Originally Posted by
furloughfuntime
In addition, China has invested heavily in battery technology and renewables to the extent that it is the leading power in these fields:
"
Chinese companies dominate not just batteries and grid hardware but also, increasingly, the software that manages energy flows. While some governments may be wary of giving Chinese firms access to their grids via the software, they are likely to keep buying the hardware since they have few affordable alternatives."
While there may be some domestic pain, China may be positioned to benefit from a global oil shock: "Chinese companies dominate the manufacturing of nearly every component of a modern grid, including solar panels, high-voltage cables, transformers and batteries that store energy for later use. Even before the war in Iran, they were expanding abroad, helping countries build grids designed to meet the heavy electricity demands of artificial intelligence."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/b...tery-grid.html
And yet so many Americans dismiss the Chinese as makers of "useless crap I can buy at Walmart." They surely do make plenty of that sort of stuff, but in recent years they have become much more forward-thinking with their industrial policy than we have.
China has tons of its own economic issues, and they still can't make a decent commercial aircraft... But they're absolutely on a trajectory to overtake us as the world's economic superpower at some point in the next decade.
Meanwhile we spend our time changing Notices to Air Missions back to Notices to Airmen. Yup, we've got our priorities straight...