Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Drought threatens Chinese wheat crop
Tania Branigan, Guardian
Low rainfall in the north has put nearly half of the country's harvest at risk
---
A severe drought in northern China – considered the country's breadbasket – has hit almost 43% of the country's wheat crop this winter, senior officials have warned.

... Henan Daily reported that the drought is the province's most severe since 1951, with no rain for 105 days. It warned that up to 63% of the region's wheat crop is threatened.

... But environmental campaigners warned the lack of rainfall had merely exacerbated a long term problem in a naturally dry region where consumption has soared, thanks to intensive agriculture, industry and a rising and increasingly urbanised population.
(4 February 2009)

Darley: China Enters A New And 'Interesting' Phase
Julian Darley, blog
... Until recently, it has become the done thing to say that the Chinese economic miracle will carry it through to being the largest economy in the world, and that along with the rising India and a possibly resurgent Japan, the centre of the world will keep shifting towards the East and South Asia. It is possible that this is what will play out, but it might happen in unexpected ways or not all.

The economic crash has taken China by surprise, as it has every other country. The reduction in economic activity is causing a huge increase in unemployment, which is not easy to cope with in any country (neither for those without jobs nor those trying to govern), but in China the situation is rather more tricky, because every year it has to absorb six to eight million new migrant rural workers into the eastern industrial and heavily urbanised part of China.

... The Chinese leadership is only too painfully aware of the situation and is trying to introduce policies to stabilize and reverse the economic decline. They are doing this for a number of reasons including the fact that they don't want to see social order break down (which government does?) and they also see signs that the economic miracle has promoted the regions too much leading to an age-old problem of local and potentially uncontrollable power bases developing.

It is therefore imperative that the Chinese economic stimulus, now underway for two months, work quickly and effectively. Specifically in response to the rural migrant worker problem, the measures include subsidies and training programmes, and encouraging the formation of new small businesses, though there is little optimism that the latter will have much traction in the poorest, most cash-starved areas, at least in the short term.

Rural health care systems are being proposed, and much more boldly, China has just announced that it will spend $123 billion to provide universal health care within two years instead of eleven. This in itself could relieve a lot of potential social and economic tension (as it might in America, were it ever to be tried).

The economic stimulus package is also going to spend massively on constructing new inter-city rail lines - $88 billion is proposed, with $44 billion having already been spent last year. If China were able to power these trains with renewable electricity instead of coal or imported diesel, it would have moved a long way to having a sustainable transport system. Given Chinese expansion in wind and solar PV, such an idea cannot be ruled out.

... There are many other problems besides those mentioned here and the stimulus and other policies may not all work as intended. But for the world, the consequences of China's new path may be easier to grasp, however unwelcome in some quarters, because whether China succeeds or not, it looks like it will start pulling back from the heavy emphasis on global export trade as it concentrates on domestic development. It should be noted that it is unlikely to pull back from its need to import oil, especially if the domestic stimulus works.
(3 February 2009)

China to Construct 8 Strategic Oil Reserve Bases
Xinhua News Agency via Rigzone
China plans to start constructing 8 more strategic oil reserve bases this year, after the first batch of four have gone into operation in 2008, authoritative sources disclosed.

China started to construct its first batch of strategic oil reserve bases from 2003, altogether four in Zhenhai, Zhoushan, Huangdao and Dalian, respectively. Zhenhai and Zhoushan two strategic oil reserve bases have been in operation for nearly two years; while Huangdao and Dalian bases have gone into operation at the end of 2008.
(5 February 2009)