It seems like the Chinese domestic market is jinxed. Instead of keeping the great promises of the future, consumers of high-end watches, jewelry and bespoke suits are increasingly looking for second-hand luxury on the Internet.
As soon as the balance on the private account does not show an exorbitant credit balance, then at some point even the higher earners in China will turn the Mao over twice. After all, the Chinese are born thrifty like few other nations in the world.
Luxury manufacturers from Europe are painfully feeling the ghost of the past in their sales figures, writes Jörg Petring. So the hint for Louis Vuitton and Co. is to simply lower their prices so that the level of receivables and the value of goods realistically converge.
Incidentally, luxury goods also include metals and minerals. At least in the political poker of national economies. China is sitting on such large quantities of rare earths and critical minerals that it can even use its exports as economic policy leverage. This is perhaps a little different from having a chic Louis Vuitton handbag on your arm. But it is certainly also a form of luxury.
Christiane Kühl explains why this luxury could lead to further export restrictions from China.
On Sept. 15, export controls come into force in China for the metal antimony, which is required for car batteries and solar panels, but also for weapons and military equipment such as ammunition and night vision devices. After gallium, germanium and high-purity graphite, it is the fourth metal for which Beijing regulates exports. It is therefore no wonder that the West is increasingly concerned about its dependence on China for critical minerals. The country is the world’s most important source of numerous important minerals or products processed from them.
The target countries are stepping up their efforts to diversify the procurement of critical minerals. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act, for example, sets a maximum of 65% of the demand for each critical raw material to be sourced from a single country by 2030. However, the changeover may take longer than the law envisages.
Beijing’s argument is always that the controls serve to protect “national security”. Many experts see them more as a reaction to US export restrictions or investigations and countervailing duties such as those imposed by the EU on EVs.
In December, Beijing also banned the export of technologies for the production of so-called permanent magnets made from rare earths, which are used for batteries, turbines and electronics. This is seen as a warning shot that the rare earths themselves could also be targeted.
“Of its small arsenal of possible retaliatory measures, imposing export restrictions on critical minerals is the most practical option“, says Cory Combs, Associate Director of Climate-Energy-Industrial Policy at the consulting agency Trivium China. This is because China’s mineral wealth “influences a large number of downstream consumers”. Combs was already expecting new controls for 2024 in the spring. “The big question is which mineral exports China will target next”, he wrote. Beijing has since given the answer: antimony.
The metal was one of nine minerals for which Combs and his team predicted controls after analyzing the likelihood of such controls for 73 critical commodities based on China’s strategic interests, according to a scoring system. Beijing will select minerals that meet these criteria for export controls:
Beijing, on the other hand, will avoid controls
The scoring system took all these aspects into account. In addition to antimony, the following eight minerals ended up on the Trivium list of minerals that could be affected by export controls:
According to Trivium, all of these minerals are listed as “critical minerals” in the USA, the EU and Japan – with the exception of bismuth, which is not on the list in Japan. The dependencies are similar for minerals that are already subject to export controls: China’s share of global graphite production is 78 percent. The figure for antimony production is 48 percent.
It remains to be seen whether the controls feared by Combs will actually take place. So far, the rules on the export of graphite, gallium and germanium are primarily a threat that serves as a deterrent. In fact, China has not yet banned any exports of these metals.
Nevertheless, the announcements had an impact on trade. According to Bloomberg, overseas sales of gallium, germanium and graphite jumped in the month before the export controls began as buyers stocked up – followed by a sharp drop and then a recovery. The same could now happen with antimony.
While gallium has largely recovered, germanium and graphite are lagging somewhat behind according to the Bloomberg report – which is partly due to the fact that buyers are already in the process of diversifying their sources. For example, the EU and the USA agreed to supply germanium to the Democratic Republic of Congo in April.
China’s exports of natural graphite in the first seven months of 2024 were 17 percent lower than in the same period last year, which, according to Xu Peng of Bloomberg NEF, is due to both an increase in graphite mining abroad and a decline in demand for electric cars. The situation is therefore more complex than it appears at first glance.
The European luxury groups’ big bet on the Chinese market is in danger of being lost. Their latest business figures have been consistently disappointing, mainly because things are no longer running smoothly in China. Paris-based industry leader LVMH, which owns brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Bulgari, reported a 14 percent drop in sales in the region in the second quarter. Sales had already fallen by six percent in the first quarter.
Investors are correspondingly disappointed. Due to the ongoing slump, LVMH is no longer the most valuable company in Europe. Founder Bernard Arnault had to relinquish the title of richest man in the world to Elon Musk. But LVMH is not alone with these problems.
The stakes are high for Europe’s economy, as practically all major luxury brands come from there. China has been their most important growth market for years. Chinese buyers now account for 23% of global sales of luxury goods. According to forecasts by the consulting firm Bain, this share should actually rise to 40 percent by 2030. The Chinese would then be the most important group of buyers, ahead of Europeans and Americans.
However, the industry is slowly coming to the realization that the optimistic forecasts were perhaps too ambitious. Conditions in China have developed differently than expected.
The market came to a standstill in 2022 when the government imposed pandemic lockdowns in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Following the easing of restrictions, there was a brief shopping boom. However, the weak economy and the ongoing real estate crisis have taken away the middle class’s desire for luxury.
A certain modesty has also spread, as the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei reports. Second-hand luxury goods are becoming increasingly popular in China. “New things are expensive, so I look at second-hand items”, Nikkei quotes a customer in a used luxury bag store in Guangzhou, where designer bags from Louis Vuitton and Burberry are offered at discounts of up to 80 percent.
But it is not only the second-hand trend that is causing problems for European companies. They are also facing a growing grey market, where brand-new, authentic products are sold at high discounts. According to a report by the data company Re-Hub, quoted by Bloomberg, the Chinese online platform Dewu in particular has changed the market considerably. In some cases, more luxury items are now sold on Dewu than on official online store platforms such as Tmall, which belongs to Alibaba.
The business model is simple: luxury brands actually strictly control their distribution channels and prefer to sell through their own boutiques or selected partners. Grey market platforms such as Dewu bypass these channels and are used by individuals or small retailers who source goods from abroad or via unofficial channels.
Many gray market offers currently come from Japan. Due to the favorable yen, luxury items were cheaper there than in China. Retailers who smuggle the goods past customs and offer them on Dewu are doing good business. According to Bloomberg and Re-Hub, the sales figures for outdoor brands such as Moncler and Canada Goose were 2.5 to 15 times higher on Dewu during the peak season than on the official online stores on Tmall. Luxury jewelers such as Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels also sold up to 6.8 times more on Dewu than on Tmall, with discounts often ranging from 50 to 70 percent.
The luxury brands are now taking action. Blacklists for suspicious buyers have been introduced, wholesale channels are being tightened and the flow of goods to China is being analyzed more closely. But for companies in China to finally start doing better again, one thing is needed above all: The economic environment must improve and consumer sentiment must pick up again.
China’s overcapacity is a cause for concern worldwide. The reason for this is easy to see: China accounts for almost a third of global value creation in industrial manufacturing and a fifth of global exports in this sector. However, there is every reason to believe that the decline of the Chinese manufacturing industry is imminent.
To understand the current situation in China, it is worth taking a look at Japan’s recent history. After the Second World War, the manufacturing sector in Japan grew rapidly, largely thanks to access to the huge US market. But with the 1985 Plaza Accord (which revalued the yen and weakened Japanese exports), an ageing population and a shrinking workforce, this trend reversed.
From 1985 to 2022, the share of Japanese products in US imports fell from 22 percent to five percent, and Japan’s share of global manufacturing exports fell from 16 percent to four percent. In addition, Japan’s share of global manufacturing value added also fell dramatically, from 22 percent in 1992 to five percent in 2022. The number of Japanese companies in the Fortune Global 500 list fell from 149 in 1995 to just 40 today.
China has followed a similar upward trend in recent decades, but the rise of the Chinese manufacturing industry was even more dependent on the US market. In the period 1978 to 1984, Japan’s imports from the United States were roughly equivalent to its exports to the US at 51 percent. In comparison, the share of Chinese imports from the US was 23% between 2001 and 2018.
The main reason for this imbalance is China’s family planning policy. Normally, household disposable income would account for 60 to 70 percent of a country’s GDP to support household consumption of around 60 percent of GDP. In China, however, the one-child policy – which was in force from 1980 to 2015 – restricted household incomes, encouraged high savings and dampened domestic demand.
As a result, the disposable income of Chinese households fell from 62% of GDP in 1983 to currently 44% of GDP, with household consumption falling from 53% to 37% of GDP. In contrast, household consumption in Japan is 56% of GDP. Looked at another way: If wages were normally 60 to 70 dollars, Chinese workers would only get 44 dollars, which would equate to a purchasing power of 37 dollars, while the purchasing power of Japanese workers would be 56 dollars.
However, China’s government has plenty of financial resources at its disposal, which it uses for industrial subsidies and investments in the manufacturing industry. As the Chinese manufacturing sector also promises high returns, international investors are happy to pour their capital into it. In addition, there is a surplus of around 100 million workers, making it difficult to avoid overcapacity.
In view of insufficient domestic demand, China’s only way to reduce its overcapacity and create enough jobs for its population is to maintain a high current account surplus. This is where the US comes into play: the share of Chinese goods in US imports rose from one percent in 1985 to 22 percent in 2017. Between 2001 and 2018, the US accounted for three-quarters of China’s trade surplus.
China’s huge surplus is a mirror image of America’s deficit. The rise of the Chinese manufacturing sector is probably not the only reason for the decline of its US counterpart, but it is a significant one. America’s share of global manufacturing exports remained stable at 13% between 1971 and 2000, but fell dramatically after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, dropping to just 6% in 2022. America’s share of value added in the manufacturing sector also plummeted, from 25 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2021.
The American Rust Belt, which stretches from Wisconsin to eastern Pennsylvania, has been enormously affected by these developments, which is why the population’s frustration with globalization and the “political elites” who promoted it has been growing steadily. In 2016, Donald Trump moved into the White House on the back of this frustration, promising to revive US manufacturing and force China to change its trade practices. Trump hopes to do the same again this November.
In this sense, China’s one-child policy has changed the US political landscape indirectly, but profoundly. Today, American policy is reshaping the Chinese economy. The American measures against China, which began in 2018 with Trump’s tariffs and intensified under President Joe Biden, have led to the share of Chinese goods in US imports falling to just 12.7% in the first half of 2024.
China is not only losing the US market, but also some of its own manufacturing operations, which are shifting some of its production to countries such as Vietnam and Mexico to avoid US tariffs. This partial relocation points to a broader retreat, similar to the situation of the Japanese manufacturing sector when it was in decline.
China is increasingly resembling Japan for two other reasons. First, the labor force is shrinking and aging rapidly. According to government figures, annual births have fallen from an average of 23.4 million between 1962 and 1990 to just nine million last year, and even this figure is probably greatly exaggerated. In a few years, China will probably only have six million births a year. Meanwhile, the average age of migrant workers, who make up 80 percent of China’s manufacturing workforce, has risen from 34 years in 2008 to 43 years last year, with the proportion of those over 50 rising from 11 percent to 31 percent. Some production facilities are already being closed due to labor shortages.
Secondly, China’s service sector will put increasing pressure on the manufacturing sector. As the Chinese government seeks to increase the share of disposable household income in GDP, Chinese demand for US goods will increase and some of the manufacturing workforce will move into the service sector, which will also absorb the rapidly growing number of university graduates.
The decline of the manufacturing sector may not be as rapid as in Japan, as China has a larger domestic market and a more extensive industrial ecosystem. The country is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence and robotics, which could lead to productivity gains. Nevertheless, the decline is inevitable and irreversible. Unfortunately for the US, this will not necessarily lead to a revival of American industry.
Yi Fuxian is a senior researcher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He was at the forefront of the movement against China’s one-child policy and is the author of the book Big Country with an Empty Nest (China Development Press, 2013), which was banned in China at first, but was then found in the ranking of the 100 books of the year 2013 by China Publishing Today.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
www.project-syndicate.org
With their bright yellow anoraks, they look like Lego figures or members of the Minions. The electricians are installing intelligent switches on the electricity pylons in the city of Chuzhou, Anhui province. Their aim is to coordinate and portion the electricity demand of the local autumn harvest so that private households do not run out of electricity. A highly complex undertaking in the course of China’s energy transition: After all, no one should be cut off in the fall.
It seems like the Chinese domestic market is jinxed. Instead of keeping the great promises of the future, consumers of high-end watches, jewelry and bespoke suits are increasingly looking for second-hand luxury on the Internet.
As soon as the balance on the private account does not show an exorbitant credit balance, then at some point even the higher earners in China will turn the Mao over twice. After all, the Chinese are born thrifty like few other nations in the world.
Luxury manufacturers from Europe are painfully feeling the ghost of the past in their sales figures, writes Jörg Petring. So the hint for Louis Vuitton and Co. is to simply lower their prices so that the level of receivables and the value of goods realistically converge.
Incidentally, luxury goods also include metals and minerals. At least in the political poker of national economies. China is sitting on such large quantities of rare earths and critical minerals that it can even use its exports as economic policy leverage. This is perhaps a little different from having a chic Louis Vuitton handbag on your arm. But it is certainly also a form of luxury.
Christiane Kühl explains why this luxury could lead to further export restrictions from China.
On Sept. 15, export controls come into force in China for the metal antimony, which is required for car batteries and solar panels, but also for weapons and military equipment such as ammunition and night vision devices. After gallium, germanium and high-purity graphite, it is the fourth metal for which Beijing regulates exports. It is therefore no wonder that the West is increasingly concerned about its dependence on China for critical minerals. The country is the world’s most important source of numerous important minerals or products processed from them.
The target countries are stepping up their efforts to diversify the procurement of critical minerals. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act, for example, sets a maximum of 65% of the demand for each critical raw material to be sourced from a single country by 2030. However, the changeover may take longer than the law envisages.
Beijing’s argument is always that the controls serve to protect “national security”. Many experts see them more as a reaction to US export restrictions or investigations and countervailing duties such as those imposed by the EU on EVs.
In December, Beijing also banned the export of technologies for the production of so-called permanent magnets made from rare earths, which are used for batteries, turbines and electronics. This is seen as a warning shot that the rare earths themselves could also be targeted.
“Of its small arsenal of possible retaliatory measures, imposing export restrictions on critical minerals is the most practical option“, says Cory Combs, Associate Director of Climate-Energy-Industrial Policy at the consulting agency Trivium China. This is because China’s mineral wealth “influences a large number of downstream consumers”. Combs was already expecting new controls for 2024 in the spring. “The big question is which mineral exports China will target next”, he wrote. Beijing has since given the answer: antimony.
The metal was one of nine minerals for which Combs and his team predicted controls after analyzing the likelihood of such controls for 73 critical commodities based on China’s strategic interests, according to a scoring system. Beijing will select minerals that meet these criteria for export controls:
Beijing, on the other hand, will avoid controls
The scoring system took all these aspects into account. In addition to antimony, the following eight minerals ended up on the Trivium list of minerals that could be affected by export controls:
According to Trivium, all of these minerals are listed as “critical minerals” in the USA, the EU and Japan – with the exception of bismuth, which is not on the list in Japan. The dependencies are similar for minerals that are already subject to export controls: China’s share of global graphite production is 78 percent. The figure for antimony production is 48 percent.
It remains to be seen whether the controls feared by Combs will actually take place. So far, the rules on the export of graphite, gallium and germanium are primarily a threat that serves as a deterrent. In fact, China has not yet banned any exports of these metals.
Nevertheless, the announcements had an impact on trade. According to Bloomberg, overseas sales of gallium, germanium and graphite jumped in the month before the export controls began as buyers stocked up – followed by a sharp drop and then a recovery. The same could now happen with antimony.
While gallium has largely recovered, germanium and graphite are lagging somewhat behind according to the Bloomberg report – which is partly due to the fact that buyers are already in the process of diversifying their sources. For example, the EU and the USA agreed to supply germanium to the Democratic Republic of Congo in April.
China’s exports of natural graphite in the first seven months of 2024 were 17 percent lower than in the same period last year, which, according to Xu Peng of Bloomberg NEF, is due to both an increase in graphite mining abroad and a decline in demand for electric cars. The situation is therefore more complex than it appears at first glance.
The European luxury groups’ big bet on the Chinese market is in danger of being lost. Their latest business figures have been consistently disappointing, mainly because things are no longer running smoothly in China. Paris-based industry leader LVMH, which owns brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Bulgari, reported a 14 percent drop in sales in the region in the second quarter. Sales had already fallen by six percent in the first quarter.
Investors are correspondingly disappointed. Due to the ongoing slump, LVMH is no longer the most valuable company in Europe. Founder Bernard Arnault had to relinquish the title of richest man in the world to Elon Musk. But LVMH is not alone with these problems.
The stakes are high for Europe’s economy, as practically all major luxury brands come from there. China has been their most important growth market for years. Chinese buyers now account for 23% of global sales of luxury goods. According to forecasts by the consulting firm Bain, this share should actually rise to 40 percent by 2030. The Chinese would then be the most important group of buyers, ahead of Europeans and Americans.
However, the industry is slowly coming to the realization that the optimistic forecasts were perhaps too ambitious. Conditions in China have developed differently than expected.
The market came to a standstill in 2022 when the government imposed pandemic lockdowns in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Following the easing of restrictions, there was a brief shopping boom. However, the weak economy and the ongoing real estate crisis have taken away the middle class’s desire for luxury.
A certain modesty has also spread, as the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei reports. Second-hand luxury goods are becoming increasingly popular in China. “New things are expensive, so I look at second-hand items”, Nikkei quotes a customer in a used luxury bag store in Guangzhou, where designer bags from Louis Vuitton and Burberry are offered at discounts of up to 80 percent.
But it is not only the second-hand trend that is causing problems for European companies. They are also facing a growing grey market, where brand-new, authentic products are sold at high discounts. According to a report by the data company Re-Hub, quoted by Bloomberg, the Chinese online platform Dewu in particular has changed the market considerably. In some cases, more luxury items are now sold on Dewu than on official online store platforms such as Tmall, which belongs to Alibaba.
The business model is simple: luxury brands actually strictly control their distribution channels and prefer to sell through their own boutiques or selected partners. Grey market platforms such as Dewu bypass these channels and are used by individuals or small retailers who source goods from abroad or via unofficial channels.
Many gray market offers currently come from Japan. Due to the favorable yen, luxury items were cheaper there than in China. Retailers who smuggle the goods past customs and offer them on Dewu are doing good business. According to Bloomberg and Re-Hub, the sales figures for outdoor brands such as Moncler and Canada Goose were 2.5 to 15 times higher on Dewu during the peak season than on the official online stores on Tmall. Luxury jewelers such as Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels also sold up to 6.8 times more on Dewu than on Tmall, with discounts often ranging from 50 to 70 percent.
The luxury brands are now taking action. Blacklists for suspicious buyers have been introduced, wholesale channels are being tightened and the flow of goods to China is being analyzed more closely. But for companies in China to finally start doing better again, one thing is needed above all: The economic environment must improve and consumer sentiment must pick up again.
China’s overcapacity is a cause for concern worldwide. The reason for this is easy to see: China accounts for almost a third of global value creation in industrial manufacturing and a fifth of global exports in this sector. However, there is every reason to believe that the decline of the Chinese manufacturing industry is imminent.
To understand the current situation in China, it is worth taking a look at Japan’s recent history. After the Second World War, the manufacturing sector in Japan grew rapidly, largely thanks to access to the huge US market. But with the 1985 Plaza Accord (which revalued the yen and weakened Japanese exports), an ageing population and a shrinking workforce, this trend reversed.
From 1985 to 2022, the share of Japanese products in US imports fell from 22 percent to five percent, and Japan’s share of global manufacturing exports fell from 16 percent to four percent. In addition, Japan’s share of global manufacturing value added also fell dramatically, from 22 percent in 1992 to five percent in 2022. The number of Japanese companies in the Fortune Global 500 list fell from 149 in 1995 to just 40 today.
China has followed a similar upward trend in recent decades, but the rise of the Chinese manufacturing industry was even more dependent on the US market. In the period 1978 to 1984, Japan’s imports from the United States were roughly equivalent to its exports to the US at 51 percent. In comparison, the share of Chinese imports from the US was 23% between 2001 and 2018.
The main reason for this imbalance is China’s family planning policy. Normally, household disposable income would account for 60 to 70 percent of a country’s GDP to support household consumption of around 60 percent of GDP. In China, however, the one-child policy – which was in force from 1980 to 2015 – restricted household incomes, encouraged high savings and dampened domestic demand.
As a result, the disposable income of Chinese households fell from 62% of GDP in 1983 to currently 44% of GDP, with household consumption falling from 53% to 37% of GDP. In contrast, household consumption in Japan is 56% of GDP. Looked at another way: If wages were normally 60 to 70 dollars, Chinese workers would only get 44 dollars, which would equate to a purchasing power of 37 dollars, while the purchasing power of Japanese workers would be 56 dollars.
However, China’s government has plenty of financial resources at its disposal, which it uses for industrial subsidies and investments in the manufacturing industry. As the Chinese manufacturing sector also promises high returns, international investors are happy to pour their capital into it. In addition, there is a surplus of around 100 million workers, making it difficult to avoid overcapacity.
In view of insufficient domestic demand, China’s only way to reduce its overcapacity and create enough jobs for its population is to maintain a high current account surplus. This is where the US comes into play: the share of Chinese goods in US imports rose from one percent in 1985 to 22 percent in 2017. Between 2001 and 2018, the US accounted for three-quarters of China’s trade surplus.
China’s huge surplus is a mirror image of America’s deficit. The rise of the Chinese manufacturing sector is probably not the only reason for the decline of its US counterpart, but it is a significant one. America’s share of global manufacturing exports remained stable at 13% between 1971 and 2000, but fell dramatically after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, dropping to just 6% in 2022. America’s share of value added in the manufacturing sector also plummeted, from 25 percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2021.
The American Rust Belt, which stretches from Wisconsin to eastern Pennsylvania, has been enormously affected by these developments, which is why the population’s frustration with globalization and the “political elites” who promoted it has been growing steadily. In 2016, Donald Trump moved into the White House on the back of this frustration, promising to revive US manufacturing and force China to change its trade practices. Trump hopes to do the same again this November.
In this sense, China’s one-child policy has changed the US political landscape indirectly, but profoundly. Today, American policy is reshaping the Chinese economy. The American measures against China, which began in 2018 with Trump’s tariffs and intensified under President Joe Biden, have led to the share of Chinese goods in US imports falling to just 12.7% in the first half of 2024.
China is not only losing the US market, but also some of its own manufacturing operations, which are shifting some of its production to countries such as Vietnam and Mexico to avoid US tariffs. This partial relocation points to a broader retreat, similar to the situation of the Japanese manufacturing sector when it was in decline.
China is increasingly resembling Japan for two other reasons. First, the labor force is shrinking and aging rapidly. According to government figures, annual births have fallen from an average of 23.4 million between 1962 and 1990 to just nine million last year, and even this figure is probably greatly exaggerated. In a few years, China will probably only have six million births a year. Meanwhile, the average age of migrant workers, who make up 80 percent of China’s manufacturing workforce, has risen from 34 years in 2008 to 43 years last year, with the proportion of those over 50 rising from 11 percent to 31 percent. Some production facilities are already being closed due to labor shortages.
Secondly, China’s service sector will put increasing pressure on the manufacturing sector. As the Chinese government seeks to increase the share of disposable household income in GDP, Chinese demand for US goods will increase and some of the manufacturing workforce will move into the service sector, which will also absorb the rapidly growing number of university graduates.
The decline of the manufacturing sector may not be as rapid as in Japan, as China has a larger domestic market and a more extensive industrial ecosystem. The country is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence and robotics, which could lead to productivity gains. Nevertheless, the decline is inevitable and irreversible. Unfortunately for the US, this will not necessarily lead to a revival of American industry.
Yi Fuxian is a senior researcher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He was at the forefront of the movement against China’s one-child policy and is the author of the book Big Country with an Empty Nest (China Development Press, 2013), which was banned in China at first, but was then found in the ranking of the 100 books of the year 2013 by China Publishing Today.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
www.project-syndicate.org
With their bright yellow anoraks, they look like Lego figures or members of the Minions. The electricians are installing intelligent switches on the electricity pylons in the city of Chuzhou, Anhui province. Their aim is to coordinate and portion the electricity demand of the local autumn harvest so that private households do not run out of electricity. A highly complex undertaking in the course of China’s energy transition: After all, no one should be cut off in the fall.
