On October 24th, the South China Morning Post, a newspaper of Hong Kong, reported that China's imports of electricity from North Korea last month were 35,974MWh, increasing by 62% from the same period last year. During the first to third quarters of this year, the amount of electricity imported from North Korea increased by 37% year-on-year to 291GWh, a total value of $11.9 million. In addition, China's imports of electricity during the same period above increased by 44% from Myanmar and 1.3% from Russia from last year.

   There are two main causes of shortages of electricity in China. First, the lack of coal supply from Australia due to the diplomatic conflict. China has relied on coal for 60% of its electricity production, especially 50% of coal was from Australia. However, in December of 2020, China suspended imports of Australian coal due to the diplomatic conflict. After the Australian coal with high caloric efficiency disappeared, demand for alternative coal increased and coal prices also soared, leading it to power shortages. The second cause is the Chinese government's promotion of eco-friendly policy. Xi Jinping said that China will achieve *carbon neutrality by 2060. For this reason, each local government in China had received the goal of energy consumption from the central government and started to reduce carbon emissions competitively.

   Due to the shortage of electricity, factories of Dongguan and Shenzhen in Guangdong, the base of China's manufacturing industry, were temporarily shut down. Kunshan and Suzhou in Jiangsu, where the factories of Apple's iPhone are located, also suffered from disruption of production. As these factories could not work properly, countries such as Korea and the United States had difficulty in producing finished products because parts and materials were not supplied. Besides this, at a factory in Liaoning, where a four-day warning of shortage of electricity was issued from October 28th, the ventilator stopped due to the shortage of electricity, addicting 23 workers to toxic gas.

   Kim Dong-Ha (Prof. of Division of China, Busan University of Foreign Studies) said, “China's shortage of electricity seems difficult to be resolved in a short period due to the increasing heating demand in winter and maintenance of the eco-friendly policy stance. Also, if the shortage prolonged, it will be a problem affecting global supply chains and inflation. However, since the shortage of electricity was mainly caused by non-market activities such as diplomacy and administration of local government, it is expected to shift to a normal state later according to the will of the Chinese government.”