Last summer, I stood surrounded by solar panels stretching in all directions, exultant at being engulfed by the material underpinnings of a better future. Wanting a wider view, I sprinted up a small dune. Sand extended for miles, much of it covered in solar panels punctuated with substations, power lines and maintenance roads. In this arid and windy environment scrub grass struggled to grow, though the plants seemed to appreciate the shade the panels provided. Absorbing the fierce sunlight of Ordos, a city in the resource-rich Chinese autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, the panels converted it into electricity to power not just this community or province, but also distant cities like Beijing.
Nearly two decades ago, Ordos became famous for its ghost city, Kangbashi, a massive new district to the south of the city’s centre. Built as a would-be “Dubai on the Steppe”, it failed to find a human population to fill its vast expanse and the thousands of apartments that had been constructed there. Drone shots of empty streets and ghostly apartment blocks soon proliferated, and Western newspapers were filled with photos of an eerily denuded urban landscape that served as an embodiment of the folly of China’s rapid urbanization. Of the apartments that were bought, many were purchased as investments rather than residences, in a frenzy of speculation without inhabitation. Eventually, property prices collapsed, and over time Kangbashi has become less ghostly. The district now has residents, even if it is not exactly as full as its original developers had hoped. Still, the vastness of Kangbashi has imposed systemic costs on those who live there, trapping them in an unwalkable sprawl locked in place with cement.
Building is rarely China’s problem. Indeed, with the proliferation of cheap solar, wind and batteries over the past two decades, China’s green tech revolution has arisen largely because of enormous bets placed on building and innovation. But by looking in places like Ordos and the wider province of Inner Mongolia, something far messier starts to emerge. Here, piled on top of one another, are energy systems old and new: solar and wind production facilities and megabases[1] stand alongside new coal plants and vast industrial works that convert coal to chemicals like methanol and plastics—a dirty industrial process meant to replace oil, and which makes already emissions-intensive work even more destructive to our atmosphere.
Ordosmaxxing
In recent years a new meme has emerged in the West: Chinamaxxing, the trend for non-Chinese people to adopt Chinese habits and enthusiastically appreciate the country’s grand strengths. Think of the screen-based ogling of the Chongqing skyline, the country’s giant light-up drone shows or BYD’s sleek new electric vehicles. Zoomed out like this, China becomes “number go up”[2] in country form. It is scale über alles.