China’s Ongoing Heat Wave Leads to Power and Factory Disruptions – CNBC news

新聞逐字稿

Let’s in fact get over to China because while it’s still dealing with shutdowns because of its zero-covid policy. Now the people there face another big problem: heat waves, scorching temperatures, drying up water supplies and cutting crucial sources for hydropower that’s leading to electricity rationing in some areas and forcing a growing number of global manufacturers to halt production at their factories.

Eunice Yoon joins us right now from Beijing and Eunice the question has to be “how bad is this? how much worse is? what we’ve seen in the past and what’s happening?"

Eunice: Exactly, Becky you know in the past hour of the weather authority, the top weather authority of the country issued another high-level alert saying that we should expect extreme drought conditions to worsen over the next three days, so the country has been battling with some of its most severe heat waves that since 1961. They have been parching the provinces all along the country’s longest river so that is the YangTze River, so those areas which are in central and southwestern parts of China rely heavily on hydropower so the authorities there have been ordering power rationing for factories and supply chains. They’ve been telling factories to suspend or reduce operations, to cut working hours, grant high temperature holidays for staff and then all this, of course, to cope with limited electricity until August 24th.

So that’s next Wednesday, the area is home to suppliers for Apple, Intel, Tesla as well as Toyota and the authorities have said that the power rationing is only until next Wednesday. But the the higher-level authorities here have said that they’re not sure if this drought will last until September so it’s still very unclear as to how long the power rationing is going to last. Becky: I see it’s raining behind you is that kind of unexpected? does that change the picture at all? or is this just a drop in the bucket for what’s needed? Eunice: It is a drop in the bucket, but yeah it’s Beijing we have been seeing some odd weather where there’s had been rain, but it’s also been extremely hot and there have been red alerts where this is like the highest-level alert for Beijing, as well as other cities from the weekend and that basically means that the temperatures are above 104 degrees.

新聞來源： 1. CNBC YouTube://youtu.be/x2RfRyxuGbY

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關鍵單字 Key Words/ Key Sentences

zero-covid policy

scorch

crucial

hydropower

electricity ration

halt

weather authority

issue

high-level alert

drought conditions

worsen

battle

parch

the Yangtze River

grant

red alert

drops in the bucket 微不足道。杯水車薪

“how bad is this? how much worse is? what we’ve seen in the past and what’s happening?"