[eoo]

It's not about being close to consumers.

1. If you are the Communist party and you are planning electricity for a 5M inhabitants city in 2007, growing at 9% (doubling every ~7 years, electricity use is highly correlated with economic growth), you need to make the plants 10 times bigger than needed for them to last 20 years

2. Mining equipment is placed next to the source of electricity

3. Corrupt officials are co-opted (just turn on that turbine that is wasted working capacity for you, and I'll pay you in cash)

4. Profit?

FWIW, I think this doesn't happen exclusively in China but in every place where there's idle energy capture potential.

[willtemperley]

It's happening in morocco. Soluna is putting in a wind farm, which will mine bitcoin while they're waiting for transmission lines to go in.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/09/const...

[Moru]

You can't just turn on a second turbine because it's wasted anyway, it's the water reserve that is the currency here. It runs out faster if you use all turbines.