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BEIJING, May 26-- As a key barometer of economic activity, China's power consumption rose 5.8 percent year on year in April, reflecting a flourishing development of new economic drivers and consumption upgrading. Total power use reached 553.4 billion kilowatt hours in April. The increase of power consumption on new energy vehicles, photovoltaic production, and big data services were all over 50 percent, according to the National Energy Administration. "Provinces in the southwest and the central and southern China have replaced eastern and coastal ones as the new leading regions in power consumption growth," said Ye Chun, vice director of the Department of Industry Development of the China Electricity Council (CEC). Ye ascribed this shift to China's poverty alleviation work, infrastructure construction, quickened urbanization, home appliances quality improvement and tourism boom driven by the original ecological environment. Power use in Tibet Autonomous Region, for instance, increased by 18.3 percent year on year in the first four months of 2019, ranking first in growth rate in the country. "As a section of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, the Lhasa-Nyingchi railway's construction work accelerated this year, driving up the electricity consumption," said Bai Xiaowei with the China Railway Electrification Engineering Group. In April, daily power consumption in the manufacturing sector also reached its peak in the past five months, according to the CEC. | 
