America needs to get SERIOUS !!! about China's tech rise dominance. Cranial/Rectal inversion in D.C.

Comments

• Sven

  October 6

  Thank you for the informative Fareed’s reporting. China is no longer a manufacturer of low tech stuff. Far from it, the country’s long term objective is to becoming global competitor. This trade war plays into their hands as beef is imported from Australia (plus South America) and soybean from Brazil. The only area China is lagging is semiconductor (several years behind according the think tanks).
  
  Technology advances at a fast pace. The anti-science protectionism policy of this administration only spells demise for US.
• bee

  October 6

  Not seeing this from the articles I read. China is reeling, not rising. From high unemployment rates to overbuilt and overprice real estate to government stimulus that directly keeps the party going.
  
  Here are a few reads I found revealing:
  
  China in Charts:
  the-chinese-economys-moment-of-macro-weakness-in-charts/
  
  Government Stimulus and The China's Economic Impulse:
  https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/04/gauging-the-strength-of-chinas-economy-in-uncertain-times/
  
  Problem- The Chinese Real Estate Sector and Chinese Wealth Effect:
  insights_understanding_china
  
  China economy: Finding a cyclical floor amid a structural downturn:
  https://oxfordeconomics.com/china-economy/
• Old_Joe

  October 6

  You have to separate China's internal domestic economy from their long-term manufacturing, military, and technical research sectors. Those sectors are where we are going to be in serious trouble, as they move ahead rapidly and we regress to a coal-powered economy. China is well aware of the climate crisis, and employing enormous resources to survive that. The "leaders" of the United States deny that there is even a climate crisis, and any efforts to deal with that are actively being devalued and discontinued.
  
  China's internal domestic economy has had serious and well documented problems particularly in the real estate sector. However, even the real estate sector has recently begun to stabilize and is slowly improving.
  
  
• bee

  October 6 edited October 6

  @Old_Joe
  
  China's current consumption of coal ranks 12th per capitia. They are the number 1 user of coal in the world by weight, an astounding 50% share of the world coal usage. Another way of saying this, "China is half of the dirty coal problem...the rest of the world is the other half."
  
  https://worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-country/
  
  Lets look at current air quality stats, Real Time Air quality statistics:
  
  China:
  https://aqicn.org/map/china/
  
  US:
  https://aqicn.org/map/usa/
  
  and,
  worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/air-quality-by-state
  
  Let's look at how the US and China produce energy by input fuels:
  
  China:

  China's primary input fuel for energy is coal, which accounted for about 58% of its total energy consumption in 2019

  eia.gov/international/content/analysis/countries_long/China
  
  US:
  https://eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
  
  Regarding Dire Real Estate Challenges in China (from the same news source (CNN) that @Catch22 sited):

  what matters the most is that Beijing has taken the bold initiative, which will help stabilize expectations.
  
  Taking a long-term perspective, the plan could reduce the risk of China sliding into a “deflationary spiral” like Japan did, as a key lesson from there is that policy makers should avoid doing too little, too late, they said.
  
  “[This might be] the beginning of the end of China’s housing crisis,”

  economy/china-property-crisis-stimulus-challenges-intl-hnk
  
• Old_Joe

  October 6

  I understand that China is highly complicit in the ongoing use of coal as an energy source for electricity generation. But it is also true that they are indisputably the world leaders in research, production, and installation of clean energy generation. They basically own solar generation, and are also an important provider of wind generation technology.
  
  The United States government, on the other hand, is attempting to terminate the installation of wind generation projects which are already near 80 or 90 percent of completion. Installation of additional wind and solar generation is being actively suppressed, while coal and oil based generation is being strongly promoted.
  
  And the financial genius of one man is responsible for that.
  
• Old_Joe

  October 6

  And this, from the BBC:

  Chinese car making giant BYD says the UK has become its biggest market outside China, after its sales there surged by 880% in September compared to a year earlier.
  
  The company says it sold 11,271 cars in the UK last month, with the plug-in hybrid version of its Seal U sports utility vehicle (SUV) accounting for the majority of those sales.
  
  It comes after figures from the car industry body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed that sales of electric vehicles (EVs) jumped to a record high in September.
  
  The UK is particularly attractive to firms like BYD as the country has not imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs, unlike other major markets such as the European Union and the US.
  
  BYD, which offers cheaper models than many of its Western rivals, said its share of the UK market jumped to 3.6% in September.
  
  The company will launch more new hybrid and electric cars in the months ahead, said the BYD's UK manager Bono Ge. He added that the brand's future in Britain looks "hugely exciting", having just opened its 100th retail outlet.

  Eating our lunch.
• WABAC

  October 7

  China has a lot of problems, including cratering demographics. That doesn't appear to have slowed down the desire to maximize productive capacity beyond reason, seemingly in nearly every human endeavor.
• Old_Joe

  October 11

  How China Powers Its Electric Cars and High-Speed Trains
  
  
  

  In China, the longest ultrahigh-voltage power line stretches more than 2,000 miles from the far northwest to the populous southeast — the equivalent of transmitting electricity from Idaho to New York City.
  
  The power line starts in a remote desert in northwest China, where vast arrays of solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity on a monumental scale. It snakes southeast, following an ancient river between mountain ranges before reaching Anhui Province near Shanghai, home to 61 million people and some of China’s most successful electric car and robot manufacturers.
  
  That’s a single power line. China has 41 others. Each is capable of carrying more electricity than any utility transmission line in the United States. That’s partly because China is using technology that makes its lines far more efficient than almost anywhere else in the world.
  
  ==================
  
  Beijing’s expansion of its power grid contrasts sharply with President Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” approach of doubling down on fossil fuels and rolling back federal programs to spur greater use of clean energy.
  
  In July, the Energy Department terminated its commitment to provide a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for construction of the Grain Belt Express power line to take wind power from Kansas to cities in Illinois and Indiana. That 800-mile ultrahigh-voltage line, which would have covered a shorter distance than dozens of lines already built in China, ran into criticism from rural landowners and Republican lawmakers.
  
  Many of China’s ultrahigh-voltage lines use direct current technology, which allows them to carry electricity for long distances with barely any of the transmission losses that affect most high-power lines in other countries.
  
  China’s more efficient power lines have broad consequences for the global race against climate change. They will help determine how quickly China can reduce its world-leading use of coal, a stain on the country’s clean energy track record. China uses as much coal as the entire rest of the world, and emits more greenhouse gases than the United States and the European Union combined.
  
  ==================
  
  China already consumes twice as much electricity as the United States. By 2050, China plans to triple its count of ultrahigh-voltage routes. The most recent public Chinese data, from the end of 2024, showed 19 lines transmitting power at 800 kilovolts. Another 22 lines operated at 1,000 kilovolts. One of them, the behemoth terminating in Guquan, transmits enough electricity at 1,100 kilovolts to power more than seven million American households or 40 million to 50 million Chinese households.
  
  To put the scale of China’s power grid build out in perspective, consider that the United States has a handful of 765-kilovolt lines and a few running at 500 kilovolts or less. The 765-kilovolt lines together total about 2,000 miles — the length of a single line across China.
  
  Construction of the power lines has helped China reduce its emissions of toxic air pollution and greenhouse gases. A University of Chicago analysis of satellite data, released in August, found that air pollution in China had plunged 41 percent since 2014. That added almost two years to the country’s average life expectancy.
  

  The above is excerpted from a current report in The New York Times. (Not a free link.)
  
  (Text emphasis added.)
  
• Crash

  October 11

  +1. Thanks for the news.
• Mark

  October 12

  Interesting information. Thank you.
  
  Apparently where there's a will, there's a power line for that.
• bee

  October 12 edited October 12

  The Great Wire of China!
  
  I guess it will power China's ghost towns:

  It is unclear how many of these Chinese ghost cities currently exist, but estimates put the number as high as 50 municipalities.

  https://allthatsinteresting.com/chinese-ghost-cities
  
  
  
  In world of finite resources, does China appear to be a steward of this little blue marble we call earth?
• rforno

  October 12

  China has traditionally taken a long long / strategic view on things. The US wants instant-gratification and focuses primarily on short-term results.
• WABAC

  October 12

  From @bee's link:

  The country has used more cement in its construction of new cities between 2011 to 2013 than the entirety of the United States in the 20th century.

  Nothing long term about that when your demographics are cratering. And it doesn't mention all the other stuff they've built that is also unused, or barely used. There's going to come a point where very few countries will be interested in importing deflation from China.
  
  Reminds me of the days when people thought the land under the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was worth more than all of the real estate in the US.
  
  Of course it's not surprising that China consumes a lot of elecricity--it has a lot of people. And if they want to get to where the US is in consumption per capita, then they're going to have to invest in a lot more infrastructure to support that. Given its track record, one might wonder if China will know when to slow down, or stop.
• Old_Joe

  October 12

  I like it when I can get you guys arguing on different aspects of a discussion. Makes it interesting.
• bee

  October 21

  India needs $45 Trillion to achieve "net zero growth of emissions" by 2045.
  
  interesting read-
  
  india-sees-emissions-peaking-in-2045-under-new-climate-plan?
• bee

  October 21

  Also a podcast on,
  
  What climate tech is overhyped and what's not:
  
  what-climate-tech-is-overhyped-and-whats-not