Besides witnessing crowds of stranded home-coming travelers and an alarming demand for electricity to fight bitterly cold weather, the pre-lunar New Year weeks bleakly revealed the magnitude of the energy and transportation crises that had threatened the industrial growth of China's southern provinces. The onslaught of the recent snow storm drew global attention to this sensitive weakness in China's international trade.
Urgent need to expand China's infrastructure and to feed the energy-hungry industrial centers of the south is nothing new. Despite the government's multi-billion-dollar projects to lengthen railway tracks and cross-country highways, and its awareness of harms resulting from stringently limiting operation hours on profitable factories because of power shortages, the issue is speed. It is clear that lasting industrial growth will be jeopardized if power and logistical supports fail to keep apace.
Efforts to sustain industrial growth will directly affect those of us in U.S.-China trade. Manufacturers are sure to be first to shoulder the cost for building roads and railroads that delivery their products and generating new energy resources that fuel their factories. So, importers of Chinese goods will inevitably feel the impact of these skyrocketing bills. Ironically, China's industrial in the south had narrowly escaped economic devastations thanks partly to the Chinese New Year holiday's timely arrival. Yet, as milder weather had returned workers to their factories, the world awaits to see how the Chinese government strives to forestall foreseeable crises highlighted by this paralyzing winter.