Full wind speed ahead! Since 2020, the construction of wind energy plants in the People’s Republic has been increasing, albeit with strong fluctuations. The expansion targets are ambitious, as Christiane Kuehl reports. Provinces offer subsidies and companies focus on scale. However, the power grid and electricity markets still need to improve to efficiently utilize renewable energy.
It was already clear that this year’s Annual General Meeting of Volkswagen in Berlin would be much more difficult than in previous years. However, the protests that accompanied the event on Wednesday were unexpectedly intense, as Marcel Grzanna reports. Activists expressed their displeasure with the automaker’s involvement in the Chinese region of Xinjiang with various actions. Among other things, they threw a pie towards the podium. One activist protested topless. VW remained true to its PR clichés despite it all.
In the Heads section, we introduce you to the work of Guo Yuhua today. The once renowned sociologist in China was recently banned from leaving the country. She collected, among other things, oral histories from farmers who were not allowed to flee their villages during the great famines. Guo is just the latest case in an endless series. The central government repeatedly holds critical voices hostage within its own borders.
As announced, human rights activists disrupted Volkswagen’s shareholders’ meeting several times on Wednesday. With various actions, they protested against the carmaker’s involvement in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Among other things, the activists threw a cake toward the podium, where Wolfgang Porsche was seated as a representative of the owner family on his 80th birthday.
Meanwhile, Group CEO Oliver Blume’s speech was interrupted by a bare-chested woman in front of the podium who criticized the “exploitation” of workers in Xinjiang before being led out of the hall by security personnel.
Unimpressed by this, Blume announced that the group intends to continue investing and growing in China. The “China Strategy 2030” envisages an “even stronger focus on Chinese customers” and “accelerating the development of new technologies” through local partnerships.
In front of the entrance to the City Cube, non-governmental organizations and the Dachverband Kritischer Aktionaere had already protested before the event began. In front of a VW Golf, two people practiced shoulder-to-shoulder. One person was masked as China’s head of state Xi Jinping, the other as VW CEO Blume. The Xi impersonator was holding two people in blue overalls on a chain. The activists are demanding an end to the manufacturer’s Xinjiang involvement.
China CEO Ralf Brandstaetter commented on the allegations of possible human rights violations. He said that in order to meet the cultural needs of the workforce, the plant had “created an inclusive working environment that respects religious beliefs and different cultures.” For example, he said, there are halal dishes for Muslims in the canteen. Because of contractual obligations, however, Volkswagen is not able to order external audits without the consent of its joint venture partner SAIC.
Brandstaetter said he agreed with SAIC that fundamental values and laws must be respected and protected in joint ventures. After a visit to the plant in Xinjiang in February, Brandstaetter could not find any evidence of human rights violations. He also said he had no reason to doubt the relevant sources for his information. Otherwise, he said, the group would “react immediately and without delay”.
Brandstätter thus resorted to Volkswagen’s usual defense strategy. The group defends its plant in Xinjiang but largely avoids accusations against weak points in its supply chains. Researchers at Hallam University in Sheffield had revealed the major risks to which Volkswagen, but also other German manufacturers such as BMW or Mercedes-Benz, expose themselves through their value creation in China.
“With its answers, Volkswagen shows that it has not understood or does not want to understand the systematics and extent of human rights violations,” said Hanno Schedler of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), which participated in the action in front of the entrance. “With PR-speak VW mocks the victims of genocide,” Schedler said. It is all the more important, he said, that the state government of Lower Saxony, as a shareholder, also abandons its restraint towards Volkswagen and demands a withdrawal from the region.
The Wolfsburg company’s Xinjiang engagement is also viewed critically by fund companies that represent the interests of their millions of shareholders vis-à-vis the corporations. These include Union Investment, whose head of ESG Capital Markets & Stewardship, Janne Werning, reminded the board of management on Wednesday that Volkswagen owed satisfactory answers despite repeated requests.
Whether the little precise explanations of the board Union Investment convince is still uncertain. “It is not yet possible to pass judgment on this so soon after the meeting,” said Werning. Together with the fund company’s ESG committee, Volkswagen’s statements will be evaluated in the coming days.
Commenting on the risks of the group’s increasing dependence on China, Brandstaetter said that it was a matter of mutual dependence because of the deep-rooted supply chains. Volkswagen was focusing on diversification rather than decoupling. The group supported the political goal of creating corresponding incentives for German companies, he said.
China consumes more coal and emits more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world – but it also generates more renewable energy than any other state. The controversial hydroelectric projects of the past and huge photovoltaic projects in the west of the country are especially well known. However, wind power is also gaining importance in the plans. Since 2020, the construction of wind energy plants has been picking up, albeit with strong fluctuations.
2020 was a record year for China’s wind power. Around 72 gigawatts (GW) were installed, more than twice as many as in 2019, most in December: Operators gave it their all, as China abolished fixed feed-in tariffs for new solar and onshore wind power projects in 2021, as they had become competitive from Beijing’s point of view. Some observers believe that plants that were not quite finished were also counted at that time so that they could still receive full funding. These GWs were then missing from the 2021 statistics, which showed a significant dip. And in 2022, China only connected wind turbines with a capacity of 37.6 gigawatts to the grid.
But now the pace is set to pick up again in general. In the first quarter of 2023, 10.4 GW were connected to the grid, 31 percent more than in the same quarter of the previous year. Trivium Netzero industry analysts expect between 60 and 75 GW of new wind power capacity to be installed this year, about twice as much as in 2022.
According to data from the Global Energy Monitor (GEM), the total operating capacity of Chinese wind farms in China was over 278 GW in January 2023, about ten times that of India (28 GW). In Germany, it was just under 40 GW. In 2022, China generated 46 percent more wind energy than the whole of Europe. For the first time, in 2022, the capacities of renewable energies – which, in addition to wind, solar, and hydropower, also include nuclear power in China – exceeded the capacities of coal power. According to the National Energy Administration, renewables accounted for 47.3 percent of the country’s power generation capacity, compared to 43.8 percent for coal. Coal plants run more continuously than wind and solar plants, which rely on the weather.
While wind turbines used to be mainly located in the windy, sparsely populated highlands of the northwest a few years ago, they are now turning in 30 provinces. According to GEM, ten provinces have more than 10 GW of capacity. This is also because Beijing is putting pressure on the regions to set their own targets for wind and solar power expansion. These local plans could more than double China’s wind and solar capacity by 2025 if they are implemented.
And for the construction of the facilities, the authorities continue to spend a lot of money, not only in the central government. “Chinese provinces often extend their own subsidies for wind energy,” according to Joseph Webster, China expert at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. As an example, he cites Guangdong’s subsidy for offshore wind projects of 1,500 yuan per kilowatt. “At this scale, a similar program in the United States would yield about $109 million in subsidies for a 500 megawatt turbine, a remarkable level of support from a subnational government,” Webster said.
Especially the mega-projects in the dry expanses of the northwest, pushed forward by the central government, are becoming increasingly important for China’s energy mix. President Xi Jinping has announced plans to complete around 455 GW of wind and solar capacity in the region by 2030. About 200 GW of wind and solar capacity would go online in these mega-projects by 2025, said Li Qionghui of the state grid operator State Grid to Bloomberg recently. Three-quarters of this would then be transported out of the region via long-distance transmission lines to other parts of the country.
It is these transmission lines for ever-increasing amounts of electricity – sometimes over very long distances – that are a major challenge. In the early 2010s, the failure to build enough suitable transmission lines slowed wind power growth in some of the windiest provinces, according to Webster. But in recent years, China has been working on expanding its networks and creating a unified electricity market for green energy. Since then, network bottlenecks for wind power have steadily decreased.
China is aiming for unprecedented scale in many areas, including wind power. In Jiuquan in Gansu province, the world’s largest wind power base currently has a capacity of ten GW. This is set to increase to 20 GW.
All of the mega turbines are larger than those under development by the three major international manufacturers, such as Vestas, Siemens Gamesa and GE. This is why there are criticisms that China has siphoned off technologies from western firms when they once pushed into the Chinese market as pioneers.
Chinese engineers had to be trained and technology transferred, according to Webster. “Some foreign companies have also had their intellectual property stolen by Chinese companies, often with the support of Chinese intelligence services.” The result: local companies now dominate China’s market.
These days, incidents are accumulating that seem to repeat the traumatic history of the People’s Republic of China: During her field research, sociologist Guo Yuhua once collected the oral stories of farmers who were not allowed to flee their villages during the great famines. 60 years later, the retired professor herself stands at the border crossing from Shenzhen to the former British colony of Hong Kong – and is rejected by customs officials. Beijing has imposed a travel ban against her, the academic was informed.
Guo Yuhua is just the latest case in an endless series. Again and again, the central government holds critical voices hostage within its own borders. The human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders has identified in a recent study how systematically President Xi Jinping has expanded the practice: In the last four years alone, five additional laws have been passed or changed that provide for such exit bans.
The NGO estimates that tens of thousands of Chinese citizens are currently subject to such a clause. A recent scientific study recorded almost 130 cases between 1995 and 2019 in which foreign citizens were also affected – mostly North Americans.
The 66-year-old is considered one of the country’s leading sociologists. She has dedicated her academic life to field research like few others. She became known in the mid-1990s for her project “Communist Civilization,” in which she traced the history of several village communities since the beginning of the collectivist land reforms of the 1950s. Following the model of so-called “oral history”, the farmers, as eyewitnesses, recorded their life experiences as independently and in their own words as possible.
Meanwhile, under President Xi Jinping, this approach is de facto no longer possible because the Communist Party always wants to maintain control over the narrative – whether in journalism, politics or science. It wants to prevent even the dark sides of history from coming to light. Guo Yuhua has repeatedly unearthed these despite the political climate, as the title of her 2013 book alone illustrates: “The Narrative of Those Who Suffer.”
The work was banned on the mainland and could only be printed in Hong Kong. However, smuggled goods from there repeatedly made their way to Beijing, even though the deliveries have hardly made it through the mail recently. Guo herself has complained repeatedly that, as a renowned researcher, she has no access to some of her own publications.
Her voice has also increasingly been silenced in other ways: Her alma mater – the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing – recently banned virtually all of Guo’s books from its library shelves. And again and again, censors also deleted her posts from social media.
That Guo Yuhua was committed to ordinary people was not necessarily in her genes. She grew up in a state-owned housing estate in Beijing reserved for the country’s political leadership. Her parents were military officers who served the central government. However, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Guo’s father fell out of favor and was persecuted by the authorities. He died of liver cirrhosis in 1968 – also because he was denied access to medication. Like millions of young people at the time, Guo Yuhua was banished to the provinces to perform forced labor.
Her biography bears remarkable parallels to that of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who was born as a “princeling” to a powerful party official who was later purged by the founder of the state, Mao Zedong. While Xi became “redder than red” in the following years, Guo Yuhua chose a different path: She maintained her critical view of the Communist elite.
Her rejection of the circumstances became increasingly uncompromising, especially due to the policy of the current state leader, Xi Jinping, who took office in 2012. The 69-year-old expanded ideological control to all areas of society and did not tolerate any intellectual freedom in the universities. Recently, several professors at Tsinghua University were arrested and fired. When the publicist Geng Xiaonan was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021, Guo was one of the few voices that still publicly expressed solidarity. This could now be one of the reasons why she is not allowed to leave China.
In one of her last interviews from spring 2020, she spoke with disarming honesty about her feelings: “Of course, I’m afraid! Who wouldn’t be? But no matter how much fear you have, you must not kneel before them or let yourself fall.” For her, there is no other choice but to continue to speak out publicly. Fabian Kretschmer
Yes, yes, we know, everything was better in the past. Once upon a time, every middle-class student could prepare their three warm meals commonly eaten in China by themselves. At least, that’s what is often claimed. In times of fast food, food delivery services and intermittent fasting, this skill has been lost for many. This school in Yongzhou, Hunan Province, wants to counter this trend and celebrates cooking classes in the schoolyard for the whole school. However, the cooking teacher doesn’t seem to generate much enthusiasm among the students.
Full wind speed ahead! Since 2020, the construction of wind energy plants in the People’s Republic has been increasing, albeit with strong fluctuations. The expansion targets are ambitious, as Christiane Kuehl reports. Provinces offer subsidies and companies focus on scale. However, the power grid and electricity markets still need to improve to efficiently utilize renewable energy.
It was already clear that this year’s Annual General Meeting of Volkswagen in Berlin would be much more difficult than in previous years. However, the protests that accompanied the event on Wednesday were unexpectedly intense, as Marcel Grzanna reports. Activists expressed their displeasure with the automaker’s involvement in the Chinese region of Xinjiang with various actions. Among other things, they threw a pie towards the podium. One activist protested topless. VW remained true to its PR clichés despite it all.
In the Heads section, we introduce you to the work of Guo Yuhua today. The once renowned sociologist in China was recently banned from leaving the country. She collected, among other things, oral histories from farmers who were not allowed to flee their villages during the great famines. Guo is just the latest case in an endless series. The central government repeatedly holds critical voices hostage within its own borders.
As announced, human rights activists disrupted Volkswagen’s shareholders’ meeting several times on Wednesday. With various actions, they protested against the carmaker’s involvement in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Among other things, the activists threw a cake toward the podium, where Wolfgang Porsche was seated as a representative of the owner family on his 80th birthday.
Meanwhile, Group CEO Oliver Blume’s speech was interrupted by a bare-chested woman in front of the podium who criticized the “exploitation” of workers in Xinjiang before being led out of the hall by security personnel.
Unimpressed by this, Blume announced that the group intends to continue investing and growing in China. The “China Strategy 2030” envisages an “even stronger focus on Chinese customers” and “accelerating the development of new technologies” through local partnerships.
In front of the entrance to the City Cube, non-governmental organizations and the Dachverband Kritischer Aktionaere had already protested before the event began. In front of a VW Golf, two people practiced shoulder-to-shoulder. One person was masked as China’s head of state Xi Jinping, the other as VW CEO Blume. The Xi impersonator was holding two people in blue overalls on a chain. The activists are demanding an end to the manufacturer’s Xinjiang involvement.
China CEO Ralf Brandstaetter commented on the allegations of possible human rights violations. He said that in order to meet the cultural needs of the workforce, the plant had “created an inclusive working environment that respects religious beliefs and different cultures.” For example, he said, there are halal dishes for Muslims in the canteen. Because of contractual obligations, however, Volkswagen is not able to order external audits without the consent of its joint venture partner SAIC.
Brandstaetter said he agreed with SAIC that fundamental values and laws must be respected and protected in joint ventures. After a visit to the plant in Xinjiang in February, Brandstaetter could not find any evidence of human rights violations. He also said he had no reason to doubt the relevant sources for his information. Otherwise, he said, the group would “react immediately and without delay”.
Brandstätter thus resorted to Volkswagen’s usual defense strategy. The group defends its plant in Xinjiang but largely avoids accusations against weak points in its supply chains. Researchers at Hallam University in Sheffield had revealed the major risks to which Volkswagen, but also other German manufacturers such as BMW or Mercedes-Benz, expose themselves through their value creation in China.
“With its answers, Volkswagen shows that it has not understood or does not want to understand the systematics and extent of human rights violations,” said Hanno Schedler of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), which participated in the action in front of the entrance. “With PR-speak VW mocks the victims of genocide,” Schedler said. It is all the more important, he said, that the state government of Lower Saxony, as a shareholder, also abandons its restraint towards Volkswagen and demands a withdrawal from the region.
The Wolfsburg company’s Xinjiang engagement is also viewed critically by fund companies that represent the interests of their millions of shareholders vis-à-vis the corporations. These include Union Investment, whose head of ESG Capital Markets & Stewardship, Janne Werning, reminded the board of management on Wednesday that Volkswagen owed satisfactory answers despite repeated requests.
Whether the little precise explanations of the board Union Investment convince is still uncertain. “It is not yet possible to pass judgment on this so soon after the meeting,” said Werning. Together with the fund company’s ESG committee, Volkswagen’s statements will be evaluated in the coming days.
Commenting on the risks of the group’s increasing dependence on China, Brandstaetter said that it was a matter of mutual dependence because of the deep-rooted supply chains. Volkswagen was focusing on diversification rather than decoupling. The group supported the political goal of creating corresponding incentives for German companies, he said.
China consumes more coal and emits more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world – but it also generates more renewable energy than any other state. The controversial hydroelectric projects of the past and huge photovoltaic projects in the west of the country are especially well known. However, wind power is also gaining importance in the plans. Since 2020, the construction of wind energy plants has been picking up, albeit with strong fluctuations.
2020 was a record year for China’s wind power. Around 72 gigawatts (GW) were installed, more than twice as many as in 2019, most in December: Operators gave it their all, as China abolished fixed feed-in tariffs for new solar and onshore wind power projects in 2021, as they had become competitive from Beijing’s point of view. Some observers believe that plants that were not quite finished were also counted at that time so that they could still receive full funding. These GWs were then missing from the 2021 statistics, which showed a significant dip. And in 2022, China only connected wind turbines with a capacity of 37.6 gigawatts to the grid.
But now the pace is set to pick up again in general. In the first quarter of 2023, 10.4 GW were connected to the grid, 31 percent more than in the same quarter of the previous year. Trivium Netzero industry analysts expect between 60 and 75 GW of new wind power capacity to be installed this year, about twice as much as in 2022.
According to data from the Global Energy Monitor (GEM), the total operating capacity of Chinese wind farms in China was over 278 GW in January 2023, about ten times that of India (28 GW). In Germany, it was just under 40 GW. In 2022, China generated 46 percent more wind energy than the whole of Europe. For the first time, in 2022, the capacities of renewable energies – which, in addition to wind, solar, and hydropower, also include nuclear power in China – exceeded the capacities of coal power. According to the National Energy Administration, renewables accounted for 47.3 percent of the country’s power generation capacity, compared to 43.8 percent for coal. Coal plants run more continuously than wind and solar plants, which rely on the weather.
While wind turbines used to be mainly located in the windy, sparsely populated highlands of the northwest a few years ago, they are now turning in 30 provinces. According to GEM, ten provinces have more than 10 GW of capacity. This is also because Beijing is putting pressure on the regions to set their own targets for wind and solar power expansion. These local plans could more than double China’s wind and solar capacity by 2025 if they are implemented.
And for the construction of the facilities, the authorities continue to spend a lot of money, not only in the central government. “Chinese provinces often extend their own subsidies for wind energy,” according to Joseph Webster, China expert at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. As an example, he cites Guangdong’s subsidy for offshore wind projects of 1,500 yuan per kilowatt. “At this scale, a similar program in the United States would yield about $109 million in subsidies for a 500 megawatt turbine, a remarkable level of support from a subnational government,” Webster said.
Especially the mega-projects in the dry expanses of the northwest, pushed forward by the central government, are becoming increasingly important for China’s energy mix. President Xi Jinping has announced plans to complete around 455 GW of wind and solar capacity in the region by 2030. About 200 GW of wind and solar capacity would go online in these mega-projects by 2025, said Li Qionghui of the state grid operator State Grid to Bloomberg recently. Three-quarters of this would then be transported out of the region via long-distance transmission lines to other parts of the country.
It is these transmission lines for ever-increasing amounts of electricity – sometimes over very long distances – that are a major challenge. In the early 2010s, the failure to build enough suitable transmission lines slowed wind power growth in some of the windiest provinces, according to Webster. But in recent years, China has been working on expanding its networks and creating a unified electricity market for green energy. Since then, network bottlenecks for wind power have steadily decreased.
China is aiming for unprecedented scale in many areas, including wind power. In Jiuquan in Gansu province, the world’s largest wind power base currently has a capacity of ten GW. This is set to increase to 20 GW.
All of the mega turbines are larger than those under development by the three major international manufacturers, such as Vestas, Siemens Gamesa and GE. This is why there are criticisms that China has siphoned off technologies from western firms when they once pushed into the Chinese market as pioneers.
Chinese engineers had to be trained and technology transferred, according to Webster. “Some foreign companies have also had their intellectual property stolen by Chinese companies, often with the support of Chinese intelligence services.” The result: local companies now dominate China’s market.
These days, incidents are accumulating that seem to repeat the traumatic history of the People’s Republic of China: During her field research, sociologist Guo Yuhua once collected the oral stories of farmers who were not allowed to flee their villages during the great famines. 60 years later, the retired professor herself stands at the border crossing from Shenzhen to the former British colony of Hong Kong – and is rejected by customs officials. Beijing has imposed a travel ban against her, the academic was informed.
Guo Yuhua is just the latest case in an endless series. Again and again, the central government holds critical voices hostage within its own borders. The human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders has identified in a recent study how systematically President Xi Jinping has expanded the practice: In the last four years alone, five additional laws have been passed or changed that provide for such exit bans.
The NGO estimates that tens of thousands of Chinese citizens are currently subject to such a clause. A recent scientific study recorded almost 130 cases between 1995 and 2019 in which foreign citizens were also affected – mostly North Americans.
The 66-year-old is considered one of the country’s leading sociologists. She has dedicated her academic life to field research like few others. She became known in the mid-1990s for her project “Communist Civilization,” in which she traced the history of several village communities since the beginning of the collectivist land reforms of the 1950s. Following the model of so-called “oral history”, the farmers, as eyewitnesses, recorded their life experiences as independently and in their own words as possible.
Meanwhile, under President Xi Jinping, this approach is de facto no longer possible because the Communist Party always wants to maintain control over the narrative – whether in journalism, politics or science. It wants to prevent even the dark sides of history from coming to light. Guo Yuhua has repeatedly unearthed these despite the political climate, as the title of her 2013 book alone illustrates: “The Narrative of Those Who Suffer.”
The work was banned on the mainland and could only be printed in Hong Kong. However, smuggled goods from there repeatedly made their way to Beijing, even though the deliveries have hardly made it through the mail recently. Guo herself has complained repeatedly that, as a renowned researcher, she has no access to some of her own publications.
Her voice has also increasingly been silenced in other ways: Her alma mater – the elite Tsinghua University in Beijing – recently banned virtually all of Guo’s books from its library shelves. And again and again, censors also deleted her posts from social media.
That Guo Yuhua was committed to ordinary people was not necessarily in her genes. She grew up in a state-owned housing estate in Beijing reserved for the country’s political leadership. Her parents were military officers who served the central government. However, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Guo’s father fell out of favor and was persecuted by the authorities. He died of liver cirrhosis in 1968 – also because he was denied access to medication. Like millions of young people at the time, Guo Yuhua was banished to the provinces to perform forced labor.
Her biography bears remarkable parallels to that of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who was born as a “princeling” to a powerful party official who was later purged by the founder of the state, Mao Zedong. While Xi became “redder than red” in the following years, Guo Yuhua chose a different path: She maintained her critical view of the Communist elite.
Her rejection of the circumstances became increasingly uncompromising, especially due to the policy of the current state leader, Xi Jinping, who took office in 2012. The 69-year-old expanded ideological control to all areas of society and did not tolerate any intellectual freedom in the universities. Recently, several professors at Tsinghua University were arrested and fired. When the publicist Geng Xiaonan was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021, Guo was one of the few voices that still publicly expressed solidarity. This could now be one of the reasons why she is not allowed to leave China.
In one of her last interviews from spring 2020, she spoke with disarming honesty about her feelings: “Of course, I’m afraid! Who wouldn’t be? But no matter how much fear you have, you must not kneel before them or let yourself fall.” For her, there is no other choice but to continue to speak out publicly. Fabian Kretschmer
Yes, yes, we know, everything was better in the past. Once upon a time, every middle-class student could prepare their three warm meals commonly eaten in China by themselves. At least, that’s what is often claimed. In times of fast food, food delivery services and intermittent fasting, this skill has been lost for many. This school in Yongzhou, Hunan Province, wants to counter this trend and celebrates cooking classes in the schoolyard for the whole school. However, the cooking teacher doesn’t seem to generate much enthusiasm among the students.
