Recently, in mainland China, essential consumer industries such as water, electricity, and gas have been raising prices, with phenomena of doubling meter readings for electricity and gas bills. It is believed by observers that after the collapse of the land finance model, the Chinese Communist Party is now grabbing money from the public through changing measurements, indicating common signs of the last days of a regime.
In recent times, water, electricity, and gas prices have been on the rise across China. According to incomplete statistics, since 2023, areas including Shanghai, Xianyang in Shaanxi, and Wuhu in Anhui have successively raised water prices, with the basic water prices for residential use increasing by 10% to 50% among different regions.
Additionally, several cities like Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Zhenjiang, and Xinghua in Putian have announced residential natural gas price adjustment plans. According to Tianfeng Securities, 125 municipal and county-level administrative units are involved in these adjustments.
Moreover, high-speed trains in mainland China have also begun the practice of price hikes. On May 3rd, the China Business News reported that Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed rail announced that starting from June 15, 2024, there will be price increases for trains with speeds of 300 kilometers per hour or above on the section between Wuhan and Guangzhou, with an overall ticket price increase of around 20%.
It was reported that besides the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed rail, other railways have also raised prices.
In Chongqing, residents have complained that their gas meters are “running faster,” leading to a doubling of invisible gas fees. A couple in Nanjing complained online that their natural gas bill exceeded 1,880 yuan for two months, with even the stove not being used after payment, and the electricity bill also showing abnormal increases, costing over 3,300 yuan in four months.
As per a report by The Paper, several residents in Chengdu claim that after replacing meters, gas bills have abnormally increased by more than double. For instance, before meter replacement, a household would use around 30 cubic meters of gas per month, but after the replacement, the monthly usage increased to 60 to 80 cubic meters. Official responses only mention the necessity of timely replacement of gas meters that have reached their 10-year usage limit, emphasizing the need for certified meters to be put into use.
There are also reports of Chongqing residents filming videos warning against meter replacements by gas companies, citing significant bill increases. Similarly, a netizen from Hefei complained that turning on a water heater resulted in a rapid increase in the meter readings.
Electricity prices are also seeing hikes. Provinces like Guangdong, Hunan, Anhui, and Jiangsu have announced electricity price adjustment plans, initiating a new round of provincial electricity transmission and distribution prices with increases of up to 30%.
For instance, the tiered electricity price standards in Guangdong will enter “summer mode” starting in May, where monthly charges are divided into three tiers based on electricity usage, with incrementally higher prices. The difference between the first tier (0.6 yuan) and the second tier (0.65 yuan) is only 5 cents, yet the third tier (0.9 yuan) sees a considerable increase of 30 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Netizens have shared experiences of exorbitant prices at Ideal car charging stations on highways, where the cost per kilowatt-hour, including service fees, amounts to nearly 3 yuan.
Netizens express concerns stating that the recent surge in gas prices indicates a government debt crisis has reached a point where they must extract money from the public welfare sector. This indirectly reflects the current economic situation of the government.
As a netizen from Zhejiang shared, with a salary of around 4,000 yuan during the probation period in Ningbo, coupled with rent, utility bills totaling 1,500 yuan, daily expenses, and commuting costs, life feels financially tight and exhausting, making it challenging to survive.
Zhi Zhi, founder of a video platform, and former senior editor at Southern Weekend, Ma Jiangbo, analyzed the situation in an article, indicating that the unsustainable model of utilities companies with low pricing, losses, and financial subsidies has led to price hikes in water, electricity, and gas sectors following the collapse of land finance. Simultaneously, the government aims to increase rigid expenditures and raise operational costs to combat deflation.
Back in September 2023, during the third-quarter meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Bank Monetary Policy Committee, the agenda included strategies to “facilitate a low-level price rebound.” This shift in policy indicated a signal of impending price hikes, contrary to previous commitments of price stabilization and basic living standards for citizens.
Blogger Yan Xiaohua raised concerns that after failed monetary policies and consumption guidance, public utilities like high-speed trains, gas, water, and electricity have started increasing prices. With the general public already financially strained, stimulating consumption through price hikes seems illogical. Over the years, fuel and electricity prices have been rising despite economic downturns. Attempting to compensate for insufficient land finance through public utility price hikes is an uncharted approach globally.
Huang Guo’an, a former technical expert at the Guangzhou Power Bureau, mentioned during an interview that a series of energy reforms in mainland China has led to increased residential electricity usage, necessitating electricity policy adjustments and subsequent price hikes. The Chinese government’s resource exploitation extends wherever it finds opportunities, monopolizing all aspects of citizens’ daily lives.
He explained that before 2008, the main profits of the power sector in China came from industrial electricity usage due to the higher prices for industrial consumers compared to residential ones. However, the dynamics shifted post the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, there have been reports of electricity price hikes.
He highlighted that another reason for the price hikes is the surge in residential electricity usage due to electric vehicles. To prevent public discontent through direct price increases, the government resorts to manipulating data on electricity meters, akin to how mobile operators manipulated mobile data plans in the past.
“The manipulation of smart meters is relatively easy, with centralized control of meter data from backend servers. This is similar to controlling any Internet of Things device, enabling direct modification of electricity calculation parameters.”
According to Huang, as the Chinese government fears disruptions in oil transportation routes during wars, there has been a massive push for electric vehicles resulting in a surge of electric vehicles in urban areas. Consequently, China’s National Grid and Southern Power Grid profit where China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinopec do not due to the transition to electric vehicles.
Writer Gao Tianyou recently published an article in Xin Bao titled “From Price Collapse to the Three Tricks of Money Grabbing.” Timothy Brook, a prominent Sinologist from Canada, published “The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China” last year, pointing out that a common sign of the downfall of past dynasties in China was the surreptitious changes in official measurements, such as increasing the size of units used for tax collection or reducing weights of units to extract wealth from the people.
Currently, similar “money-grabbing” incidents are happening in mainland China, including the “gas meter scam” in Chongqing, the “pay before farming” scheme in Inner Mongolia, and the “public security fund transfer” in Shunde, Guangdong, where 320 million yuan from a Wuhan company’s account was transferred to the Shunde Public Security Bureau.
The economic slowdown and a stagnant real estate market have pushed several local governments on the mainland into financial distress. Some local governments are unable to pay salaries to civil servants, leading them to require various departments to raise their own funds, including imposing fines on citizens and businesses to fill the budget deficit, with “fine revenues” accounting for as much as forty percent of total fiscal income in some regions.
Scholar Dai Wei, in an interview with the Epoch Times, noted that changing measurements surreptitiously began twenty years ago when the so-called state-owned enterprises in China resorted to manipulating measurements in areas like water, electricity, gas, mobile billing, fuel gauging, etc., due to a lack of funds for government expenditures. Although appearing as state-owned enterprises, these entities are essentially controlled by powerful families siphoning off funds.
“The manipulations of measurements were the easiest choice then because of the absence of tax revenue, resembling a land grab. Nowadays, there are more strategies in place, primarily involving excessive money printing, expanding financial liquidity, diluting funds in people’s hands due to inflation.”
Dai Wei emphasized the lack of industrial tax revenue as a core issue causing financial difficulties in local governments.
“In the Hu-Wen era when the economy was doing relatively well, eighty percent of prefectural-level cities in the country did not have significant tax revenues. The only means to sustain the extensive bureaucratic apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party was through real estate – selling land. They bought land from farmers for a few thousand yuan per mu and sold it for millions, thereby compensating for the massive fiscal revenue shortfall. This is the most significant covert money grab—seizing money through land exploitation. However, the real estate sector has been exploited to exhaustion, leaving no escape routes.”
“Various tactics to exploit the public persist because of the single-party rule in China, where officials are appointed and utilized, focusing on benefiting the higher-ranking officials rather than addressing the needs of the lower rungs in the hierarchy. Therefore, resorting to land grabs and various methods of robbing the people is the only way forward. This highlights a hastening decay.”
A source within the system also informed the Epoch Times that local leaders push for accomplishments leading to unfinished projects and financial debts. Due to the financial crisis, all projects are government-bid, and with no funds to pay for project completion, enterprises are unable to sue the government. The local courts do not file cases or enforce rulings. Post-pandemic, the economy has not recovered, causing local debts to explode, leading to inflation. The only option left for the government is printing money.