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China sells electricity to Vietnam despite huge power shortage at home

BEIJING - Although it is suffering from an acute power shortage, China has agreed to deliver large amounts of electricity to Vietnam, state media reported. The deal calls for a 110,000-volt power line linking Wenshan county in southwest China's Yunnan province with north Vietnam's Ha Giang province, the Beijing Youth Daily said."Power transport is emerging as a new channel for economic cooperation with the Mekong sub-region, on top of the channels already provided by land, sea and air transport," the newspaper quoted an unnamed expert as saying.

Thailand is another target of China's growing ambitions for energy sales to its southern neighbours. According to the newspaper, China and Thailand recently reached an agreement to establish two hydropower stations on the Langcan river, also in Yunnan province, with a combined capacity of 7,350 megawatts. The power generated there will be channeled to the southern Chinese province of Guangdong from where it will be transported onwards to the Thai energy market when the need arises, it said.

China South Power Grid, the power distributor that reached the recent agreement for the power line to Vietnam, admitted the deal comes at a time when China itself is desperately short of energy. "Much of the electricity generated in Yunnan province is sold to Guangdong province," an official with the company told AFP, declining to give his name. "And there's a serious power shortage in both provinces." He said, however, that his company had to adopt a longer-term perspective, even under the current circumstances of severe energy bottlenecks at home.

"It's part of a marketing strategy," he said. "Sometimes we need to develop new markets." Twenty-four of China's 31 provinces and provincial-level regions experienced power shortages to varying degrees last year. Energy shortages, along with crowded roads and railways, are considered the main obstacle to economic growth in 2005, Jia Yinsong, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission, told state media recently.

Agence France Presse - February 8, 2005