The denial is clearly deeply entrenched. The US didn't copy and paste the British Empires model of global imperialism, with Britain still holding your hand even to this day? Emerging empires have always copied the predecessor and pirated wealth from the declining predecessor. Why should China be expected to play it differently?

'And it’s not just nuclear. China is building out renewables capacity at a mind-boggling rate, and the latest figures are hard to even comprehend. In just the first five months of 2025, China installed 198 GW of new solar, blasting past the one terawatt cumulative milestone. The pace is staggering with 92 GW of that solar capacity having been added in May alone. As another analyst pointed out, that’s the equivalent of installing “almost 100 solar panels every second.”

Being the “world’s factory” means having your very own supply chain. For the first time last year, the top four wind turbine makers in the world were all Chinese. Similarly, China enjoys a majority market share in the manufacture and export of photovoltaic cells. As one analyst from the Asia Society bluntly put it, “When it comes to clean energy, it no longer makes sense to talk about competition. There is only one player. The U.S. is not even in the room.

As the U.S. cancels $22 billion in clean energy projects and sees wind investment shrink to a decade low, China is churning out the “wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars... all over the planet.” They aren’t just positioned for the data center boom; they’re the ones building and selling the entire energy infrastructure for it.

These lower energy costs ripple through the entire economy, compounding over time and creating a competitive advantage that could last for generations. Cheap, abundant power is a fundamental economic multiplier. Its effects reach far beyond the tech sector. It drastically lowers the input costs for all foundational industries: steel, cement, chemicals, plastics, and advanced materials. This, in turn, makes all types of manufacturing, from electric vehicles and batteries to the solar panels and wind turbines themselves, exponentially cheaper to produce.

With the cost of electricity becoming the dominant factor, China can effectively subsidize its entire technological ecosystem. While other nations are forced to choose between powering AI data centers or maintaining their industrial base, China is building the capacity to do both. The Chinese approach creates a virtuous cycle where cheaper energy allows for cheaper compute, which in turn accelerates breakthroughs in big data, machine learning, and even energy production itself. We’re already seeing this feedback loop in action. A research team recently used AI to control the ultra-hot plasma in the HL-3 tokamak reactor. By training an AI model, they were able to stabilize plasma in ways traditional, slower containment methods cannot. It’s a type of of a breakthrough that can unlock the next generation of power.

These advantages ensure that the high-value industries of the future will inevitably thrive and concentrate in China, where energy is cheap and there’s plenty of it to go around. It is a key economic advantage to unlocking the technologies of the future.'