China's Trade War With Australia Has Spectacularly Backfired

China instigated a trade war with Australia that seemingly started right after the Land Down Under called for an independent review about the origins of the coronavirus.

The Asian superpower has introduced harsh restrictions on the import of some of Australia's biggest industries like wine, timber, barley and lobsters.

They have also brought in an 'unofficial ban' on our coal, according to News Corp, with Chinese steel mills and power companies told to avoid Aussie thermal and coking coal.

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The action has prompted a huge backlash from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, however, in a severe case of schafenfreud, it appears the ban has led to China shooting itself in the foot.

The Australian reports there are loads of power outages in China due to people having to ration their heating over winter.

A Chinese energy insider told the news outlet: "You cannot pretend that bad relations between China and Australia haven't contributed to this situation."

There are reported electricity shortages in parts of Hunan, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang provinces that will last until roughly February next year.

This could have massive repercussions down the line that could impact commercial and communications technologies like including mobile phones and traffic signals. Petrol stations and ATMs could be affected as well and factories have been put under notice to operate during non-peak hours.

China revealed this week that it would be restricting the import of coal from Australia and will instead prioritise coal coming from Mongolia, Indonesia and Russia.

It caused the value of Whitehaven Coal to plummet 8.36 per cent and Yancoal dropped 10.44 per cent.

Scott Morrison said the ban was a 'lose-lose' situation that would gravely affect the relationship between the two countries.

"If that were the case, then that would obviously be in breach of WTO rules,'' Morrison told reporters. "It would be obviously in breach of our own free trade agreement and so we would hope that's certainly not the case.

"It really is a lose-lose here because Australian coal, compared to that coal that is sourced from other countries, the other countries have 50 per cent higher emissions than Australian coal."

Topics: Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie