Tensions between Australia and China have increased this year as China continues to retaliate against Australia for trade, and coal imports are a key target for China, leading to a dramatic drop in Australian exports to China and forcing 50 to 80 Australian coal bulk carriers that have not been able to discharge their cargoes to be stranded in Chinese ports. And more than 1,000 crew members have been stranded on board for days.
According to reports, an increasing number of bulk carriers carrying Australian coal have recently been stranded off the coast of China waiting to be unloaded, numbering 82 ships carrying between 8 and 10 million tonnes of coal and involving up to 1,500 crew members. The cargo on board is worth more than A$1.1 billion ($812 million), raising concerns for the Australian government.
The New York Times reported on Dec. 26 that seafarers from some of the countries trapped on the coal ship were depressed about being stuck at sea, were depressed, their mental health had deteriorated sharply, and some had attempted suicide.
China is the world’s leading coal consumer, with more than 40 percent of total coking coal imports and about 57 percent of power coal imports coming from Australia in 2019. Australia exported nearly $10.4 billion of coal to China last year, according to statistics.2020 China imported a cumulative total of nearly 240 million tonnes of coal in the first three quarters of the year, equivalent to about 80 percent of its total imports for 2019.
However, after Australia called for an independent international investigation into the source of the new crown virus in May this year, China was annoyed and began to launch trade retaliation against Australia. So far, China’s retaliation against Australia has been fully rolled out, with banned goods covering coal, iron ore, barley, wine, seafood, sugar, cotton, wool, timber, lobster, meat, tourism, education and more.
But since the beginning of winter, especially recently after Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangdong provinces, Beijing and Shanghai have also been blacked out one after another. Some analysis said that China has never had a major power outage in recent years. Most of China’s electricity is generated by coal-fired thermal power, but the current coal embargo on Australia in retaliation for not having enough coal to generate electricity is “killing a thousand enemies, self-loss eight hundred”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, known as the “war wolf”, argued on Nov. 25 that in recent years, Chinese Customs had conducted risk monitoring and analysis of the safety and quality of imported coal, and found that there were more cases of environmental failures of imported coal.
The Global Times, a subsidiary of the Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, reported on Dec. 14 that China’s economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said in a meeting with representatives of 10 power companies over the weekend that they were not subject to approval restrictions on coal imports, with the exception of Australian coal.
Speaking about the Global Times news on Dec. 15, Australian Prime Minister John Morrison said if true, it would be a bad outcome for both the Australian and Chinese economies, a lose-lose situation, because other countries have 50 percent higher coal emissions than Australia. Morrison said that if China were to abandon Australian coal and switch to coal from other countries, it would have “a very bad consequence for the environment.
At the same time, Morrison also stressed that China’s approach is discriminatory against Australia, in violation of WTO regulations, Australia will be the WTO to file a lawsuit.
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