In yet another bit of bad Spring Festival news for the Chinese economy, Bloomberg reports winter storms may have cut travel revenues by upwards of 70% for the Lunar New Year.
More than 10,000 group tours were canceled nationwide, Xinhua said, citing Wang Zhifa, vice director of China’s National Tourism Bureau. About 50 percent of trips from Beijing to southern China were also canceled, according to Xinhua.
The nugget, however, is at the bottom–almost lost to the editor’s table.
It will cost 2.1 billion yuan to fix the power grid in Zhejiang, Xinhua said.
To put that in perspective, at current market numbers, that’s just above $292 million (USD).
By comparison, the latest estimates at NationalPriorities.org show the total cost of the Iraq war on the United States to be about $275 million a day.
So, if we took tomorrow off from the war–and breakfast the next day– we could pay for the entire cost of fixing the power grid.
