[Epoch Times November 27, 2021]The mainland coal supply is tight. In Yingxian County, Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province, this small town in northern Saibei, which is “connected with Datong Coal Sea in the north and Shuozhou Electric Capital in the west”, has recently appeared on a voucher. The phenomenon of coal.
According to a photo of “civil coal ticket” published in the “China Youth Daily” report on November 24, the coal ticket is issued by the “Energy Bureau of Pinglu District, Shuozhou City” and printed with “Pinglu District Civil Coal Ticket” “” the red official seal. Validity period is July 2021-June 2022, expired and invalidated, and lost cannot be replaced.
In this regard, Wang Jian, a senior media person in the United States, said in his self-media program video released on November 24: “The planned economy is characterized by short supply and backward productivity. With backward productivity, it cannot meet demand, so it appeared. Tickets, tickets are to restrict consumption and restrict you from buying.”
Xie Wanjun, a pro-democracy activist now living in the United States, said on Twitter, “Famine follows immediately after the ticket! Later, there is a great famine and a great famine!” He warned: “When people hold coal tickets in their hands, they must Ready to be frozen! When the people have food stamps in their hands, they are going to be hungry!”
Shanxi is a major coal province, and Shuozhou is a city built on coal. The Chinese Communist Party’s official media Chinanews reported on October 31 this year that Shuozhou “the city is expected to produce more than 200 million tons of raw coal in 2021, an increase of 21.86 million tons year-on-year.”
Why is there a restricted coal ticket in Shuozhou? On November 26, a reporter from Radio Free Asia called the Pinglu District Government of Shuozhou City to inquire about the coal ticket. However, the operator said that it is not clear that the coal ticket is currently not implemented in the local urban area. The urban area has been centrally heated, but the rural area of Pinglu District currently needs to use the coal ticket to purchase “clean coal”.
According to the China Youth Daily, Shuozhou is one of the three cities in Shanxi Province that has applied for the “Clean Heating Project in Northern Region in 2021.” The heating rate has basically reached 100%”. According to the plan, Shuozhou will invest 6.451 billion yuan in the next three years to implement clean heating renovations for 223,400 urban and rural residents. The transformation methods include “coal to electricity” and “coal to gas”, but the clean heating transformation task, the progress of the coal-to-electricity project is not smooth.
According to information provided by the Shuozhou Energy Bureau, as of November 18, there are still 46 villages in Shuozhou that have not yet completed the conversion of coal to electricity. Reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily visited Yingxian Shijiafang, Dahuangwei, Dongxinzhai, Dasuimin, Xiaosuimin and other villages and found that, except for Xiaosuimin, the other villages have basically installed coal-to-electricity facilities. , But it is still not powered on, and it is still in a shutdown state.
In response to residents who were not included in the clean heating renovation plan this year and are temporarily unavailable after the renovation, the Shuozhou City government requires each household to allocate 3 tons of clean coal, but “because the coal source is relatively tight, 1 ton will be sent first, and then purchased while sending.” . A staff member of Shuozhou Energy Bureau said.
However, according to a data provided by the Shuozhou Energy Bureau to the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily reporters, this winter, there are 62,144 households in Shuozhou who need to issue clean coal at a subsidized price. As of November 21, 47,393 households were distributed, and the distribution rate was 76.3%. Among them, the lowest is Yingxian County, which does not produce coal. Out of 21,400 households, only 5,795 households have issued the payment, with a distribution rate of 27.1%.
Hao Jianying, general manager of Shanxi Jingwei Tongda Co., Ltd., a coal storage and distribution enterprise designated by Shuozhou City, told the reporter that since Shuozhou’s local clean coal is pulverized coal, it is not suitable for farmers to use for cleaning and heating and needs to be replaced into blocks. Only coal can be used. “This coal is also up to standard, (but) ordinary people can’t burn it, they can’t burn it.”
Therefore, Jingwei Tongda can only store clean coal that is “unburnable” and temporarily “unsellable” in the company park, and then send people to Inner Mongolia to add money to buy high-calorie lump coal. And “for the sake of openness and transparency, we have purchased an electronic recorder to record coal pulling, testing, unloading, sampling and other processes on site.”
But Hao Jianying said that it costs 1,450 yuan per ton to pull back from Inner Mongolia, which is a big price difference with local coal. The relevant person in charge of the Energy Bureau of Yingxian County also stated that the coal price in the same period in the previous year was 600 to 700 yuan per ton, and it reached 2,300 yuan when it reached its peak this year, and the current ton is also more than 1,300 yuan.
Due to the high cost of coal this year, most families in the villages of Shijiafang and Dahuangwei in Yingxian County rely on burning wood and corncobs for cooking and heating. Although some homes still have the loose coal burnt last year, they are reluctant to use it and have to “wait to count nine (that is, thirty-nine days) before burning.” Several villagers in Shijiafang, Yingxian County, told the China Youth Daily reporter.
According to reports, just after the “Xiaoxue” solar term, the average temperature in Yingxian County outside the Great Wall has already dropped below zero degrees Celsius. According to data from the Public Meteorological Service Center of the China Meteorological Administration, by January, the temperature in Shuozhou will drop to minus 9°C to 10°C. For many farmers, energy supply has become an urgent need to burn “coal”.
China is the third largest coal producer in the world, but because of its large amount of coal, it mines itself and imports it from abroad. Australia is the main source of China’s coal imports. However, since the Australian government called for an independent investigation into the origin of the Chinese Communist virus (COVID-19) last year, the CCP has stopped importing Australian coal since October last year, which has exacerbated the tight coal supply and the rise in coal prices.
The September report of “SBS” quoted Ralph Leszczynski, head of research at Banchero Costa & Co, a shipping brokerage firm, as speculating that the CCP may soon be forced to relax its ban on Australian coal in order to ease the pressure of soaring domestic coal prices.
Editor in charge: Lin Congwen
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