The Polycrisis
Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie on how geopolitics has been driving a quiet revolution in clean tech, and how the energy transition is in turn reshaping world power.
The Polycrisis
04 | Electric World Order | Manufacturing Chimerica
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China didn’t set out to fix climate change. Its production of clean energy and electrification tech is changing the world, but this particular green revolution is a byproduct of China’s economic strategy and its quest for energy independence. The global financial crisis, the US shale boom, and the US attitude towards China have all contributed to China’s new dominance of clean energy manufacturing.
Guests:
Jessica Chen Weiss - Professor of China Studies and the faculty director of the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC
Jake Werner - Director of the East Asia Program, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Hosted by energy and climate finance expert Kate Mackenzie, and Tim Sahay from the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University. They co-author The Polycrisis newsletter, which explores connections between energy, geopolitics, climate change, finance and industry.
- Produced by Sarah Allely
- Original music by Russell Stapleton
- Mixed by Bethany Stewart
Contact us at: polycrisispodcast@gmail.com
Links:
Jessica Chen Weiss in 2024; "The Case Against the China Consensus", Foreign Affairs
CSIS note on the implications of China's rare earths export controls for US military and semiconductor manufacturing
Welcome to the Polychris Podcast. This first season, Electric World Order, tells the story of the clash between new and old energy regimes. There's a quiet revolution in energy, and that's connected to almost every big global news event that we're hearing about.
SPEAKER_00We're going to explore and explain how the shift from the old fossil energy world to the new electric world order is unfolding. I'm Kate McKenzie, a Sydney-based energy and climate finance expert.
SPEAKER_03And I'm Tim Sahai. I'm at Johns Hopkins University in the US, where I co-direct the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab. This is episode four. Manufacturing Chai America.
SPEAKER_00So, Tim, one of our main ideas is that to understand what's going on in energy today, you really have to look at how US-China relations have evolved in the last few decades. And China's using manufacturing exports while the US is using its power in world finance and trade, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and of course it's military power. The oil, gas, coal-producing countries, not just companies, are pushing back against this manufactured energy future that China is creating. It's a counter-revolution that's led by the US government.
SPEAKER_00So back to China. In 2025, China made enough solar panels to generate almost 700 gigawatts of electricity, which is more than double the entire power capacity of Germany. China also makes 80% of the world's solar cells and 70% of its lithium batteries and wind turbines. And China's exports of solar cells alone almost doubled in one year.
SPEAKER_03Do you understand why China became such a gigantic producer for all this stuff? A good place to start would be 2001.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so 2001, globalization was advancing and free trade was seen as inevitable and beneficial for everyone. And the US and China were quite friendly.
SPEAKER_03It's really shocking how friendly they were compared to now. Jessica Chenweiss talked to me about what happened next. Jessica is a security scholar, a professor of China Studies, and the director of the Institute of China, America, and Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University. She advised the US State Department during the Biden term. Welcome, Jessica. Thanks so much. It's great to be here. So back in the early 2000s, China and the US were pretty friendly, right? So could you could you tell us a little bit about what was going on for China at that point?
SPEAKER_02Well, 2001 really marked kind of China's entry into the World Trade Organization. It was a time where the United States was feeling quite first triumphant after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but then increasingly concerned about the prospect of terrorism. And so during the 2000s, the United States and China worked together on those issues. And so during this time, you know, China was still moving, I think, in the direction of sort of partial liberalization of a formerly kind of planned economy. And this is halting progress, you know, and in fact, I think there were economic reformers inside China who looked to kind of the entry into the World Trade Organization as a way to kind of restrain other more sort of state-led components of the regime who are more conservative and inward-looking. And so this was a time where there were coalitions in both China and the United States that really benefited a lot from this. And the and the idea really was that the world would be safer with China on the inside rather than the outside of these institutions.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and by the, by the, by the global financial crisis, you know, you had an enormous sort of setback and a giant recession in the United States. Um, and you know, people started to paint China less as a win-win and more as a lose-lose. How did that change come about in the United States political system, which, you know, starts a fairly dramatic response as uh China continues to become rich in that period?
SPEAKER_02So I think that's really interesting to see their responses side by side. Of course, China was also very uh, you know, buffeted by this crisis, and China's response was to unleash an economic stimulus uh to prevent their economy from suffering the the consequences that then uh was kind of exported overseas in the steel, cement, construction. It also, I think, you know, began a period of reassessment inside China over truly the the lessons, the excesses of market liberalism and the need to continue to uh hold fast to components of the state kind of intervention in the economy for security and and stability, uh, of course, to develop as well. Um, but China stopped, I think, looking at the United States as the teacher at that point, uh, as as they saw what havoc this kind of financialization, uh, unregulated financialization could wreak, both domestically and on the global stage.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell And what changed within the US, within the political elites of the US, and how they started to think about China in a different way?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell So that took a bit longer. I would I would say that the you know the Obama, early Obama administration was still uh quite focused on kind of reaching some sort of understanding uh with China. And pretty quickly, as under Xi Jinping, who of course took office in 2012, and you had everything from the you know, sort of island reclamation in the South China Sea and a variety of other actions that were seen by not just the United States but many in the region is quite assertive. You know, relations uh even toward the end of the Obama administration became much more testy. And then you had the first uh Trump administration come into office uh using very inflammatory language about China, but really changing the focus back to trade and away from uh the South China Sea and other issues. And so you had, I think, starting with the first Trump administration, then continuing under Biden, um, the sense that now China was the United States' kind of greatest strategic rival. Uh, this was not uh just an economic competition, but a competition for dominance or primacy regionally and globally, and that this was um no longer could China be seen as a partner. Uh, it was either a rival or a competitor, a strategic uh competitor. And so that's really where the second Trump administration came into office. Now they've upended a lot of that. Um, but that's the sort of narrative that's set in um from the first Trump administration into the Biden administration, I would say.
SPEAKER_03So just to continue on that, you know, as China gets seen as a sort of systemic competitor and a rival, you know, one of the points that we have been exploring in the podcast is, you know, climate is not just about energy, but it's about security and autonomy and resource autonomy. So how did China learn this lesson? What made China go on this generational quest to get political autonomy and and and seek leverage in these new energy and new technologies?
SPEAKER_02I mean, there are a lot of different contributing factors. I think an important part was the concern about uh energy security and also the concern, which you know is a large part a concern about imported sources of energy, and the sense that, you know, even in terms of development and the economy, that China had never been able to be competitive in internal combustion engine vehicles. And so, you know, there was a strategy to look to the next uh kind of wave of innovation and to invest heavily early on in those technologies. Um they're solving multiple problems, I think, at the same time, sort of a lack of competitiveness in the automotive, the traditional automotive sector, and this concern about you know continued reliance on imported energy. And all of that has, you know, of course, then you had the supercharging of this uh sector through for subsidies, but also local uh competition. Um, but that it was really this confluence of um, you know, economic technological development provided combined with uh energy security that really has supercharged these investments uh rather than a plan to kind of dominate and destroy the world. I don't think this was about de-industrializing the rest of the world, um, but really about meeting domestic needs, and then uh the externalities of that strategy have led to where we are today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and to pull back sort of back to the US again, um, you know, Brian Dees, uh, who was the former advisor to the White House, you know, made a really interesting statement that the market created three problems the rise of China, inequality, and climate change. And these problems couldn't be fixed by the market. So the state had to step in and, you know, US policy under Biden then tried to do a whole green transition directed by the state. It tried to revive American manufacturing and unions, and it tried to contain and sort of check China's economic and military power. Uh what what do you now in you know make of that policy strategy and how was it received inside China?
SPEAKER_02Look, I mean I was sitting in the State Department, and so the focus was a bit less on industrial policy and how the state needed to intervene. But there was a an overriding sense that we needed to beat China. Like that that it obviously there was the pacing challenge over at the Pentagon, or uh, you know, the the it was the the the greatest challenge that the United States faced. And so um the need to you know avoid becoming like the competitor was less important than beating the competitor. Uh and and so I think that there was a does that make sense?
SPEAKER_03Sorry, the pacing challenge from the Pentagon being exactly what?
SPEAKER_02Oh, that China was the you know, China's military developments and it's uh the the pacing threat is the one that you need to keep up with or meet or overmatch. Um and so with China as the the new kind of benchmark for success, um I think that the folks inside the US government were, I think, less concerned about being the best that we can be, and more we need to beat them at all costs, because to not beat them is to be dominated by them. Um I mean, interestingly, that's sort of the there's a strand of that thinking in China too, that a lot of what has motivated them to catch up is to avoid being dominated and um subjugated uh by the United States. I think the real question is whether we can live in a world with neither can dominate the other. I mean, that's uh to me, that's the stable world that we need to move into, is one in which uh, you know, there's a mutual recognition that neither country is gonna run the board.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So one one of the strengths of the United States over the last 20 years has just been its unabashed fossil fuel production and indeed sort of fossil fuel dominance, you know, becoming the world's largest oil producer, gas producer, gas exporter, what have you. So what does it actually mean for the United States to be both a petrostate and the global hegemon? So I mean, in other words, like how how how how do security people think about fossil fuel dominance as being a sort of security strategy?
SPEAKER_02I don't think they usually put it in those terms. I think that they uh think of the variety of sources of American strength. Uh, usually, I mean, I think that the Trump administration certainly takes that view, but I don't I'm not aware of anybody under the Biden administration who thought of that the United States needs to embrace its kind of nature as a petrostate in order to rule the world. I think that usually the sources of strength uh you know include, again, investing at home in innovation and economic dynamism, working with our allies and partners around the world, attracting the best and the brightest, to renew the sources of technological strength, which is a high emphasis on advanced technology. This administration, or you know, Trump also emphasizes AI dominance, but as you rightly point out, has uh really changed uh the the conversation about you know what's the future for energy security and energy dominance in ways that I find perplexing, but is um it is a it is a thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I guess I guess what I'm trying to think through um is what happens when you know the Trump people come into power and they sort of use American sort of hegemonic power, you know, the role, um, its power in the market, uh the centrality of the dollar, its technology, its overall sort of geopolitical position to sort of preserve the role of fossil fuels um in the system.
SPEAKER_02I think we are in a moment where the United States is stepping back and there is, if anything, kind of a vacuum in that space. And the question is, what are other countries doing in the interim? Um, assuming that there is a United States that decides to re-engage on these issues. And as far as I understand, and the economics here all point in the continued direction of deploy this stuff. Um, I mean, that it's uh cheaper electricity, I why would you uh why would you double down on uh these dirty sources when you have uh you know cheaper, cleaner, more efficient sources of electricity? But nonetheless, I think that the the real action is going to be then in the kind of adoption and and deployment of these technologies, which have already been proven uh to be effective, even if the United States wants to pursue a different strategy.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell Yeah. And just to sort of pull back from the energy side, just you know, thinking about the trade war um between the US and China um in the last year, you know, why has China sort of created this rare earth uh weapon and controlling the exports of rare earth? What has what has been the effect of these export controls?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell These are really rolled out, I think, as a part of a broader effort to push back against the U.S. effort to use export controls on advanced semiconductors to uh constrain China's ability to uh continue to pursue the frontier. Of course, that's not why they were rolled out when they were, but they were they began building this system, I think, earlier, and then um after the Trump administration unleashed their kind of Liberation Day uh tariffs and more, um, you know, used this to fight the United States to a standstill, to show the Trump administration that China didn't hold a pair of twos, as Treasury Secretary Bessant had initially said, but that in fact China had real sources uh of leverage and strength and and would not be pushed around. And so, you know, once that I think became clear, the two sides, you know, over the period of weeks did negotiate a truce where China would resume uh kind of the flow of rare earths, which, you know, that's not just uh, you know, industry, but also the US military uh for now still depends. I think that it was a you know a clear strategic kind of counter move, you know, to block further efforts by the United States to bring China to their knees.
SPEAKER_03Would you just say that that China has sort of beaten Trump? Uh I mean you you use the word truce there, but but it seems like it seems more than more than a truce, right? Like the United States is being asked to sort of drop tariffs and um start sort of a new relationship with China.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell I think it's important to note that China hasn't continued to escalate uh its use of the rare earth's um export controls to rest even further concessions. I think that where we are is that they've the Trump administration has backed off the additional tariffs that they applied. We haven't gone back below, for example, we haven't rolled back uh the the binary ones. Similarly, on chips, there were new controls that the Trump administration was rolling out, and then those were rolled back in the truce. Um and so I think the question is where does it go from here? So far at least, I think we do see signs that they are more interested in kind of stability and you know continued uh development than they are, you know, using this, for example, as a cudgel to, you know, get Trump to trade away Taiwan, for example. Um, but it seems to me that they have used it largely, I mean aggressively, but defensively.
SPEAKER_03Okay. All right. Thank you very much, Jessica, for being on the Polycrisis podcast with us.
SPEAKER_02Wonderful. It's great to have been in conversation with you, too.
SPEAKER_03So Kate, Jessica told me that the main view from the State Department was we need to beat China.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the US under the first Trump administration and the Biden administration both had this kind of economic war going already against China with tariffs and export bans and sanctioning certain technologies, didn't they?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and so because China was first in that firing line, it tried to break free of that dependence and vulnerability by developing all that green technology.
SPEAKER_00And it's that green technology that other countries are using now to But that rare earths export control that she mentions, that was a really big power move, wasn't it? So that was in October 2025, um, and China showed that it was actually willing to weaponize its control of rare earths in response to the US tariffs. And it meant that any other country had to have a license to buy rare earths from China. And that was a huge moment because everyone needs these minerals to make so many things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it meant American companies briefly couldn't make smartphones or cars or military kit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, until the US backed down on the tariffs. It was a really big deal.
SPEAKER_03So, Kate, you also spoke with someone who's been working on this question of how China and the US can avoid full-fledged conflict.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Jake Werner is the director of the East Asia program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which is a DC-based think tank. And he's done research on China's development model and the global implications of China's rise. Hi, Jake. Good to have you here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00I want to start with a key moment, I think, that led to where we are now, which was the global financial crisis. Um can you tell us what why was that a bit of a turning point in how both the US and China pursued their economic, respective economic strategies and what that meant for relations between the two of them?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And I completely agree. I think it was maybe the turning point of our lives in a whole bunch of ways, but not just but definitely in in the way that China ran its economy. A little bit of a little bit of a delay for the US, but the way ultimately the way the US ran its economy too. China had been in the game of promoting industry for a long time, and it was seeking to get Chinese industries into niches and gaps that the advanced economies didn't already dominate. And so this is where something like clean energy shows shows up for China. This is an opportunity for Chinese industries to really develop uh a global market. Before the financial crisis, the growth strategy was really based on export-led investment and expansion. And so the idea here was uh in the years leading up to the global financial crisis, there was increasing interest in renewable energy, solar wind, uh in the rich countries, and China was looking to export into those countries. Uh so they had already put in place a set of policies and institutions that would uh that would help Chinese industry uh start building into that market. So the the financial crisis really blew up that whole strategy because the uh growth slowed to a halt in Europe and the United States, Japan, South Korea. So the rich countries that China had counted on exporting into, suddenly the demand for uh their exports dried up and China was left holding the bag. They had all of these ways to encourage industrial production, uh, but suddenly there was no market. And uh in the case of clean energy technology, uh, this is what caused the Chinese government to start encouraging domestic uh insulation of wind and solar. And so suddenly created a pretty substantial domestic market for these products.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's interesting because one of the things that often comes up for Tim and I talking about this this moment and China's strategy is uh around clean energy, is how much of it was uh about China's own security or security and you know, by extension, energy security and wanting to, you know, protect itself against uh oil, you know, losing access to to imported oil, for example. And how much of it was just this core economic growth, industrial strategy where they had to just you know keep finding industries that would that would keep that growth rate up and that that you know it they need for social legitimacy and and development.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all of these things are kind of in the mix. Uh so as you mentioned, there's there was uh really intense anxiety that the United States might blockade uh the Malacca Straits and prevent China from importing oil. That's something that Emerged in the early aughts. You have uh by the by the mid-aughts, the very severe pollution problems are becoming a big headache for the Chinese leadership uh because of coal burning and because of the increasing cars on the street, uh internal combustion engine cars on the streets. Uh and uh and then there is also in in these years leading up to the global financial crisis, uh there's also this idea that we're gonna hit peak oil. Suddenly there's gonna be massive oil scarcity because the price of oil was just shooting through the roof in in the mid-oughts. Uh and so all of that was sort of in the back of the head of Chinese leadership. Uh and uh and it was sort of, I I wouldn't say that that was the primary driver because the they were not looking to turn China into a clean energy superpower at that point. They were looking for export markets. But when the time came and they and those export markets disappeared, then they were able to switch around to this idea fairly quickly. Uh, and partly that was just short-term, like we have to find some way to absorb this because we don't want the kind of social instability that comes with mass unemployment. Um, we developed this capacity, suddenly we're gonna have people thrown out of work, we have to figure out a way around this. And and that led to the this enormous stimulus. Uh, China was the only country that responded to the crisis with a stimulus that was anywhere adequate to the size of the of the crisis. Um, and and it wasn't just in clean energy, it was across a whole range of industries to make sure that those jobs were still there, to keep the economy growing. Um, and then that led to a bunch of other problems. But um but in the short term, they kept the economy growing, unlike the rest of the world. Um, and but I think in over the longer term, it wasn't just a stimulus that was pulled back once it had run its course, once the economy was growing again. It was something that institutionalized a much more ambitious industrial policy uh that uh became the basis of Chinese growth strategy from this point onward. And that's where you get, I think, some of these considerations about about energy security, about pollution, because by the mid-2010s, then pollution is becoming a serious social, like it's causing social instability because of uh because of popular anxiety and protests, um, uh as well as sort of these concerns about imported oil and uh the concern about oil scarcity kind of disappeared after the price crashed, of course. Um but but these other issues continued to be really front and center for Chinese thinking and and became the basis on which that 2010's industrial policy uh was consolidated.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell So it's this kind of convergence of actually, you know, it's not just energy security versus along with industrial strategy. It's it's i it's really like three or four or five things when you think about local pollution and um yeah, that oil scar oil fear of oil scarcity was really an issue in the in the or something. Yeah, so it's like a convergence of all these things, I guess, that led to China becoming this like really incredibly dominant green industrial power where they just make you know manufacturing so much of the clean energy gear in the world. What's your sense of how that in particular has affected or has maybe you know driven the US stance towards China? Like just the fact that China is as is the source of so much green um green tech that it's exporting, deploying itself, but also exporting at such a high rate?
SPEAKER_01You know, I think it it varies across the political spectrum. Of course, you have these uh fossil fuel energy dominance people who are like, if China's gonna be good at this, then we're gonna reject it entirely. Uh and that's kind of where the the Republican Party is. I don't know about Trump himself. I think Trump is, you know, off in his own world. Um but he's at least signed on board for this bit of that, kind of like culture war pro-fossil fuels, uh, energy dominance bit. And the the the animo the sort of pop the political animosity that has grown up against China over the last 10 years really plays into that and supports that. I don't think it's the main driver, but it certainly comes in and supports that on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, I think the primary um the primary feeling is just is just sort of like envy and uh like why can't we do that? Like we used to make things and and they're making the future there in China, and why aren't we making the future there in China? And so I think that that has there's a complicated psychology that comes out of that, which is I s you know, we simultaneously desire to be like them and also feel very threatened by them because they are kind of knocking us off of our position of preeminence. Uh, and so I think that that results in some pretty unhealthy impulses alongside much healthier impulses to try to catch up and try to develop these industries in the United States. Uh, but it but it's really hard in the United States because the the sort of institutional basis for for this kind of development has just disappeared from from the over the course of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Uh and so even even though in that in that same moment of like we're reaching peak oil, we're we understand that clean energy is the future, that moment when Obama came in right after the crisis, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for for directing the the relatively small stimulus that the United States eventually put together, uh, some of that went into developing clean energy. Uh but of course it had a much different fate, and that has to do with a different political economy and different institutional structure between the US and China.
SPEAKER_00Uh last question, just quickly. What's your sense of how this is going to unfold now, where you've got China on the one hand exporting, again, huge volumes of solar panels, batteries, EVs to the rest of to most of the rest of the world, whereas the US is kind of trying to lock countries into buying its own fossil fuel exports and and you know those of countries that it's kind of taken control of, like Venezuela. Um it it seems like these two different energy strategies are very core now to how each country, each China and US, each deal with the rest of the world. Do you think this is going to kind of affect or really drive how the energy transition works or what what the world of energy we're looking at in the future looks like, this tension between the US and China?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I w I wish I knew the answer to that because it would really help help for uh strategizing how to deal with what what we're facing right now. Um I I think uh China's gonna go forward in the direction it's been going. There's no question about that. It's going to continue to expand its ability to produce clean energy and EVs and and the whole uh the whole supply chain around them. Uh I think that's gonna be a that's there's elements of that that make that a big problem for China. Uh on the one hand, sending these products to people who want them, there's a huge market for this, obviously for the future of humanity. Uh even that existing huge market is not nearly big enough. Uh so there has been some discussion in China about how do we promote a bigger market for our exports of clean energy. Um but uh but the Chinese government has not really taken up that approach, a kind of like a green Marshall Plan or uh it's been called a green uh development initiative to match some of the other initiatives that Xi Jinping has opened up. Um there the government doesn't seem very interested in that. Yeah, what can you say about what what Trump is doing, trying to force people into natural gas contracts and stuff? Um I I think more or less the rest of the world is going to try to avoid the attacks from Trump, and probably most countries will go roughly in the direction that uh China, but not just China, right? Like there are a lot of other countries that are producing clean energy products that the the rest of the world wants. Um so I I'm not it's a big question where the United States goes after I think the bankruptcy of Trump's approach on this is revealed, but then that really depends on how kind of debates within the Democratic Party shake out, and that is still a big open question for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that that's that really makes sense. All right. Thanks so much, Jake, for for talking to us.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, glad to be on.
SPEAKER_00So, Tim, Jake describes that China is this kind of accidental sponsor of global clean energy. And remember, we wrote in late 2024, early 2025 about the possibility of a green Marshall Plan. Um, there were lots of hopes around then that China would help spread clean energy around the world by offering cheap loans and grants to developing countries, but they they're not doing that, are they?
SPEAKER_03Kate, I disagree with this accidental point. China is financially supporting green tech overseas, just in a different way. The thing is that my Johns Hopkins Lab has found over 450 green factories in 54 countries. 200 billion dollars in investment. And that's Chinese companies, it's not the government that's building solar battery, EV, wind, electrolyzer manufacturing plants overseas. And it's all just since the pandemic. And countries are bargaining hard to get those factories from China instead of, you know, just getting those ships full of green goods.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no one had tried to tally this up before, right, had they? And it's actually on a scale with the Marshall Plan, right? 200 billion. Um but it's it's so new, a lot of these factories are still in the construction phase. And it it is counter to my narrative of China being an accidental clean energy superpower, but it's not part of any government plan, like you said. So it's not coordinated or or even sort of signalled, like the Belt and Road Initiative, for example.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's right. While the US is running around, you know, very much trying to force countries to lock into more fossil fuels till Kingdom Come.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and our next episode will get more into that. You've been listening to the first season of the Polycrisis. I'm Kate McKenzie.
SPEAKER_03And I'm Tim Sahai. We publish a newsletter about the political economy of climate change, amongst other things. You can sign up for that and find out more about us at thepolycrisis.com or in our show notes.
SPEAKER_00Our producer is Sarah Allerly, Russell Stapleton composed our music, Bethany Stewart is our sound engineer, and Sarah Allerly is our executive producer.