[ak217]

Alas is right, China is poised to dominate battery, solar, and EV technology and to translate it to military technology as well. Meanwhile the Republicans are blowing up US alliances and sabotaging the battery/EV industrial development policy that was actually making progress in giving the US hope in catching up.

[api]

It’s the innovators dilemma. We have so much not just technical but cultural and political sunk cost in fossil fuels and traditional industrial era infrastructure. The Chinese are just developing now and don’t have so much of that sunk cost. So they can think like it’s the future. We are stuck in the past.

Eventually there may come a day when it’s China that is stuck in the past, looking back to the early 21st century like we look back to the middle twentieth, and someone else will be ascendant.

I really felt like Trump’s 2024 election was the moment it became the Chinese century. It was the moment we chose to exit our position of world leadership both culturally and technologically.

[ksec]

May be it is not of an innovators dilemma?

Chinese CCP are willing to scarifies whatever traditional industrial era infrastructure in order for things to move forward and gain a global advantage. Especially when they are not the one paying for the scarifies.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Certainly sounds like a sunk cost dilemma.

Just because a country has previously invested in fossil fuels, it doesn't follow that they can't get the benefit of solar with future investment. However, there's a lot of powerful money/people/corporations that depend on fossil fuels for making billions - that's the real problem as that skews the market and politics of energy production/distribution.

[mcswell]

"Make America Little Again" --Donald J. Trump

[jack_tripper]

>I really felt like Trump’s 2024 election was the moment it became the Chinese century.

You must have been asleep at the wheel or living under a rock to have mised China's rise over the last decades. They didn't wait for Trump to get elected in 2024 and then flipped a switch from third world country to global superpower.

"Damn, this hot cup of coffee burned my tongue. Why would Trump do this?"

-HN comments

[calvinmorrison]

good. maybe we can copy some shit for cheap and leap frog a few generations instead of leading the world!

[jfengel]

Unlikely, since our labor costs are still considerably higher than elsewhere. For a very long time our economy has rested on developing high margin products and letting others do the low-marginal-overhead of making it. We assumed that they were not going to catch up to us as innovators.

That was a dangerous mistake, and we may be left with nothing.

[sdoering]

Same here in Germany/Europe. Our conservatives actually destroyed the solar industry for the third time. Our conservative party has actually destroyed significantly more jobs in solar industries over the last 20 years than it keeps alive with subsidies of 70k€ - 100k€ per person working in that industry (direct and indirect subsidies make the 70 - 100k€ range).

But hey, our populist right tell us, that the subsidies for "green technology" are bad and that we need to get rid of them, because they are making energy so expensive in Germany (cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12 years ago).

But hey - people vote for those parties. Because they know their economics, not like the leftists, who don't.

Germany (or Europe in general) is fucked. In a few years, we will reap what we now sow. And not because of our social systems or immigration, but because our oh so great political leaders are not willing to invest in the future.

[bootsmann]

> cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12 years ago

This is not the argument you want to make. Energy prices are a significant component of the basket used to measure inflation. Like yeah, you expect energy prices to sink if you discount for the rise of energy prices. Germany is suffering from high energy prices its the key factor why the country has been stagnating economically for the past 6 years.

[aktuel]

> cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12 years ago

Dude, soaring energy prices are driving inflation. That's like saying the prices are lower if you just keep ignoring everything that actually makes them more expensive. Duh.

[tirant]

I don’t care if German prices for electricity are below inflation. They’re just still expensive. As an EV owner is difficult to find an electricity provider with costs below 0,25€/kWh, and most of them go beyond 0,30€. While I had prices in other European countries for around 0,05€/kWh at night for example.

Not only that, Conservatives, Socialists and the Green all managed to increase our electricity CO2 footprint by moving from nuclear to coal/lng.

[antonvs]

> Alas is right, China is poised to dominate …

Are you saying “alas for citizens of the US who see things in competitive nationalist terms”?

Seems like a win for everyone else, no? What happened to “competition”, or is that something that’s only supposed to be beneficial within the US?

[ak217]

China is governed by the CCP, which holds the world record for the number of people murdered by the state, feeds its citizens militaristic propaganda at scale, is currently controlled by a guy who fancies himself a dictator, and is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade. It takes a dangerous kind of willful naivete to just ignore that fact.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Are you saying “alas for citizens of the US who see things in competitive nationalist terms”?

He’s saying it as a realist.

China is building the equivalent to America’s sanctions power in their battery dominance. In an electrified economy, shutting off battery and rare earths access isn’t as acutely calamitous as an oil embargo, but it’s similarly shocking as sanctions and tariffs.

[nutjob2]

It's alas for everyone but China. Who wants to be dependent on an aggressive totalitarian state?

You can't compete fairly with China because the government applies massive subsidies and is coercive with both imports and exports.

Right behind Russia, China is the biggest threat to global order and peace. It's no accident they are in cahoots.