Pays zero what? They have to buy the hardware so I assume you mean electricity, pretty sure bribing allows them to operate, it doesn't cover electricity costs.
pays zero electricity costs, yes. A couple grand a year can buy you all the electricity you want. tens or hundreds or of grand per year, or millions. A couple grand is a lot in terms of China salaries.
you'll never find a systematic article on it, but these aren't the first or the last incidents.
they also pay much lower hardware costs than the US does, because it all happens off the books. Chinese mining farms with internal hardware/super cheap power are nothing new.
china doesn't and never has played fairly in terms of hardware or power costs. crypto as a whole has been embraced because it's a good system to move value past chinese capital controls, you just are getting your beak wet as that money moves.
just like those 2 million dollar houses in vancouver or whatever. Sure, it's great to be trading in that current, or providing property management services, or to be holding the asset as it's pumped up by that money moving under the chinese capital controls!