I think it was on Volts podcast where I heard that many of them are built as political insurance for regional governments who don’t want an angry population if they have an unusually cold winter and a lot of them are going to end up as stranded assets which the population gets way less mad about.
Ironically building coal plants probably helps wean China off coal. They use a lot of coal for heating. But nobody is going to want to switch to a heat pump unless they have reliable electricity.
to add, given the governing structure in china, the coal plants don't have to make economic sense. one-party politics would thus prefer to overbuild as a hedge against the population getting mad at them.
