Energy Superpower

"With Europe importing 80 percent of its solar panels from China, dependencies would merely shift from imported oil or gas to imported solar equipment, leaving much to be desired when it comes to the solar sector as a genuine source of energy security and strategic autonomy."

European Parliament backgrounder

 

China's big break came when in 2001 Western powers agreed it should become a member of the World Trade Organization. Actually, its big opportunity came when Western consumers became enthralled with the prospect of buying Chinese goods offered for sale at prices substantially reduced for common household goods manufactured in their own countries where production costs were higher, mostly because of higher worker wages and benefits amidst union-corporate bargaining and national standards that China's vast production network was untroubled by, particularly relating to environmental degradation. 

It took dogged patience for Beijing's Chinese Communist Party, and careful planning but in fact, took no time at all for China to dominate the manufacturing and trade market globally, while manufacturing in the West closed down, unable to compete with China, and corporate investment from the West ensured that name brands once proudly home-grown were now produced in China keeping their bottom lines healthy and Chinese industry booming. The environment in China suffered; all-enveloping smog from coal-fired production, poisoned lakes and rivers reflecting no national standards.

 

SHANGHAI, CHINA - Feb 21, 2017: Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) offshore patrol vessel No. 31088 berthed at the pier next to China's biggest coal-fired power plant in Shanghai.

 

Now, add to that China, the world's greatest energy user and contributor to greenhouse gases playing to the environmental game of Climate Change and green energy, vowing at the United Nations to do its part in reducing carbon output, while at the same time building new coal-fired power projects at home and abroad. Remember the Olympic Games held in Beijing when corporations were ordered to temporarily shut down their production facilities and stop emitting particulate matter and carbon in an effort to reduce the dense smog responsible for shortening life spans?

Anxious efforts to show the incoming world spectators that there were blue skies over Beijing, after all, lasted as long as the Games went on, and then it was full throttle ahead, again. And more coal-fired projects on the agenda, not only in China itself, but elsewhere in the world where less-advanced economies responded to Chinese investment and planned coal-fired projects through Chinese generosity willing to advance foreign economies, upgrading bridges and roads in the Belt and Road initiative.

In the West the argument by advocates of decarbonization of industrialized economies, that the oil and gas energy dependency would be replaced with new "green jobs" has failed to materialize. On the other hand, China has been advantaged there, too. Even while China continues to benefit economically as it dominates global production with inexpensive coal-generated power, and has secured a near monopoly on solar panel production and rare earth elements which the West is hungry for in its quest for clear energy and electric vehicle production.