Microsoft was secretly wasting electricity to avoid fines -- gaming an economic system designed to encourage efficiency under bureaucrat-designed rules that make sense within market capitalism, and Chinese companies are secretly wasting electricity to avoid a loss in confidence, ie. business, under the direction of bureaucrats -- gaming a larger economic system designed for efficiency, but here specifically for efficiency of labor to product spend, versus efficiency of product sale.
Curiously, the need to maintain this appearance of productivity is only likely for the sake of capitalist clients who buy the services -- c.f. the classic entrepreneurial slogan, "fake it till you make it!"
Some people are saying in response to this, "only under communism", and in the specifics of who and how and why they may be correct, but waste to satisfy bureaucratic systems is not unique to any economic or social system. People are going to juke the stats under every regime, at all scales, under all circumstances.
People in China are actual human beings, not part of a hive mind. They react to individual incentives.
Also, you can criticize the Chinese government without having any issues with Chinese people. Learn the difference or life is going to be hard.
Microsoft was trying to avoid a penalty for itself, one company.
The businesses in China (not all obviously) are conspiring with the bureaucracy to fake economic activity on a massive scale, to put on a veneer for the outside world. This is about appearances to the world, because China is very scared right now.