China’s Disrupted “Spring Festival”

Severe weather, mixed with heavy snow or freezing rain, has swept across China’s provinces since 31 January – first heavy snow in and around Henan, then freezing rain centred in Hubei. As China prepares to welcome the Lunar New Year, the freezing rain and snow have disrupted people’s travelling. In central Hubei province in particular, heavy snow and freezing rain disrupted traffic and stranded travellers. At least 4,000 vehicles were stranded on motorways. At least 4,000 vehicles were stranded on the highways, and in the most congested sections, travellers were stranded on the roads for two days and two nights. 2008 saw the most complicated Spring Festival in China since 2008.

Thousands stranded on motorways by freezing rain and snow.

For years, the start of the festival, known as the Spring Festival, has been preceded by massive domestic and international travel, creating the world’s largest annual movement of people. As a result of rapid urbanization, a large number of people from rural areas have become urban workers over the course of two or three decades. They work away from their families throughout the year, and the Chinese New Year period, which lasts for a month or so, is the most important time for them to return to the countryside to visit their families and friends. As a large proportion of the country’s population goes to other provinces for work, travelling back to their hometowns is not as easy as it used to be. In the past, it was difficult to find tickets for the Spring Festival, and it often took several days to travel from the city to the town and then to the countryside, often with different modes of transport connecting, and staying in different places in between.

In the past 10 years or so, China’s automobile industry has developed rapidly, with many foreign car manufacturers producing cars in China, and the number of inexpensive cars has increased dramatically, so it has become very common for people living in cities to drive themselves. During the Spring Festival, it is even more popular to drive across the country and provinces. It also became fashionable to take advantage of this time to travel around the world.

During a pandemic, fears of city closures, quarantines, and other regulations keep many people from travelling. Last year, after widespread protests, the regulations were suddenly lifted a few weeks before the Spring Festival, but many people who would have travelled did not do so for fear of spreading the virus. This year is expected to see a return to normal levels of holiday travel – a record 9 billion trips are expected.

Returning home has a special significance for Chinese people at this time of year. Thousands of people travel across the country before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, but the weather has led to a large number of flight cancellations and railway shutdowns. As a transport hub, Wuhan’s public Spring Festival traffic was relatively seriously affected by the inclement weather. As of 3 p.m. on February 4, the normal rate of traffic at Wuhan Tianhe Airport was only 20%, with 468 flights cancelled temporarily and 64 flights cancelled in advance, a flight cancellation ratio of over 60%.

At the same time, central and eastern China welcomed heavy snowfall, freezing rain, railways and roads were blocked. Especially in Hubei, many drivers were forced to be stranded on the highway, facing serious difficulties. Some drivers said that they have been stuck in the Xu Guangzhou Expressway Jingshan section for more than 30 hours, their prepared food and drink supplies have been exhausted, had to start cooking snow and drinking water. There was also a citizen named Li Ke who set off with his friends from Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in the morning of 2 February, planning to return to his hometown in Hubei Province. But because of the freezing rain and snow on the highway, she was stuck on the highway for nearly seventy hours until late at night on the 4th. Twenty-four hours of this time, the car could not move at all. These situations reflect the fact that urban drivers do not have much experience in self-driving long-distance journeys. This time, the weather was particularly bad, and all sorts of situations arose. Readers who have lived in Australia for a longer period of time will know that driving in the city is different from long-distance travelling, and requires a much higher level of safety and smoothness.

This severe weather is the strongest winter rain, snow and sleet in 15 years, and it will reach its peak just before the Chinese New Year and at the peak of the Spring Festival. In layman’s terms, freezing rain is rain in the sky, but when it drips down to the ground it freezes. This type of rain attaches itself to roads, houses, power lines, and trees and quickly forms a layer of ice. If the freezing rain persists, these long and crazy layers of ice will make roads and railways impassable, and power lines, electricity pylons and trees may be overwhelmed and fall down in large numbers. All in all, judging from the duration and record low temperature, this year’s snow, sleet and ice disaster has not yet reached the scale of 2008, but the scope of impact of this year’s low-temperature snow, sleet and ice weather is close to that of 2008. In this round of inclement weather, this time the rain, snow and freezing weather is concentrated in the middle and eastern regions, such as Hubei, Henan, Anhui and Hunan, and there have already been incidents of buildings collapsing due to the accumulation of snow in a number of places, resulting in deaths and injuries.

China’s emergency management system is almost completely paralyzed.

For severe extreme weather, the world will happen: the United States in the winter time blizzard is very much, Australia, although there is no blizzard, but also floods, fires are frequent; but seldom appeared in such a large area, the formation of a catastrophic public weather events, which is mainly and the European and American countries of the early warning mechanism related. This is mainly due to the early warning mechanisms in Europe and the US. In similar situations, the European and US governments will repeatedly remind their citizens to make good travel plans, whereas China has obviously not done enough in this regard, and many of its residents do not understand the severity of the weather conditions. A nation that does this well together is also a nation that does not well together. China’s inflexible rigid system emphasizes control more than governance.

The Covid-19 epidemic of the past three years has exposed many of the Chinese government’s governance problems, and its response to crises has been woefully inadequate. In dealing with floods, the Chinese government’s management style is almost always paralyzed when a large-scale disaster of this kind occurs, and there are serious problems with emergency management and disaster warning in China. For example, people in Europe and the United States can hardly imagine being stuck on a motorway for days and nights. Even though many car owners may not be aware of the severity of the weather conditions, officials should control the traffic. Specifically, if it is found that a blizzard has begun, or there is freezing rain, the government should restrict the flow of traffic at all highway intersections, that is, to keep these cars from going up; already on the highway, either diversion, or as soon as possible to open up an emergency corridor, rather than all the vehicles are blocked on the highway and cannot move, resulting in more serious consequences. This Chinese government as compared with Europe and the United States, is just like a tottering toddler, there is still a long way to go.

Europe and the United States emergency management work started earlier. After years of development and improvement, it has now formed a more advanced and mature emergency management mechanism: based on the overall governance, through legislation, will be a complete crisis response plan, efficient core coordinating agencies, comprehensive crisis response network and social response capabilities combined in the system. The Chinese government’s expertise in control is not equal to the social governance capabilities of European and American societies. Zeroing out, which was unthinkable in other Western countries during the epidemic, has proven to the world that the Chinese government is capable of control, but governance is a different matter altogether. If good governance means transparency, responsibility, accountability, and responsiveness to the needs of the people, then the Chinese government has hardly lived up to this, either in its draconian “clean slate” policies or in its chaotic reopening. After all, what the Chinese government will do, what it loves to do, what it can do, what it doesn’t want to do , what it can’t do, what it do not want to do, has always been an unpredictable mystery to the general public.

The helplessness of electric vehicle owners under snowstorms

The Chinese Spring Festival blizzard freezing rain, in addition to people deeply reflect on China’s social governance capabilities, another important issue is in full swing of new energy vehicles to replace the petrol car a question cannot help but become a farce. This year’s Spring Festival, overlaid with snowstorms in Hubei, Hunan and other places, electric car owners will encounter long-distance travel in the range of anxiety has once again become the focus of attention. Spring Festival winter blizzard is still raging, especially Hubei freezing rain to high-speed traffic jams 200 kilometres, this extreme weather so that the snow clean-up work has become extremely difficult, but also a large number of car owners suffered. This time, the entire new energy vehicle sector became completely quiet. Some car owners reported that in a trip of 300 kilometres, it went for 15 hours, resulting in many new energy vehicles becoming without electricity. A large number of pure electric car nesting on the road, were towed away by trailers. A car owner from Hangzhou driving back to Lianyungang, the journey was only 600 kilometres, but due to heavy rain in the first half of the journey and snow in the second half of the journey, so that the owner of a small town in the middle of the night stuck in the highway: after looking for piles, charging, trapped due to the snow, pushed the car out of the trap, the owner could only start again, continued to catch up with their destinations. Some car owners derided that it was too much effort for them to drive their trams home, so they might as well celebrate the Chinese New Year on the spot.

As a matter of fact, every year during the Spring Festival, the argument between petrol and electricity vehicles always reaches a climax in China. This year’s blizzard has undoubtedly revealed the shortcomings of new energy vehicles, including the decline in low-temperature performance, the range of electric vehicles has been grossly exaggerated, in high-speed traffic jams, extreme low-temperature environment, the battery performance declined, the range of a serious shrinkage, the charging time is slow enough to make people crazy. Trams are subject to inclement weather, congestion, charging piles are not enough, skidding collision risk and many other circumstances, any one of which will cause trouble for the tram, these are new energy vehicle owners need to drive on the highway ahead of time to have a mental expectation of things – driving out of the door must look at the weather, the car with dry food and water, the conditions of the winter is best to have the necessary! The best thing to do in winter is to bring a non-slip chain. And battery charging short board solution should also be accelerated, short-term or can develop car chargers, long-term is a solid-state battery.

The development of any new thing needs a process, new energy vehicles represent the future, but it does not mean that because of the promotion of new energy and the petrol car killed. For example, China’s highly developed high-speed rail, but still have the need to retain the traditional green train, is because when relying on electricity as the power source of the high-speed rail, Wind, freezing rain and other factors had to stop running, and those usually powered by diesel or steam engines, but the still running green train running, though almost eliminated, are not afraid of snowstorms. In this regard, blindly clamouring for the elimination of fuel vehicles and promoting the dominance of new energy sources is not the best option. It is safest to choose multiple alternatives and have an option to ensure the survival and stability of the base at critical moments. This also gives the Australian government, which has been considering heavily subsidizing EV owners in recent years, a new way of thinking.

Implications for the adoption of EVs around the world

China has become a major producer of lithium batteries and has a significant price advantage over other countries. Electric vehicles are simpler to produce than petrol cars and require fewer parts, so the Chinese government has subsidised the production of electric vehicles and is now a major producer of electric vehicles, exporting them to the rest of the world at a very low price. With western societies aiming for zero carbon emissions and environmentalists demanding governments to phase out petrol vehicles, cheap Chinese electric vehicles have begun to enter the market in large numbers. In Australia, the number of electric vehicles purchased has increased dramatically in the past few years, but the supporting charging facilities have yet to be developed.

With the younger generation becoming more environmentally conscious, Australia expects the electric car market to take off. However, today’s Spring Festival issue in China has highlighted the limitations of electric vehicles when travelling, and I believe it will bring a rethink to those who are planning to switch to electric vehicles. Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan has been promoting the use of hybrid vehicles, but due to the inability to reduce the limitation of having two sets of propulsion system, the price is not competitive and unable to open up the market significantly. Or is the newly developed hydrogen-powered vehicle another option for those who support zero-emission environmental protection? After the Chinese Spring Festival, I believe this is a direction that the world will have to rethink.

Author /Editorial Sameway

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