While Western governments debated carbon prices and regulatory frameworks, Beijing built the entire industrial stack. It did not attempt to optimise one part of the supply chain; it built the whole chain. China subsidised upstream materials, poured capital into wafer and cell production, locked in refining capacity, scaled module assembly, and offered cheap electricity in key regions.

Only in the first half of 2025, China installed 256 gigawatts of new solar capacity, more than twice as much as the rest of the world combined. In batteries, China produces around 70% of the world’s lithium-ion cells.

This is not an advantage – it is architecture. China built the industrial spine of the energy transition, and the world will spend the coming decade negotiating its dependence on that spine.

This is why the West’s climate ambitions increasingly collide with its geopolitical anxieties. Europe can legislate its way to net zero, but it cannot meet those targets without Chinese hardware. America can subsidise clean technology at a historic scale, but its roll-out still depends on imported components from the very country it seeks to counterbalance. The transition is universal in rhetoric but profoundly concentrated in execution.