Rather than opening space for rivals, China’s solar industry shakeout is forging a more resilient core — embedding deeper into global value chains, securing a technological lead, and reshaping the industry’s future trajectory to its own long-term advantage.
The world’s renewable-energy superpower
China’s moment for climate leadership has arrived
China’s Shift to Clean Energy Is Saving the Paris Climate Accord
Beijing’s massive manufacturing investments have driven the costs of clean energy down.
The Future, Made in China
Beijing is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy. Who wins will have huge political implications.
The ‘wicked trinity’ of late capitalism: Governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown
Scholars within the fields of political ecology, environmental political theory, and international political economy tend to evaluate the prospects of state-led environmental transitions in general terms – enquiring as to the capitalist state’s inherent properties and their environmental implications. Less attention has been paid to how the state’s green capacities are conditioned by contemporary evolutions in the form and pace of capital accumulation. Capitalism’s directional pattern of historical development poses unique challenges for green state projects. Its drive to raise labour productivity metabolises nature on a growing scale, while generating conditions of overproduction and rendering a progressively larger portion of the population superfluous to the production process.Thus, the question is not simply whether the state can rise to the challenge of climate change, but rather how states are scrambling to govern the intersecting crises of climate catastrophe, economic stagnation, and surplus humanity. This ‘wicked trinity’ compounds the tensions at the heart of the capitalist state, resulting in an increasing inability to perform its role while sustaining its liberal form. This governance trilemma is illustrated by the case of the solar photovoltaic boom, where the spectacular increase in the productivity and scale of solar panel manufacturing have generated oversupply and falling profitability. States have reacted by indefinitely providing subsidies, financing automation technologies thatexacerbate labour superfluity, and relocating solar panel manufacturing to places with authoritarian labour regimes. The case of photovoltaics is a microcosm of the general predicament faced by states as they struggle to govern capitalism’s secular developmental tendencies.
China's overlapping tech-industrial ecosystems
EVs, batteries, lidar, drones, robotics, smartphones, AI. China's progress across a range of overlapping industries creates a mutually reinforcing feedback loop.
China’s $143 billion push to dominate the global EV industry
After years of investing in Europe, Chinese EV and battery firms are turning to Asia, Africa, and Latin America
The geopolitical fight to come over green energy
The struggle for sustainable energy will soon put China, the US and Europe on a geopolitical collision course. But moving away from fossil fuels is a Herculean task, and a greener politics will not transcend tragedy.
Space to Grow — the privatisation of the solar system
A useful primer explains how cosmic exploration has been commercialised and explores the challenges in policing this new wild west
China Is The World's First Electrostate - CleanTechnica
Carbon emissions in China fell slightly int he first quarter of 2025 as more renewable energy and storage came available.
How Xi sparked China’s electricity revolution
Beijing’s aggressive pursuit of energy self-sufficiency could give it the upper hand in the trade war with the US
China to help Cuba with solar energy amid US oil blockade and total power outage
Beijing will ‘intensify its support’ to Havana after around 10.9 million people were left without power amid an ongoing energy crisis.
Global Electricity Review 2026 | Ember
Solar surge halts fossil generation rise as clean power meets all demand growth and renewables overtake coal
More US firms turn to China’s DeepSeek over pricey Silicon Valley AI
DeepSeek takes top spot on ‘trending’ list as companies look for alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic, spending tracker’s report says.
Nobody Wants The Jobs
10,000 US boomers retire every day. China has 12.22 million new grads and 19% youth unemployment. Both superpowers are quietly running out of the one thing they can't import.
Strategic interdependence is rewiring the global economy
It is no longer sufficient for the US-China trade relationship to be driven solely by cost and efficiency
How China’s Renewable Push Upends Geopolitics w/ Kate Mackenzie & Tim Sahay