On January 27, the eve of Chinese New Year, President Xi Jinping of the Communist Party of China visited Shanxi, which is known as a major energy province, according to Xinhua, the official media of the Communist Party of China.
According to official media reports, on the afternoon of January 26, Xi Jinping visited Fengnanyuan Village, Shizhuang Township, Huozhou City, and Duan Village, Sengnian Township, Fenxi County. The villagers spend the winter and so on.
CCTV images of the CCP show that Xi Jinping opened the lids of villagers’ pots as usual to watch the food being cooked.
It is reported that, according to the official practice of the CCP, the top officials of the CCP will go to the grass-roots level to conduct research on the eve of Chinese New Year.
According to previous reports, on the eve of Chinese New Year in 2021, Xi Jinping will visit Guizhou. According to public information, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping’s Chinese New Year’s Eve went to the grassroots provinces including Yunnan, Beijing, Sichuan, Hebei, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and other places.
Energy job is not guaranteed?
CCTV reported that on the afternoon of January 27, Xi Jinping visited Shanxi Ruiguang Thermal Power Co., Ltd.
Xi Jinping said that Shanxi is an energy and heavy chemical industry base, and it is necessary to consolidate the foundation of energy production and ensure the safety of coal supply.
According to official media reports, Shanxi Ruiguang Thermal Power is a national-level coal-fired energy conservation and emission reduction demonstration power station. It is designed in accordance with the circular economy technology route and is the first ultra-low emission enterprise in Shanxi Province.
Energy is a potential risk that Xi Jinping has always been worried about. He has repeatedly emphasized on different occasions in recent years that “the job of energy should be firmly in his own hands.”
China’s economy is huge, and the basic energy that supports this huge economy is coal. China’s energy is characterized by rich coal, lack of oil (petroleum), and little gas (natural gas). Statistics show that coal accounts for more than 90% of China’s fossil energy resources, while oil and natural gas together account for less than 9%.
At the turn of summer and autumn in 2021, a power crisis broke out in China. Large-scale power outages occurred in more than ten provinces from the three northeastern provinces to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong in the south, which severely damaged China’s economy and people’s livelihood.
Wang Jun, chief economist of Zhongyuan Bank, said that more than 60% of China’s crude oil is imported. Except for high-tech fields such as chips, which are stuck, if crude oil imports are affected by weather, geopolitics or price increases, it will pose a challenge to China’s energy security. There are many factors.
Recently, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has made the market increasingly concerned about crude oil prices.
Russia is an important participant in OPEC+. In December 2021, Russia’s crude oil production was 11.19 million barrels per day, second only to the United States‘ 11.58 million barrels per day, making it the second largest oil producer in the world.
According to OPEC+’s crude oil production policy, Russia’s crude oil production quota in January 2022 is 10.122 million barrels per day, accounting for 25% of the organization’s total quota; Russia’s crude oil production quota in February is 10.227 million barrels per day, an increase of 10.5 month-on-month million barrels per day.
However, commodity information firm Jinlianchuang said that OPEC+’s crude oil production policy is being questioned by the market and may not reach the previously planned increase of 400,000 barrels per day. If Russia is sanctioned by Western countries again due to the Ukraine incident, the country’s crude oil production will shrink in a short period of time, and energy export will be blocked again, which may lead to a further widening of the global oil and gas gap and a new round of energy prices. skyrocketed.
Ready for battle?
Two U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike groups led by the USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln entered the South China Sea on Sunday (January 23) for training, the US Defense Department said on Monday (January 24).
A senior U.S. military commander said this was to reassure allies and to show their determination to “counter the malign influence.”
Reuters reported on January 27 that the Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Thursday (January 27) that the Beijing Winter Olympics is a sporting event for the international community as the United States may hold military exercises around China during the Winter Olympics. China will be a good host for the event. But the Chinese military is fully prepared for “external provocations and emergencies.”
According to the analysis of Jiang Weiping, a senior media person, Xi Jinping visited the affected people in Shanxi before the Chinese New Year, which is just a kind of propaganda of the CCP. The reason behind this may be related to the fact that the recent frequent activities of the US military in the South China Sea have caused huge pressure on the CCP.
Jiang Weiping said that Lin Wu, the current “top leader” of the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee, was born in steelmaking, and he needed weapons to fight, and steel was the basic raw material for making weapons.
However, some analysts believe that Xi Jinping’s biggest threat does not come from abroad, but from within the CCP. A few days ago, he was promoted to 7 generals. It seems that he did not want to start a war with the outside world, but to more firmly grasp the military power, seize the “gun” and “escort” the re-election of the 20th National Congress.