Hebei heating fees too high; farmers say they'd rather endure the cold than turn on the heat.

Many residents in Hebei are calling for attention to the province’s heating issues, saying they are reluctant to turn on their heaters due to high costs. (Screenshot from Douyin)

For environmental reasons, China’s Hebei Province has switched winter heating from coal to natural gas, but soaring heating expenses and the phasing out of government subsidies have sparked widespread online complaints. Farmers say they’d rather endure freezing temperatures than switch on their heating systems. Multiple related topics on Weibo have been censored.

On Saturday (January 3), Daxiang News, the new media arm of Henan Broadcasting Television, published a commentary noting that rural households previously spent only RMB 2,000–3,000 (approximately SGD 367–552) per winter on coal heating. After switching to natural gas, heating costs for a 100-square-meter home now start at RMB 5,000 per season—two to three times higher than before—and account for 30% to 50% of a rural household’s annual income.

In 2024, the per capita disposable annual income of rural residents in Hebei was RMB 22,022, making the burden of heating costs evident. Government subsidies have also been scaled back—from an initial RMB 1 per cubic meter of gas down to RMB 0.8, and most recently to just RMB 0.2—described in the commentary as “adding insult to injury.”

Netizens from Cangzhou and Baoding posted on Douyin that nighttime temperatures in Hebei had already dropped to minus 4°C around New Year’s Day, yet many rural families still hadn’t turned on their heating. Numerous posts urging attention to rural heating problems in Hebei have appeared on Chinese social media. Although hashtags like “Hebei rural heating” briefly trended on Weibo, users were later met with the message: “Sorry, this topic is not available.”

Hebei is a key region in northern China targeted for air pollution control. Since 2017, it has implemented large-scale “coal-to-gas” conversions for winter heating, sparking recurring controversies each winter ever since.

At last year’s Two Sessions (China’s National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference), Hebei provincial deputy Yang Huisu pointed out that while coal-to-gas and electric heating have improved the environment, their high costs have led some rural residents to “have gas but dare not use it.” She recommended increasing fiscal support and improving the subsidy mechanism for clean heating.