China's Campus Heat Crisis Exposes Gaps in Cooling, Safety and Electricity Supply

Students seek cooler places as dormitories overheat

Temperatures above 40°C (104°F) have pushed students across eastern China out of crowded university dormitories and into libraries, corridors, supermarkets and hotels. Rooms that often house four to eight students, many without air conditioning, have become difficult places to sleep during some of the country's hottest summers on record.

At least six colleges in Shandong province, including Qingdao University and Yantai Nanshan University, have pledged to install air conditioning in student dormitories over the summer break. Other universities have opened libraries overnight or arranged temporary places where students can escape the heat while dormitories are renovated.

The pressure to act intensified after a dormitory supervisor was found dead in his room at Qingdao University. A student at the same university was hospitalized for heatstroke that day. The supervisor's cause of death remained under investigation, although many believed heatstroke had played a role.

Students have responded with whatever cooling they can find or afford: bowls of ice in front of fans, bedding moved into corridors and occasional nights in hotels. Their experiences connect a campus housing problem to a much larger national challenge. More people need cooling as temperatures rise, but meeting that demand puts additional pressure on electricity supplies.

China's universities must now manage both an immediate health concern and a longer process of adapting buildings to hotter summers. Installing air conditioning can provide relief, while the cost of equipment, electricity and improvements across large student populations shapes how quickly institutions can respond.

Ice, tents and hotel rooms become survival tools

China's annual sanfu season, the period commonly described as the dog days of summer, has long brought uncomfortable nights. In 2024, the heat arrived early and with unprecedented intensity, catching millions off guard and making familiar ways of coping less effective.

In Jilin province, students have slept in tents lining corridors with air conditioning. In Shandong, students have sought relief in supermarkets or slept in libraries opened by their universities. Others have dragged bedding into cooler hallways, turning shared spaces into temporary sleeping areas.

Hotels offer another escape, but their cost puts them beyond the reach of many students for more than an occasional night. A student aged 20 from Changchun described the financial pressure:

Checking into a hotel is a huge expense for us students.

Students who remain in their rooms have improvised inexpensive cooling devices, including a bowl of ice cubes placed in front of a fan as a homemade air conditioner. These responses show how strongly access to relief depends on what students can spend and which spaces their universities make available.

One student recalled a change in the summers experienced in northeastern China:

When I was young the summers in the northeast were really comfortable. But now the summers are getting hotter and hotter.

A death brings campus welfare into focus

The Qingdao University supervisor was affectionately known as the dormitory uncle because of his care for stray cats. His death brought attention to the conditions faced by the people who support daily campus life, alongside the students living there.

Tributes and demands for reform spread on social media. One Weibo user linked the university's responsibilities to its treatment of ordinary staff:

The quality of a university does not lie in how many buildings it has, but rather how it treats the regular people who quietly support the school's operation.

The hospitalization of a student for heatstroke on the same day added urgency to concerns about campus safety. Heatstroke is the serious health danger at the centre of those concerns, making access to cooling a matter of protection as well as comfort.

The public response has focused attention on how universities look after their most vulnerable members during extreme weather. Students and campus workers share the same buildings and weather, even when their roles and access to help differ.

Universities expand cooling and temporary shelter

Qingdao University and Yantai Nanshan University are among the institutions promising air conditioning upgrades during the summer break. Across Shandong, at least six colleges have announced such plans as pressure grows to improve dormitory conditions.

Universities have also allowed students to sleep overnight in libraries with air conditioning while dormitory work takes place. Restaurants and supermarkets have become informal cooling refuges, with video footage showing students sprawled on floors to escape the heat.

A high school student in Jinan described how essential cooling had become:

Without air-conditioning, it's too hot to survive.

Libraries and other shared spaces can offer immediate shelter, but the dormitory upgrades address the places students return to each night. The combination of temporary accommodation and planned installation work shows institutions trying to meet urgent needs while changing their facilities.

Why the dormitory cooling gap is so large

Many university dormitories were built decades ago for a different climate and era, when air conditioning was regarded as a luxury rather than a necessity. Hotter summers and more frequent heatwaves have made that gap in infrastructure harder to manage.

Rooms shared by four to eight students concentrate the problem. When a dormitory lacks cooling, several people must find another place to rest or rely on the same limited equipment. Across a large university, those individual room conditions become an institutional challenge involving budgets, buildings and student welfare.

A large survey published through ScienceDirect found that cost and convenience shape students' choices of cooling methods. The student cooling survey found preferences for options including fans cooled by water and floor fans, with price remaining the main consideration.

That helps explain why improvised devices are popular and why hotels tend to be a last resort. Students are trying to obtain relief within tight budgets, while universities face the expense of serving very large student populations.

Shanghai offers another example of education authorities responding to heat. The municipal education commission has provided air conditioners and ice cubes for students taking college entrance examinations. Such measures are not yet universal, leaving access to cooling dependent on local arrangements and institutional resources.

Cooling demand puts electricity supplies under strain

China's nationwide electricity demand reached a record high in early July 2024. Air conditioning accounted for more than a third of the electricity load in eastern China, showing how strongly hot weather can affect the amount of power needed at a given time.

Electricity load means the demand the grid must meet. When households, schools, businesses and other users switch on cooling equipment together, utilities must supply enough electricity at the same time to keep those systems running.

According to Ember's heatwave analysis, cooling needs contributed to a 31% increase in electricity demand from a year earlier during the hottest months. Utilities increased generation from coal to avoid blackouts.

The campus response therefore forms part of a wider energy challenge. Every additional air conditioner can provide needed relief, while the combined demand from cooling across eastern China is already large enough to account for more than one third of the regional load.

Relying on fossil fuels to meet rising cooling demand also adds emissions that worsen climate change. Hotter summers increase the need for cooling, and meeting that need with more fossil fuel generation feeds the conditions behind further warming.

Heat records show the scale of the problem

China's recent heat emergencies span several years. Scientists have linked the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather to global climate change, placing the experiences of students within a broader pattern of rising heat risks.

The sequence of recent records shows why universities and electricity suppliers face growing pressure:

• In 2022, China experienced its worst heatwave since 1961, with some regions enduring a hot spell lasting 79 days.
• In 2023, Xinjiang recorded 52.5°C, the highest temperature ever noted in China.
• In early July 2024, nationwide electricity demand reached a record high as cooling needs surged.
• In 2024, July became China's hottest month since national records began.

According to The Lancet, heatwaves caused more than 50,000 deaths in China in 2022 alone. That figure places the discomfort of overheated rooms alongside the much more serious health consequences extreme temperatures can bring.

Students, older people and outdoor workers are among those most vulnerable. Their circumstances differ, but access to a cooler place, the ability to stop an activity and the money available for relief all affect how they experience extreme heat.

Outdoor workers face heat with fewer options

Delivery drivers, construction labourers and millions of other workers in the gig economy must continue working outdoors while students seek refuge inside. For these workers, escaping the heat can be difficult to reconcile with earning a living.

Chinese law mandates a heat wave allowance for workers, but enforcement is uneven. Most gig workers receive no extra pay or benefits, leaving many to carry the physical and financial costs of working in high temperatures.

Students face a related problem when the only readily available cool room is a hotel they cannot comfortably afford. Workers face it when protection or additional pay fails to reach them. In both settings, the burden falls heavily on people with limited resources.

The response to extreme heat therefore extends beyond purchasing equipment. It also involves who can use cooled spaces, who receives financial support and how institutions protect people whose daily responsibilities keep them exposed.

Greener buildings and more efficient equipment

Guangzhou is experimenting with ways to reduce urban temperatures through vegetation, water and building design. These approaches address heat in the surrounding environment as well as the cooling needed inside individual rooms.

The measures include expanding green spaces and water bodies to create cooler areas, adding vegetation to building fronts and rooftops, restoring traditional architectural features that encourage ventilation, and designing urban layouts that channel wind and disperse heat.

According to the World Bank, such measures can reduce indoor air temperatures by 3°C to 5°C and deliver substantial economic and health benefits. Their relevance to campuses lies in the same problem universities face: buildings and their surroundings influence how much mechanical cooling people need.

More efficient air conditioners offer another way to meet cooling needs while limiting electricity demand. Rooftop solar panels and improved electricity pricing are also among the proposed responses to pressure on the grid.

Ember's analysis points to incentives for efficient cooling devices and the integration of renewable energy as key measures for meeting future demand without worsening climate change. These measures connect the immediate need for cooler rooms with decisions about how the electricity supplying them is produced.

Campus upgrades become a question of preparedness

Universities face pressure to improve facilities for health and safety, not simply comfort. Opening libraries overnight and providing temporary shelter can help during an emergency, while installing air conditioning changes what students can expect from their dormitories during later hot spells.

Policymakers face a similar balance at national scale: meeting immediate cooling needs while working toward longer term sustainability goals. The record electricity demand of July 2024 and the increased use of coal show how closely those decisions are connected.

Students continue to adapt, improvise and advocate for better conditions. Their experiences have helped drive a national discussion about preparedness, fairness and student life as summers grow hotter.

The practical challenge is to make relief available where people live, study and work, while reducing the amount of energy needed to provide it. Dormitory upgrades, temporary cooling spaces, more efficient equipment and changes to urban design address different parts of that same task.

Key Points

• Temperatures above 40°C have forced students in eastern China to seek relief outside crowded dormitories without air conditioning.
• A Qingdao University dormitory supervisor's death and a student's hospitalization prompted concern about campus conditions.
• At least six colleges in Shandong have pledged to install dormitory air conditioning over the summer break.
• Libraries, corridors, supermarkets and hotels have served as temporary refuges, with cost limiting some students' options.
• Air conditioning accounted for more than a third of electricity load in eastern China as national demand reached a record in early July 2024.
• Students, older people and outdoor workers face particular risks, while most gig workers receive no extra heat allowance or benefits.
• More efficient cooling, renewable electricity and greener urban design are among the proposed ways to protect people while limiting pressure on energy supplies.