5 ms·
I suspect this has more to do with Chinese internal politics ("We're tired of spending money on industries in Inner Mongolia that aren't part of the national in
by cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
I suspect this has more to do with Chinese internal politics ("We're tired of spending money on industries in Inner Mongolia that aren't part of the national industrial plan or whatever we're calling it this week") than anything to do with the environment. They still added a lot of coal plants last year. They just want to spend the resulting power on something other than businesses in Inner Mongolia.
- bradleyjg 6y agoIt’s subsidized power and these “businesses” are effectively just reselling that power to foreigners at a markup. No government would want to participate in that.
- Scaevolus 6y agoEven worse, it supports easy capital flight by allowing miners to exchange Yuan for BTC and then dollars, euros, etc.
- space_rock 6y agoNothing is worse for the environment then subsidized coal power. Uneconomical environmental destruction
- sudosysgen 6y agoI agree with you in theory, but in practice it's the only way to be competitive as a poor country. From the perspective of most countries that do this the only thing you can do is build more renewables.
- space_rock 6y agoBut the economic theory doesn't even agree with subsidies. It's only a populist belief that they work. China's economy boomed from free trade with the US
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe economic theory can say what it will, in most countries electricity would be so expensive that starting a business or even running a household would be really complicated.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y agoIt works for them. We still have a trillion dollar a year trade deficit with China overall. (And likely to get worse, now that the mysterious-it-came-from-wet-markets-honest non-Chinese virus has defeated Trump). Everyone in the modern western Tech scene believes they're environmentalists and believes all the modified-limited-hangouts in order to continue to pretend they are. Meanwhile their iphones were made in a country that added 40 gw of coal power last year.
- beaunative 6y agoThe problem with bitcoin mining is that they require very little human resource compare to other industries that requires similar amount of electricity. It's more likely the local government is concerned of employeement rate.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yorwba 6y ago> I suspect this has more to do with Chinese internal politics ... than anything to do with the environment. It's both. From the article: In terms of helping China meet its goals of reducing carbon emissions, Inner Mongolia has not had a good track record. It failed to meet China’s energy-saving target in 2019. The central government criticized Inner Mongolia for its “serious problems with energy conservation,” according to People’s Daily, a mouthpiece of China’s Communist Party. Chinese internal politics also include environmental regulations. If the government of Inner Mongolia doesn't want to exceed the energy consumption limit again, they need to make cuts somewhere. Now the specific choice of banning cryptominers is a matter of Inner Mongolian internal politics. But it's unsurprising that they'd prefer local businesses over some bitcoin miners who could easily move their operation to a different province (as many of the examples in the article did.)