Conversation
11.08.21
When Will China Get off Coal?
As China looks to meet its energy demands, there has been a rush for coal, with prices hitting record highs in October. Despite pledges by Beijing to pull back from fossil fuels, the power crisis has exposed shortfalls in the country’s ability to...
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12.12.17Trump’s Claim That West Virginia Is ‘Sending Clean Coal’ to ‘China’
Washington Post
“If you look at what’s happened in West Virginia and so many different places, we’re sending clean coal. We’re sending it out to different places — China," Trump said last Tuesday.
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12.12.17Need Stretchy Pants? China's Energy Squeeze May Mean Higher Prices
New York Times
Homes, businesses and even hospitals across northern China are running short of natural gas. Some schoolchildren are shivering. And in the chemical industry — well, the spandex supply is getting tight.
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11.15.17Why China Wants to Lead on Climate, but Clings to Coal (for Now)
New York Times
Barely a month ago, in a landmark speech to the Communist Party Congress, President Xi Jinping of China promised that his country would take a “driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change.”
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10.04.17China’s Putting the Brakes on Coal for Heating Millions of Homes This Winter
Quartz
China might start to see better air this winter as it prepares to heat heat millions of houses for the first time by gas, and continues a clampdown on coal to battle its deadly pollution.
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08.30.17China’s War on Smog Shakes up Ports; Tianjin Loses, Rivals Benefit
Reuters
China’s war on smog is shaking up the country’s busiest ports, which handle billions of tonnes of cargo a year, forcing Tianjin to overhaul its business as northern rivals snare a greater share of vast coal and iron ore shipments, results show.
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08.29.17Power of Love: China's Latest Arranged Match Rattles Utilities
Reuters
Beijing announced its latest arranged marriage by matching the country’s top coal miner with one of its biggest utilities to create a global powerhouse worth $280 billion on China’s Valentine’s Day.
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06.26.17Coal on the Rise in China, US, India after Major 2016 Drop
ABC
The world’s biggest coal users — China, the United States and India — have boosted coal mining in 2017, in an abrupt departure from last year’s record global decline for the heavily polluting fuel and a setback to efforts to rein in climate change...
Sinica Podcast
05.26.17
Chinese Power in the Age of Donald Trump
from Sinica Podcast
When Joseph Nye, Jr., first used the phrase “soft power” in his 1990 book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, China did not factor much into his calculus of world order: It had relatively little military and economic power, and...
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05.04.17Dust Storm Chokes Beijing and Northern China
BBC
A dust storm is choking a large swathe of northern China including the capital, Beijing, in yet another air quality crisis to affect the country.
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02.08.17‘Irrational’ Coal Plants May Hamper China’s Climate Change Efforts
New York Times
A certain coal plant near the rugged Kazakhstan border and others like it undermine China’s aim of being a global leader on efforts to limit climate change.
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01.18.17China Cancels 103 Coal Plants, Mindful of Smog and Wasted Capacity
New York Times
China is canceling plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants, seeking to rein in runaway, wasteful investment in the sector while moving the country away from one of the dirtiest forms of electricity generation
China in the World Podcast
12.21.16
China Rises to Challenge of Battling Climate Change
from Carnegie China
With the U.S. leadership role in the fight against climate change now being called into question, China has found itself in the unique position of being a global leader of the cause. In this podcast, nonresident Carnegie-Tsinghua scholar Wang Tao...
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12.12.16Going Green in China, Where Climate Change Isn’t Considered a Hoax
Salon
Chinese leaders want to improve the quality of life in their nation's cities
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12.07.16China is Outsourcing Its Pollution
Foreign Policy
Beijing's diplomacy is increasingly green, but its international trade is getting ever more coal-black
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11.30.16Despite Climate Change Vow, China Pushes to Dig More Coal
New York Times
Desperate to deliver coal before power stations run out, China mobilizes trains and half-mile lines of trucks
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11.28.16China Risks Wasting $490 Billion on New Coal Plant, Say Campaigners
Guardian
Carbon Tracker says many plants running at overcapacity but China reluctant to wean itself off coal, fearing unemployment and unrest
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09.27.16China Industrial Profits Rise Most in 3 Years as Economy Shows Signs of Stabilizing
Reuters
Is the improvement fleeting or real?
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09.23.16China’s Coal Cap Will Bite
Bloomberg
Can the shift to more domestic output be met without blanketing China's cities in smog?
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08.15.16China’s Coal Towns Are Literally Sinking
Fortune
Hundreds of thousands are being moved from regions made unsafe from coal companies.
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07.14.16Greenpeace Warns Over China’s Excess Power Capacity
Financial Times
Overcapacity is dogging swathes of Chinese industry, including steel and petrochemicals, stifling profitability and damaging the environment.
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06.17.16China Coalminers Seek New Debt Terms
Financial Times
Some of China’s largest state-owned coalminers are asking banks to relax payment terms on loans, as a profound slump in prices devastates China’s coal heartland.
Depth of Field
04.29.16
April’s Best Chinese Photojournalism
from Yuanjin Photo
Over the past few weeks, the publications Sina, Tencent, Caixin, China Youth Daily, and the publishing duo Sixth Tone/The Paper published photo stories on the intimate, the industrial, the private, and the political. Journalists Yan Cong and Ye Ming...
Environment
04.08.16
China Pulls Emergency Stop on Coal Power Construction
from chinadialogue
China’s central government has ordered local authorities to delay or cancel construction of new coal-fired power plants, as regulators attempt to reduce a glut in capacity, just one year after decisions were delegated to the provinces.The National...
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03.31.16China Has the Most Coal Plants in the World—and Half the Time They’re Doing Absolutely Nothing
Quartz
Time-lag and decentralization of government contributed to excessive coal plants.
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03.01.16China Expects to Lay off 1.8 Million Workers in Coal, Steel Sectors
Reuters
China expects to lay off about 15 percent of the workforce, as part of efforts to reduce industrial overcapacity.