainly a part of the equation...

I'll highlight a few.