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CHINA-ECONOMY-POWER-CONSUMPTION
Power consumption reveals China’s economic vitality
BEIJING, May 27, 2019 (BSS/Xinhua) – As a key barometer of economic
activity, China’s power consumption rose 5.8 percent year on year in April,
reflecting a flourishing development of new economic drivers and consumption
upgrading.
Total power use reached 553.4 billion kilowatt hours in April. The
increase of power consumption on new energy vehicles, photovoltaic
production, and big data services were all over 50 percent, according to the
National Energy Administration.
“Provinces in the southwest and the central and southern China have
replaced eastern and coastal ones as the new leading regions in power
consumption growth,” said Ye Chun, vice director of the Department of
Industry Development of the China Electricity Council (CEC).
Ye ascribed this shift to China’s poverty alleviation work, infrastructure
construction, quickened urbanization, home appliances quality improvement and
tourism boom driven by the original ecological environment.
Power use in Tibet Autonomous Region, for instance, increased by 18.3
percent year on year in the first four months of 2019, ranking first in
growth rate in the country.
“As a section of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, the Lhasa-Nyingchi railway’s
construction work accelerated this year, driving up the electricity
consumption,” said Bai Xiaowei with the China Railway Electrification
Engineering Group.
In April, daily power consumption in the manufacturing sector also reached
its peak in the past five months, according to the CEC.
“The growth of power use in traditional industries and manufacturing
sector has been stable, while industries connected with digitization and
informatization see drastic rises in power consumption, which illustrates new
driving forces are steadily replacing the old ones,” Ye said.
Xuzhou, an old coal city in east China, is mining its new fortune in
equipment manufacturing.
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CHINA-ECONOMY-POWER-CONSUMPTION 2 LAST BEIJING
“In the first four months of 2019, equipment manufacturers’ power use rose
60.37 percent year on year thanks to considerable order size,” said Li Ying,
head of the Department of Planning of the State Grid Xuzhou Power Supply
Company.
Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group (XCMG), China’s leading construction
machinery manufacturer, is exporting products to more than 183 countries and
regions worldwide. In March alone, XCMG’s exports have exceeded 100 million
U.S. dollars.
In the four months from January, power use of the tertiary industry and
the urban and rural residents increased 10.5 percent and 10.9 percent
respectively, becoming the main driver of the power use rise in the country,
according to the CEC.
Analysts said the new trend of consumption is stimulating enormous
domestic market demand while Internet, big data and artificial intelligence
integrated deeply with the real economy are continually changing people’s
lives.
“Consumption upgrading breeds new engines for the economic growth, filling
more confidence and resilience with China’s economy,” said Li Daokui, dean of
the Institute for China’s Economic Practice and Thinking of Tsinghua
University.
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