The Courage to Admit One's Mistakes - A Comparison of China-Australia Power Outages

YingAu

https://www.reddit.com/r/real_China_irl/comments/vhw0z9/Courage to admit mistakes China-Australia blackout comparison/

You may have also heard that the east coast of Australia (where almost all Australians live) experienced major power outages and blackouts some time ago, and the crisis has eased. Today, AEMO announced an unprecedented response to the Australian east coast energy market. The intervention will be phased out the next day. Combined with the problem of China's major power cuts for several consecutive years (this year China should be fine, and industrial production activities can't keep up), let's briefly talk about the comparison between the two.

One, are you shooting yourself in the foot?

Of course, both China's sanctions on Australia and Australia's sanctions on Russia have filled a lot of fuel for the already high energy and resource prices. The difference is that China's sanctions on Australia are unilateral, while Australia's Russia's sanctions are dozens of countries doing things together. The former is even more nonsensical, while the latter has reasons for sanctioning those who unjustly wage wars of aggression without authorization.

Second, what is the effect of throwing stones at other people's feet?

China's sanctions on Australia (including wine and lobster) are not effective, and it is easy for Australian ore and wine to find new buyers. Iron ore and thermal coal are not to be mentioned. The middlemen in Indonesia and other countries have made profits from the price difference, and even in the later stage, there was an epic long-term trade route in which Australian coal mines were transferred to Kazakhstan and completed the delivery at several times the price (the grapevine is that a certain low The business done by the IQ Red X Generation), because the situation was too unbelievable, it attracted the attention of international media including Reuters, and eventually the news was exported to domestic sales. For wine, the trade volume with Hong Kong soared, and the overall loss (if I remember correctly) ended at about 4%; China's effect on perishable products such as lobster and meat is better, causing damage in a short period of time. As a result, the supply chain of some companies in Australia is disordered, the losses are relatively large, and it is difficult to resell them in the domestic market or other foreign markets, and some seafood products are directly rotten in the port.

The sanctions against Russia by Australia and other European and American countries are still fermenting and have not yet ended. The effect of trade sanctions is definitely there, but it will take some time to evaluate. Russia has stabilized the ruble's foreign exchange market in the short term through almost all kinds of foreign trade restrictions and the central bank's use of foreign exchange to stabilize the ruble exchange rate. However, Russia's internal material shortages and rising prices are still imminent, and cannot be played by numbers games such as GDP growth. The problem of whitewashing.

Third, what does the difference in processing bring?

Although the two are not comparable in terms of the import scale of energy products, the treatment methods are quite different, not only in their scales. The Australian Energy Market Operator was quick to admit that the crisis was partly caused by soaring global coal and gas prices, as well as ageing and undercapacity Australia's coal-fired power stations. In China, there seems to be a big difference between financial media, financial institution research reports (with basic professionalism), mass media, and official propaganda. The former is naturally analyzed to cause the power crisis. For example, the research report of Kaiyuan Securities analyzed the supply gap caused by the sanctions on Australian ore imports, which intensified the soaring coal price; It takes time and cost to expand production and adjust the supply chain from overseas imports. The latter is looking for reasons at random, such as environmental protection theory, the low proportion of Australian coal imports, etc. It is very lively, but the eunuch and Pink clearly chose the latter. Of course, the knowledge of eunuchs and pink is not important, and they do not have votes; but the local government and customs are still trying to figure out what they are interested in, and have not made effective interventions on electricity and coal prices for a long time, for fear of losing face. As a result, things were getting out of hand.

Fourth, the art of smashing feet

Now the domestic problems are small problems hidden, otherwise it will be fine, or they will hold back the big ones, and then "thunder". Last year, the coal shortage finally attracted thunderous price limit and supply guarantee policies. The Australian coal was finally unloaded, but the entire supply chain has changed. China has handed over the life of energy imports to Russia, and the cooperation between the two countries has been further deepened. In 2021, crude oil imports from Russia will account for about 15% of total imports, and China is now Russia's largest crude oil importer. Previously, China and Russia also signed a large order for natural gas, announcing that they will deliver 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China every year for the next 30 years from 2019 (5 billion cubic meters in the first year, gradually reaching 38 billion cubic meters). An increase of 10 billion cubic meters; Russian officials have also stated that future coal exports to China will increase from the current 53 million tons to 100 million tons. And because of the collapse of Russia in the Russian-Ukrainian war, China has entered a very embarrassing situation in terms of foreign policy and energy policy.