Hi! I often tweet long threads about China's energy sector, mostly grid, renewables, and nuclear. This is a master collection of my favorites, from oldest to newest. I will add more as they are created and remove oudated ones.

*a simple ratio, not a simple average.* D'oh.

Links: Non-paywalled version of Economist article https://t.co/TCI1F3f5VB Data for 2020: https://t.co/sTHs7t4J7A Data for 2024: https://t.co/yRUL4aMPb6

But raising disposable incomes on the lower end has been targeted under the recent few years of common prosperity policies, so what about today? - By 2024, the lowest 20% was averaging just CNY 795/month, still low enough so about everyone in this group is likely still below the

Anyway. If you really wanted to calculate how many people have disposable income of <1000 CNY/month, what do the data say? - In 2020 NBS data, the lowest 20% had an average monthly disposable income of 655 CNY/month. They're likely all under the CNY 1000 threshold, with many of

So why was it so widely misunderstood? In my opinion, it was perhaps Li's following comment "you can't even rent in a mid-size city with that much". He likely meant to accentuate the hardships of being in a lower economic quintile, but his phrasing made it sound like he was

The main issue is: Li was citing NBS data for per-capita disposable income, not wages. It's a simple average of the disposable income by population for the bottom two quintiles (40%) in 2020, including rural elderly, children, and not-working dependents, i.e., many people outside

So where did this number come from? In May 2020, then-Premier Li Keqiang famously said: "...人均年收入是3万元人民币，但是有6亿人每个月的收入也就1000元, 1000元在一个中等城市可能租房都困难..." "Our average annual income is 30,000 CNY, but China has 600m people with a monthly

Did Li Keqiang really say 600 million Chinese people earn <1000 CNY a month? No, not quite. That comment is widely misunderstood, as explained in this paywalled article from The Economist. If you don't subscribe, I'll summarize in a thread.🧵 https://t.co/NMMK6j1vCR

So this year, I aim to cycle and write more about Shanghai, linking the stories to places you can see on these maps, to get a real vision of the areas I'm describing. My 2026 hope is to de-abstractify this incredible city, one district at a time. Happy New Year!

I've mentioned many times how the median Chinese citizen lives in a 4th tier city, not a 1st tier city. By the same logic, the median SH citizen isn't one who lives in a high-rise or lane house in downtown Jing'an; but a suburban tower community in suburban Pudong or Songjiang...

Most writing about SH focuses on 10% of its area (the downtown). But there's so much more city out there, and it deserves more coverage. Not because it's poor or crappy or whatever, but just because it's different. 75% of Shanghai's population lives outside of the downtown!

It's also useful to have a map like this in your head when someone talks about the affordability (or lack thereof) of real estate in Shanghai for different salary levels. I live in Core Downtown Jing'an District, in the circled blue area below. Just about any kind of decent

Another way to visualize or get a rough proxy for the development level of these parts of the city is to look at real estate prices. Here's a map of real estate prices by neighborhood covering the entire city, in cost per square meter. W = wan = 万, or 10000. So 6.4w = 64,000 CNY

Finally, that leaves us with Chongming Island and Jinshan District (and parts of western Qingpu and Songjiang) which are so far from downtown that I see them as a kind of "second-layer halo" of satellite cities. While I've visited both of them by car, they are the last two

After this, we're in the Shanghai exurbs, with districts like Qingpu, Songjiang, or Fengxian. Their relationship with Shanghai is often more like that of a satellite city than actually part of Shanghai's conurbation. They may be administratively governed by Shanghai today, but

Next...just like with the Core Downtown, there's a near-downtown/suburban halo region that doesn't perfectly overlap with any districts. I'll call this the "downtown suburban halo" region - encompassing the rest of the downtown urban districts and cutting deeper into parts of

Let's talk about the urban administrative fabric of Shanghai. The fully urban downtown areas are Yangpu, Hongkou, Jing'an, Putuo, Huangpu, Changning, and Xuhui, along with a little piece of Pudong (i.e., the financial district). Of these districts, none are fully within what

One of my new year's goals is to spend more time writing about Shanghai in 2026 - via bike. Over the last year, I've begun cycling as a hobby, which has given me chances to start visiting SH suburbs. So, why should you care? Well, here's SH in its glory - all 16 Districts.🧵

*Error correction:* China's 2024 annual consumption was actually 9852 TWh, so the Jan-Nov 2025 total of 9460 TWh has not yet exceeded the 2025 total consumption. December power consumption should be ~850 TWh, so we're definitely going to end up +500-600 TWh vs. last year.

Over the first 11 months of the year, China consumed 9460.2 TWh of power, 5.2% higher (or about 470 TWh) than the same period last year. 9460 TWh is already greater than China's 2024 annual consumption, so everything in the month of December is incremental growth. So it looks