Threat jolts thousands to pay power bill

More than 8,000 Beijing households whose electric heating accounts had been in arrears for four months paid their bills within a week of the electric company's threat to cut off their power on Monday, Mirror Evening News reported.

In 2009, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau and other ministries invested 7 billion yuan in the "replacing coal with electricity" project.

That changeover moved from a coal heating system, typical in bungalow households in the capital, to electric heat.