China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Clean energy edging out coal as China embraces low-carbon, sustainable growth
Nonsurgical procedures rely more on internet platforms in the COVID era
The increasing output and expanding use of clean energy in China have continuously reduced the share of coal consumption in overall energy consumption, the National Bureau of Statistics said in its annual communique released on Sunday.
Last year, the country’s coal consumption accounted for 56.8 percent of energy consumption, down from 64 percent in 2015.
Share of natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and other clean energy consumption reached 24.3 percent, up from 17.9 percent in 2015, the bureau said.
The transformation of the national energy consumption pattern is propelling China toward a low-carbon development path, according to a white paper titled “Energy in China’s New Era” released by the State Council Information Office in December.
The paper said that by 2019, China had reduced its carbon intensity, namely carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP, by 48.1 percent from that in 2005.
The decline has fulfilled the country’s commitment to the international community that the intensity will have decreased by between 40 percent and 45 percent by 2020.
Carbon intensity measures the relationship between a region’s economy and carbon emissions. When a region’s economy keeps growing with less carbon emissions, it has a high level of low-carbon development.
He Jiankun, vice-chairman of the National Committee of Experts on Climate Change, told People’s Daily in February that reducing carbon intensity is key to achieve the carbon neutrality.
China aims to see carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality — the realization of net zero carbon dioxide emissions — by 2060, goals that the country announced in September at the General Debate of the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
The communique from the NBS said that the country consumed 4.98 billion metric tons of standard coal energy last year, up 2.2 percent year-on-year.
“Unlike developed countries, China is still in the middle of developing its industrialization and urbanization so it is expected to continue with robust economic growth.”
From carbon peak to neutrality, China has 30 years to act while some Western countries have had 40 to 60 years to realize it by around 2050.
“Despite enhancing its energy conservation and carbon reduction efforts, total energy demand will grow for a certain period of time. By 2030, we should try our best to make the annual decline rate of carbon intensity exceed the annual
GDP growth rate to realize carbon peak,” People’s Daily quoted him as saying.
To achieve the goals, the National Energy Administration said that for the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), China will expand the utilization of clean energy and promote non-fossil fuel and natural gas as a major economic growth driver.
Zhang Xingying, a senior researcher at the National Satellite Meteorological Center, said that it is vital to reduce carbon emissions from the root by transforming the energy consumption pattern.
“End-of-pipe treatment, that uses equipment to eradicate polluting air at the end of the production process such as desulfurization, can only control the pollution, but switching to clean-energy mode will cut down both air pollution and carbon emission from the source. It’s a win-win strategy,” he said.
The country has adopted technologies to reduce carbon emissions. For example, the industrial sector is replacing coal boilers with electrical ones to reduce direct coal burning.
From 2010 till October 2020, the Chinese people have purchased 55 percent of the world’s new energy vehicles. On a national basis, China owns the most number of such vehicles in the world, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said.
Despite enhancing its energy conservation and carbon reduction efforts, total energy demand will grow for a certain period of time. By 2030, we should try our best to make the annual decline rate of carbon intensity exceed the annual GDP growth rate to realize carbon peak.”
He Jiankun, vice-chairman of the National Committee of Experts on Climate Change
Looking to up your looks game? Many Chinese have found it quite convenient to get the job done through aesthetic medicine services delivered by internet platforms.
Aesthetic medicine is a broad term for specialities that focus on altering cosmetic appearance through both surgical and non-surgical treatment.
China’s aesthetic medicine industry has been undergoing a transition featuring digitalization and the use of intelligent tools in recent years, and the pandemic — although a blow to the industry — has prompted it to further keep pace with information trends.
Whether seeking thermage treatment or other skin management procedures, Beijinger Chen Li often checks several apps on her smartphone in search of discounts and promotional information.
Such apps include both online aesthetic medicine platforms such as SoYoung and Gengmei, and technology firm like Meituan.
Through such internet platforms, aesthetic medicine institutions and doctors can demonstrate and sell their services, while customers can write reviews, comments and journals about their treatments with before-and-after selfies, use location-based search functions for service providers, connect with doctors for video consultations and make payments.
“All I want to know is out there online, and it is also very convenient and sometimes economical to make an appointment or pay bills through these apps,” the 35-yearold said, who works in a Stateowned enterprise.
As a regular user of skin treatments since having a laser freckle removal a few years ago, she also often reads articles and watches livestreaming videos on aesthetic medicine topics she is interested in via the apps and lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book.
Research firm Frost & Sullivan expects China’s aesthetic medicine market grew 5.7 percent year-onyear in 2020, the lowest in the past five years, due to the pandemic.
However, the market size of online aesthetic medicine platforms would jump 12.2 percent in 2020 on a yearly basis, it said.
An outlook report on China’s aesthetic medicine market, jointly released by Deloitte China and internet company Meituan earlier this year, also said the COVID-19 outbreak has accelerated the process of digitalization in the aesthetic medicine industry, and is expected to reshape the industrial chain.
Consumption enthusiasm has rebounded significantly following the gradual resumption of normal activities in the second quarter of 2020, the report said.
According to Gengmei, which means “more beautiful” in Chinese, the number of aesthetic medicine service providers participating in livestreaming activities on the Gengmei platform increased 217 percent each month in 2020, and gross merchandise value one day of livestreaming increased 323 percent compared with the average daily GMV.
SoYoung said information about 11,000 aesthetic medicine practices and more than 20,200 doctors is available on the platform, including many public hospitals.
Its remote video consultation service, launched in early 2020 during the novel coronavirus outbreak, has been used more than 800,000 times, with daily users peaking at 14,463.
“A video consultation saves customers’ time that would otherwise be wasted on traffic and waiting for a doctor, raising efficiency of the whole industry,” said Jin Xing, CEO and founder of the online aesthetic medicine platform.
Last year, the company also launched a virtual reality-empowered online visit service for customers to get a clear online look at aesthetic medicine practice options when offline visits are not feasible.
The digitalization of the industry is backed by demand from both consumers and aesthetic medicine institutions.
Traditionally, aesthetic medicine institutions have faced high customer acquisition costs, while customers have found decisionmaking difficult due to the opacity of information. The internet has, to a certain extent, solved these two problems, according to the Deloitte report.
“Aesthetic medicine institutions are becoming more rational in the selection of access-to-market channels and delivery platforms, whilst increasingly adopting high precision and more refined marketing methods to maximize value of the input-output effect,” it said.
Historically, medical aesthetic institutions mainly used traditional advertisements and search engines to gain customers, leading to crude matching, increasing costs and falling returns on investment. With high-precision marketing, the ROI of aesthetic medicine customer acquisition platforms is increasing year after year, according to the report.
China’s leading aesthetic medicine clinic franchise BeauCare Clinics said SoYoung and Meituan contribute to more than 45 percent of its new patient visits, and despite the impact from the pandemic, the company still met its yearly revenue expectations in 2020 thanks to the rise of minimally invasive procedures and recovered market demand in the second half.
“Digitalization in the industry is getting faster due to the pandemic, but also because unlike medical treatment for an ailing patient who
All I want to know is out there online, and it is also very convenient and sometimes economical to make an appointment or pay bills through these apps.” Chen Li, a 35-year-old Beijinger who works in an SOE
needs offline medical checks, video consultation and online promotions are often enough for aesthetic medicine customers, and the rise of internet platforms offers aesthetic medicine practices more channels for advertisement and promotion, said Li Bin, president of BeauCare Clinics.
However, he said customers using internet platforms are pricesensitive, and sometimes are not rational enough to prioritize quality over price.
According to Luan Jie, director of the Chinese Society of Plastic Surgery under the Chinese Medical Association, the development of online platforms improves transparency of aesthetic medicine information for customers.
“Thanks to the digitalization of the industry, customers are becoming better informed. They have more open channels to trace back the origins of services and medical devices and drugs to be used,” Luan said.
Besides, internet platforms help consumers avoid illegal and substandard service providers as they reinforce scrutiny over aesthetic medicine practices’ professionalism and compliance with government regulations, he added.
In the past, many practitioners and institutions relied on advertisements and promotions to attract customers, but now professional skills speak louder, he said.
However, as the domestic aesthetic market expands, illegal practices in the sector, such as providing services without certificates, counterfeits and smuggled drugs remain rampant.
China’s aesthetic medicine market grew from 64.8 billion yuan ($10.04 billion) in 2015 to 176.9 billion yuan in 2019, with an impressive 28.7-percent compound annual growth rate, while the global market grew at a CAGR of around 8.2 percent over the same period, according to the Deloitte report.
The domestic market is poised to grow at a 15.2 percent CAGR between 2020 and 2023, versus 7 percent globally, following a period of adjustment.
Market consultancy iResearch said there were 13,000 legal aesthetic medicine institutions in China in 2019, but 15 percent of them provided services beyond their certificates. It is estimated that more than 80,000 beauty salons and lifestyle practices provided aesthetic medicine services illegally.
There were 38,343 legally registered practitioners, yet illegal practitioners amounted to more than 100,000. Among the legal practitioners, about 5,000 provided services illegally in institutions beyond their registrations in 2019.
Moreover, iResearch estimated two-thirds of the injection drugs circulating in the domestic market are either counterfeits or smuggled.
According to the Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics, there are about 20,000 complaints annually on deformations caused by aesthetic medicine treatments in China.