There is little doubt that China gets “it”.
In a world where urbanization has become synonymous with air pollution and using imported resources for energy, daily life becomes a question of political dependency. If cities like Shanghai or Beijing are ever going to have clean air, Electric Vehicles (EV’s) are going to be a big part of the future.
That is probably why the Chinese government is pushing auto makers into the EV market. At this point Chinese EV makers like BYD are leading the world in the design and production of affordable EV’s, and based on recent sales figures, they are spanking everyone else.
The advantages that China’s economy will reap from their support are manifold, and go far beyond the fuel savings that are implicit in a shift away from gas powered vehicles.
Unplugging The Economy
The oil driven growth model that dominated the 20th century has some major drawbacks. When the USA had large reserves of domestic oil sources, there was really no problem. But when oil become scarce, and petroleum based energy technology came to exist all over the world, major issues came with it.
We use petrol to fulfill daily needs, but for a country that doesn’t have its own domestic supply of petrol, the chain of dependency begins. China likely realizes that in order to compete in the next century or two, they will need to change the rules of the geopolitical game.
That is where sustainable energy comes into play, and based on how China has developed both solar technology, and EV’s, they understand how to make investments today that could put them into leadership position tomorrow.
Full Spectrum Dominance
While President Trump bemoans the trade agreements that his predecessors made with The Middle Kingdom, one of the first things he did was gut public support for EV’s. Instead of fostering growth in the US technology sector, he decided to push coal as a power source on a seemingly hapless public.
As the recent free power fiesta in Germany has shown us, making investments in sustainable power will ultimately lead to huge advantages for a society that makes them. Given China’s drive to create a new infrastructure for its budding economy, it isn’t difficult to see how they may act as the world’s driver for growth over the next few hundred years.
The competitive advantage that essentially free power create for a society is hard to imagine, but over the next few decades, we will see just how much it helps China pull away from the west.
It is possible that the degree to which nations adopt similar energy systems will determine the degree they become economic colonies of China, with sustainable energy making the difference between a nation becoming totally beholden to the East.
When the power of another nation is free, there is simply no way to compete with them if yours isn’t.
[via motoring]
