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Holiday retail sales jumped 3% as more people shop for decor and furniture for their homes

China turns off the lights in 'Christmas town' as officials race to

meet energy targets 

By Nectar Gan, CNN

Updated 0020 GMT (0820 HKT) December 26, 2020

Yiwu, a manufacturing hub in eastern China, is known for producing Christmas decorations. TOP STORIES

Yiwu, a manufacturing hub in eastern China, is known for producing Christmas decorations.
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Hong Kong (CNN Business) — For months, factories in the city of Yiwu, known as China's "Christmas
town," have been cranking out most of the tinsel, decorations and other festive ornaments now
Chris Cuomo: This is a very bad
hanging on trees worldwide. situation President Trump is creating

But production almost stopped in mid-December, as local authorities switched o the lights. Recommended by

Ma Hairu, who works for a manufacturer making paper decorations for Christmas and New Year, Ad Herbs&Hydro
said his factory was struggling to meet demand because they're only allowed to work half days.
"We have a lot of orders, but we don't have enough time to make them," he said.

O cials in China's Zhejiang province are racing to meet

five-year energy consumption targets set by the central
government that are due to expire on December 31.
We have a lot of orders, but we
Earlier this month, a local directive instructed businesses
don't have enough time to make
to stop elevators below the third floor, and to only use
them."
heating when temperatures outside fell below 3 degrees
MA HAIRU, YIWU MANUFACTURER
Celsius (37 degrees Fahrenheit).

"There is no shortage of electricity supply [in Zhejiang].

Some places in the province adopted measures themselves to restrict electricity use to save
Szampony w kostce
energy and reduce emissions," Zhao Chenxin, secretary general of the National Development
and Reform Commission (NDRC), said Monday.
Prawdopodobnie najlepszy
szampon w kostce
The drive to cut energy consumption has disrupted millions of lives. In Yiwu, a city of a million
people, heating was turned o in o ces, shopping malls, schools and hospitals, despite daytime
temperatures of about 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit).
Otwórz
Even street lights went out, leaving drivers and pedestrians fumbling in the dark, according to
local residents and government notices. Heating has also been restricted in the nearby city of Advertisement

Wenzhou, home to more than 9 million people, according to the local government.

Zhejiang's abrupt cut in electricity consumption

MORE FROM CNN BUSINESS
highlights both the strength and pitfalls of China's
political system. While the Communist Party can make
ambitious promises to cut carbon emissions, the
forceful implementation of targets can come at a cost
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"A di cult year"
The power restriction in Yiwu first gained attention last
week, when photos and videos of pitch dark streets
Republican lawmakers Arnold
began circulating on Chinese social media. who downplayed Schwarzenegger says
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On Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, Yiwu residents complained about street lamps being
turned o and having to drive home in the dark amid tra c chaos. The topic quickly gained
traction, drawing 120 million views as of Wednesday, and thousands of comments. PAID CONTENT BY

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Yiwu residents drive in the dark as street lights are turned o to save energy.
Journal

Some accused the Yiwu government of sacrificing public safety to tick a box on a political report
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card.

Following the online backlash, o cials turned some lights back on. "The lights were only o for a
few days. Most of them have been turned on now," a government hotline operator told CNN on
Wednesday.
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But other restrictions remain in place. Yin Mingfei, a manager of a cafe in a shopping center in stimulus bill leaves mind is elsewhere as
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the city's central business district, said the heating had been switched o for nearly two weeks,
and electronic advertising billboards and escalators weren't working.

A receptionist at the Yiwu Central Hospital said heating in the common areas had been turned
o , and that she had to put on extra layers of clothing to stay warm. On Weibo, o ce workers CDC testing Fact check: Georgia
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complained about shivering at their desks. travelers are like 'a… misleading attack…

The city's factories and workshops, whose businesses have already su ered from the
coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, were ordered to reduce or halt production at a time when
orders are flooding in.

Yiwu has earned a reputation as Santa's "real" workshop for producing much of the
world's Christmas decorations.

Yiwu has earned a reputation as Santa's "real" workshop for producing much of the world's Christmas decorations.

December would have been the busiest time of the year for Liu Lei, who runs a small workshop
with his wife in a Yiwu suburb making red envelopes for the Lunar New Year. But he has been
ordered to work two days on, two days o until the end of the year to save power.

"Of course the impact [on my business] is huge. The orders are rushing in for red envelopes, but
there's no way I can make enough," Liu said. "So I had to turn some down."

Target-oriented political culture

Similar scrambles have happened in the past — on a much larger scale and for many more
months. In 2010, the final year of China's 11th five-year plan, Zhejiang and more than half a
dozen other provinces rolled out measures to restrict electricity use.

Some started as early as July that year, limiting or halting production at energy-intensive
factories and banning air conditioning in o ces and schools, according to media reports at the
time. Advertisement

Since coming to power, Chinese President Xi Jinping has waged a "war on pollution," doubling MORE FROM CNN BUSINESS

down on e orts to steer the country away from its reliance on coal, which as of 2019 still
accounted for nearly 60% of China's energy consumption. More recently, the president made
the ambitious pledge for China to become carbon neutral by 2060.

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Beijing, China's capital, is often shrouded in heavy smog in the winter.

But such well-meaning e orts have sometimes inflicted su ering due to bad planning and
aggressive rollouts. In 2017, a massive retrofitting campaign to switch northern China's winter
heating from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas left some residents and villagers shivering in
freezing temperatures, as local o cials banned coal before gas furnaces were properly installed
or gas supply was stabilized.

"This is common in China. It's a result of the target-oriented political culture," said Trey McArver,
partner at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium.

Without democratic elections, most Chinese o cials climb the political career ladder in a
performance-based evaluation system, where targets on economic growth, social stability and,
increasingly, environmental protection, play an important role in their chances of promotion.

Under Xi's authoritarian rule, local o cials are placed under even more pressure — filtered down
from the central government — to meet Beijing's policy targets, such as those set out in the
country's five-year plans.

Smoke billows from a large steel plant in Inner Mongolia, China.

Smoke billows from a large steel plant in Inner Mongolia, China.

In September, o cials in Inner Mongolia were summoned by the NDRC to discuss the "serious
problems" facing its energy saving situation, after its energy consumption and intensity
exceeded the limits set in the 13th five-year plan.

Five-year plans are a legacy of China's command economy during the Mao era. These top-level
policy blueprints lay out the country's social and economic development goals for the coming
period. The 13th five-year plan covers 2016 to 2020.

Competing targets
Zhejiang is required to cut energy intensity — the amount of energy required to produce per unit
of economic output — by 17% compared to 2015 levels, according to a blueprint of the 13th
five-year plan on energy saving released by China's State Council.

The province is only allowed to consume an equivalent of 23.8 million tonnes of coal above 2015
levels by 2020, however there are indications it was using too much.

According to a notice released by the Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission
in 2019, Zhejiang consumed 87% of its extra energy quota during the first three years of the
plan.

In October, the central government dispatched a team of investigators to Zhejiang to evaluate its
usage. The team instructed Zhejiang to "do its best" to meet its targets, according to the
Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission.

The problem with targets is there are often more than one for o cials to meet and they are not
always complementary, said McArver, the consultant. "The reason that there's a scramble to
meet these targets here at the end is because local o cials have been focused primarily on
other targets as of now," he said, such as GDP growth, employment and government revenues.

China's steel production has surged after the coronavirus lockdown.

Shutdowns due to the coronavirus initially helped emissions targets, analysts said, but the rush
to revive the economy have set it back. China's rapid economic recovery from the pandemic has
relied heavily on energy-intensive heavy industries, said Li Shuo, a senior climate policy adviser
for Greenpeace East Asia.

A surge in steel production contributed to a rebound in China's carbon emissions following a

drop during the coronavirus lockdown, Lauri Myllyvirta, analyst at the Centre for Research on
Energy and Clean Air, wrote in an analysis.

For the manufacturers in Yiwu, there was also a rebound in production following a surge in
orders after the summer. But that proved short lived.

Ma, who makes and sells festive decorations, said it had been a particularly tough year for
business, first because of the pandemic and now the electricity restrictions.

"We used to make revenue of more than one million yuan ($150,000), but with all the disruptions
this year, we really don't know how much we can make," he said.

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