The China Thread

[crazy canuck]

It sounds like China has already won. The US just doesn't realize it yet

China's biggest automaker, its biggest battery maker and its biggest electronics company have each introduced systems that can recharge electric cars in just five minutes, all but erasing one of the most annoying hassles of E.V.s, the long charging times. China has nearly 700,000 clean energy patents, more than half of the world's total. Beijing's rise as a clean power behemoth is altering economies and shifting alliances in emerging countries as far afield as Pakistan and Brazil.

The country is also taking steps that could make it hard for other countries, particularly the United States, to catch up. In April, Beijing restricted the export of powerful "rare earth" magnets, a business China dominates, unless they're already inside fully assembled products like electric vehicles or wind turbines. While China recently started issuing some export licenses for the magnets, the moves signal that the world may face a choice: Buy China's green energy technology, or do without.

From the NYTimes

[Josquius]

Wouldn't it be great if western companies start ignoring Chinese patents

[Zanza]

Just a remark: The five minute charging needs incredibly powerful chargers (1 MWh DC) and the appropriate grid, especially if there is a whole bunch of these chargers. I am a bit sceptical whether the necessary investments into the grid and power generation capability would pay off compared to charging slightly slower. Maybe that's where the exponential growth in photovoltaics in China comes in, but balancing such a grid must be a nightmare.

[HVC]

Wouldn't it be great if western companies start ignoring Chinese patents

Irony is the rarest of rare earth metals 

[Sheilbh]

I think I mentioned it last year but I'd add the 1,000 kmh high-speed train being tested in China.

I think it says something of the way our form of capitalism has gone that it's not delivering the same level of growth in renewables, mass-produced, affordable EVs and 1,000 kmh trains - but fantastic market cap. It feels like it's focused primarily on producing financial gains not, you know, producing.

[crazy canuck]

Just a remark: The five minute charging needs incredibly powerful chargers (1 MWh DC) and the appropriate grid, especially if there is a whole bunch of these chargers. I am a bit sceptical whether the necessary investments into the grid and power generation capability would pay off compared to charging slightly slower. Maybe that's where the exponential growth in photovoltaics in China comes in, but balancing such a grid must be a nightmare.

In addition to its solar power production, it is also has 31 nuclear reactors under construction (almost as much as the rest of the world combined).

China is fully engaged with creating the power grid of the future, while the Americans cling to the power sources of the past.  The Biden administration made strides toward addressing the issue, but those initiatives have been reversed (but put it politely) at a time when the Americans should have been ramping up their efforts.

[Sheilbh]

Well also China has a structural advantage. The Western world was built around fossil fuel energy and ICE vehicles for about 100 years. There is a significant legacy of that in China but also - especially in the last 10 years or so they have been able to leapfrog to an extent. A lot of the new development going on is for this grid and for the world of EVs. They don't have quite such a legacy as the Western world. Obviously at the same time, China also built over 80 new coal-fired power plants last year which was a ten year high.

I've said before but I think what's going on in China on energy transition is incredible and it's the most important story in climate in the world right now - the next most important is whether India can leapfrog again and so do what China's doing now without the massive fossil fuel intensive development in the last 40 years in China.

Having said all that I think renewables will still be growing at pace in the US for the same reason they are in the rest of the world - the economic case is there. It's the same reason why Texas last year overtook California as the state with the largest capacity of utility scale solar, wind is also growing at scale and Texas generates more renewable energy than California. I think in China and Texas the economics work for private capital to be involved and it is (relatively) easy to build things (ironically given the recent Mike Lee bill an easier factor for Texas is that land is in private hands, which is less true for a lot of the West) - the key difference with China is obviously you have state support behind it as the CCP consider this a priority. It's another example of why I think we underestimate Chinese leadership or just assume it'll fail at our peril. There's political leadership and some very effective, flexible, responsive technocrats and for all its flaws I think there's reason to think the regime can self-correct.

[HVC]

I think I mentioned it last year but I'd add the 1,000 kmh high-speed train being tested in China.

I think it says something of the way our form of capitalism has gone that it's not delivering the same level of growth in renewables, mass-produced, affordable EVs and 1,000 kmh trains - but fantastic market cap. It feels like it's focused primarily on producing financial gains not, you know, producing.

That assumes that capitalism built the infrastructure we have now, but it didn't . We didn't move to dirt horse cart paths to roads and interstates/province roads because companies invested, for example, we did so because governments did. Now a lot of that was for military reason, like in Germany and America where they wanted fast troop and Mechanized movement. Anyway, that's just to say the next big move in the west is not, and never was, going to be private investment. If you want efficient and effective change at that level you need government cash. And that's harder in some places than others. China probably has the easiest time making those changes. The cash to do it and the authoritarian power to implement it.

*edit* theres downside to the spectrum where China sits too, like an increased chance of papermache making up an unacceptably large percent of building material the building quality of many of Chinas building during its housing boom is an easy example to point to.

[Sheilbh]

It depends - there were absolutely railway booms and huge private companies (and fortunes made and lost) building railways. This was often nationalised or consolidated in the 20th century but an awful lot of the infrastructure was build by companies.

And a lot of the innovation of new models of trains were by private companies - or in the comparison with mass-produced affordable EVs the ICE equivalent was absolutely an American, private sector innovation (not devoid of authoritarian power). And capitalism is supposed to expand its productive capacity and I think in the West there's maybe been a bit less of that and a bit more rent-seeking.

I don't disagree on state playing an important role - but I think it is striking that the route the West's EV business model seems to have gone down is (via Tesla) quite high end, luxury adjacent cars. It's in China that BYD has launched 21st century Fordism. This is why I slightly bristle at the language of over-production or over capacity as if the rest of the world should be shackled by the industrial and business model our companies have chosen (plus I'm not sure on energy transition there is such a thing as over-production at this point).

[HisMajestyBOB]

I think I mentioned it last year but I'd add the 1,000 kmh high-speed train being tested in China.

I think it says something of the way our form of capitalism has gone that it's not delivering the same level of growth in renewables, mass-produced, affordable EVs and 1,000 kmh trains - but fantastic market cap. It feels like it's focused primarily on producing financial gains not, you know, producing.

https://youtu.be/T-j5XWo1fPI?t=58
We used to make shit in this country. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.