China’s top economic planner this week said it would use “all necessary means” to reduce record-high coal prices, ordering all coal mines to work at top capacity even during holidays, reports The Wall Street Journal. China is fighting its worst power crunch in two decades and reversing course on earlier ambitions to curb coal use.
Other measures taken include using domestic laws that allow the government to limit profit and prices for key goods, issuing approvals for new coal mines and ordering major coal production bases in north and northwestern China to lower prices by RMB 100 per metric ton from Tuesday.
Coal futures on Chinese bourses fell to their lower trading limits on Tuesday and Wednesday after the announcement. China’s rollback of restrictions on mining and imports of coal might help stem soaring global fuel prices that were driven up by factors including a post-pandemic economic recovery, transport bottlenecks and low stocks. Beijing’s push to meet tougher environmental targets, stepped up this summer, aggravated the shortage of coal, of which the country consumes half the world’s supply.