China may be the world’s largest car market, but the 100km traffic snarl-up that has blocked the Beijing-Tibet expressway for more than a week was not caused by a build-up of passenger traffic. The real culprit was heavy freight trucks carrying coal from inland provinces to coastal ports.
The biggest global energy consumer, according to the International Energy Agency, China’s needs have grown so fast that the infrastructure cannot keep pace.
Coal, which fuels 70 per cent of the country’s electricity, is notoriously hard to transport from the inland provinces in which it is mined to the southern and eastern industrial belts where it is most needed.
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