The Electro-State Rises

How China’s Clean Energy Strategy Is Remaking the Global Order

Trump flew home from Beijing insisting he had locked in a raft of deals covering American crude, aircraft, and farm goods for which Beijing has yet to offer any corroboration. What the summit did make unmistakable, however, is that the planet’s center of geopolitical gravity has relocated. The old petrostate order in the West is contracting; the new electrostate in the East is expanding into the space it leaves behind.

The U.S. continues to pursue a policy of energy dominance which has led it to become embroiled in a war with Iran. The war is driving up gas prices, which in turn, lead to higher cost of living across the board. As input costs continue to rise, goods and services become increasingly unaffordable for the working majority. The problem is compounded by American car culture, public preference for large gas guzzling vehicles, and lack of viable public transit infrastructure. The resulting collapse in the standard of living is predictably starting to fuel domestic discontent. The policy of energy dominance is also causing friction with the vassal states whose own economies are similarly affected. The image of a benevolent hegemon that the U.S. has been cultivating is slipping, and the world sees it for the malignant force that it is.

China, meanwhile, spent decades investing into renewable energy at a scale not seen anywhere else in the world. Those investments are now returning strategic dividends. They have insulated China’s economy against the oil price spikes radiating from the Iran war, while simultaneously unlocking enormous export demand for Chinese solar modules, wind turbines, grid technology, and electric vehicles. Where the U.S. pursues chaos and extraction, China offers stability and technological progress. The soft power advantage the U.S. has enjoyed is now evaporating as it becomes increasingly clear that China is the adult in the room.

The Material Basis of Geopolitical Power

Liberals invariably blame the geopolitical shift on a single figure in the Oval Office, but any grounded assessment must account for the change in the underlying material conditions as the globe pivots toward new sources of energy. The materialist analysis here is straightforward: the energy base of a civilization powers the productive forces that power its industry, transport, agriculture, and daily life. Political superstructure emerges from the material conditions of the society that, in turn, shape social relations. Change the energy foundation, and the entire political edifice must necessarily reconfigure itself around some new material reality.

Today, we find ourselves in a period of transition from petrol, predominantly controlled by the US, Russia, and the Gulf states, being the base input for the global economy toward an epoch of renewables. China has developed cheaper, cleaner energy technologies, that are challenging existing relations of production. It poses a direct threat to the U.S. where the fossil fuel industry has captured state apparatus, and whose military infrastructure built around oil. This is a clash of material interests which forms the primary contradiction of our times.

The argument over cost is effectively over. The price of electricity from wind and solar keeps falling, driven by manufacturing scale and technical improvement. These sources were beating fossil fuels on price even before the Iran crisis sent oil and gas into a tailspin. What the old energy order still possesses, however, is not market advantage but institutional capture—control over legislatures, militaries, and capital flows—and it is wielding that captured power to brake the transition. The same forces that built the fossil fuel age now function as its principal obstacle to ending it.

As a result, the political landscape across the U.S. is now defined by a movement whose key characteristic is desperation: it scrambles to preserve markets for oil, gas, and coal against the downward price pressure of renewables. That desperation is itself a material signal. Having lost the economic argument, legacy energy industry must now resort to state violence to maintain market share. Of course, the war on Iran has multiple, overlapping reasons, but the underlying cause-and-effect chain reveals deeper structural forces at work.

How Fossil Fuel Industry Accelerates Its Own Demise

Here the interconnected logic of the system becomes visible. The U.S. petroleum industry is enjoying record profits thanks to the Strait of Hormuz blockade choking rival suppliers while driving up global crude prices. The executives and shareholders are enjoying a record windfall thanks to the war.

But this is only the first turn of the spiral. The rising fuel costs that enrich oil companies simultaneously immiserate working people across the world who must spend extra at the pump. The resentment stemming from the cost of living crises either gets channelled into scapegoating of foreign enemies, or, among more discerning segments of the public, into demands for energy alternatives.

The second-order effect is more consequential still. While the war is creating a short term demand for new sources of oil and gas, nations around the globe are beginning to investigate methods of boosting their energy sovereignty. The same price signal that incentivizes short-term drilling also supercharges the argument for renewable energy. When oil becomes a weapon, energy independence becomes a matter of national survival. Electric cars, heat pumps, and solar panels have never seen higher demand. This is the material dialectic operating at global scale with shortfall of traditional energy sources forcing a leap to a new energy regime.

China is, without a doubt, the prime beneficiary of this dynamic. The bets Beijing placed on renewables and EVs two decades ago are generating returns that now look almost prescient. China has reduced its exposure to fuel shipments that must transit sea lanes patrolled by hostile navies, and it is positioned to supply the equipment on which the next global energy system will run. What the West spent years deriding as overcapacity increasingly looks like foresight.

Historians looking back at this period may well conclude that the war on Iran triggered the very outcome Washington sought to prevent: the displacement of American energy hegemony by a Chinese-led clean energy order. When the energy foundation of the global economy shifts, the political hierarchy built atop it reorganizes in response. This has happened before, and it is happening again. Such realignments tend to be violent, but they can also be understood through the lens of historical materialism as inevitable collisions between outdated productive relations and emerging productive forces.

Geopolitical thinking for the past quarter-millennium, since the Industrial Revolution first coupled military power to fossil energy, has rested on a simple proposition: whoever sits atop the energy hierarchy rules the international order. For the century just past, that meant oil.

But what is different today is the dawning realization that oil and other fossil fuels have become a danger to the stability of the climate and a threat to sovereignty. With cleaner power available at lower cost, fossil fuel demand no longer sustains itself through market logic. It persists only because it is held aloft by lobbying, subsidies, propaganda, and ultimately the coercive power of the state. The fossil fuel industry has entered its terminal phase, and terminal industries behave with increasing violence to defend the indefensible.

As renewables begin to supplant fossil fuels as the primary source of energy, the economic gravity is shifting back to Asia. A tenfold surge over the past ten years has pushed annual global investment in clean energy past the $2 trillion mark. By last year, that figure had doubled the total flowing into fossil fuels. Renewables have now toppled coal from its position as the world’s dominant source of electricity, a first in industrial history. The United Nations secretary-general António Guterres observed in February that “we have entered the age of clean energy... those who lead this transition will lead the global economy of the future.” China is, of course, the sole candidate for the title, given its dominance over the entire renewables supply chain as well as adjacent sectors such as battery manufacturing and electric vehicles.

China Looks to the Future

For most of the last three decades, China industrialized on the fuels it had available, which meant burning coal at enormous scale. But this was always a transitional stage: China used the energy base of the present to construct the energy base of the future. It has now pulled ahead of every rival in the deployment of clean and nuclear power, and the results are remarkable. Over the past two years, China’s carbon output has started to decline marking a historic inflection point in the global emissions curve.

China hit 1,200 gigawatts of combined wind and solar capacity last year breaking past a milestone originally pencilled in for the end of the decade. The pipeline of projects now under construction in China alone matches what the rest of the planet has in progress combined.

Solar stands out as the most dramatic shift. The technology has dropped in cost so steeply and scaled so rapidly that China’s solar fleet now produces more electricity than its coal plants which is a threshold marking the transition from an energy system based on extraction to one built around harvesting. The same dynamic is visible in transport where electric vehicles have crossed the sixty percent mark for new car sales in China, and the resulting decline in gasoline and diesel use is now structural rather than cyclical.

Having ironed out domestic renewables production, China is increasingly focusing on clean energy exports to the rest of the world. Every one of the world’s four largest wind turbine producers is a Chinese company. The pattern repeats across solar photovoltaics and electric vehicles, where Chinese firms command majority global market share. These technologies are, in turn, backed by supplies of critical minerals, vital for batteries, datacentres, and advanced military equipment. What we see here is systemic control over the material inputs of the emerging global economy. Last year, over 90% of China’s investment growth originated in the clean energy sector. These trends make cleantech from China accessible across many Global South nations. The same pattern is unfolding with related technologies such as batteries, which, in turn, are paving the way for electric cars in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Valued at 15.4 trillion yuan, China’s green energy sector now dwarfs the entire economies of all but seven nations. Its share of Chinese GDP has climbed from 7.3 percent in 2022 to 11.4 percent last year, and the future trajectory points in only one direction. The economic interests of the Chinese state have fused with the material imperative of decarbonization, aligning profit with planetary survival in a configuration no Western nation has managed to produce.

While China’s use of coal remains significant, it is following a plan of carefully sequenced energy transition. The sheer scale of the renewable industry makes the trend irreversible, making the energy policy that China is pursuing both beneficial for the planet and sound business logic. The US-Israeli assault on Iran has only sharpened this argument, forcing countries to weigh the costs of remaining tethered to a volatile region against the logic of harnessing energy that is free and effectively limitless.

The Geopolitical Realignment

The consequences of China’s rise to become the first electrostate ripple unevenly across the world. For the Global South, China’s clean energy exports represent a path to development that does not require subordination to the IMF, to Western oil companies, or to the navies that patrol the shipping lanes. Pakistan provides the most dramatic example having imported an extraordinary 36 gigawatts of solar panels from China which now account for nearly three quarters of the nation’s entire installed capacity. Pakistanis achieved this feat by taking matters into their own hands, installing panels on rooftops of homes and businesses. The flood of affordable, high-quality Chinese hardware allowed a nation of 250 million people to leapfrog the fossil fuel era entirely. For decades, everyone assumed that development required dirty energy. China is proving that proposition false, and in doing so it is building a constituency of nations whose material interests are now aligned together.

European governments find themselves in a situation of excruciating contradiction. Chinese solar panels, wind turbines, and EVs offer a clear path to genuine energy independence, yet European leaders, who are visiting Beijing in droves, seem unwilling to break with their declining patron and pivot towards a rising power. But, Europe’s choice ultimately lies between fossil-fueled subordination to the U.S. and the clean-energy sovereignty offered by China.

U.S. fossil fuel industry, which Europe is currently subordinated to, is extracting maximum short-term value before the transition renders their assets stranded. They realize that their business model is becoming obsolete, and their strategy is driven solely by maximizing shareholder returns while it’s still possible to do so. Chinese cleantech companies, by contrast, are building the infrastructure that future economies will run on, securing dominance over key future technologies.

Polling consistently shows that large majorities, in country after country, want their governments to pursue far stronger climate action. Fossil fuels now collide with popular sentiment as populations endure weather events that grow more severe and destructive by the year. The contradiction between what the material conditions demand and what the state delivers cannot widen indefinitely, meaning that countries must look to China as their energy partner in the end.

China’s ability to deliver concrete material benefits makes it an appealing and serious alternative to the current U.S. based system. Beijing’s governing model, focused on long-term planning, social stability, and the steady improvement of material conditions, stands in favorable contrast to the chaos emanating from Washington. The whole human rights narrative, once a point of Western moral superiority, has now collapsed as the U.S. continues to escalate domestic crackdowns on dissent while raining bombs on civilian populations abroad.

This is not to say Chinese foreign policy is purely altruistic. But think of it from the vantage point of a government in Africa, Latin America, or Southeast Asia: do you align with China, which offers you solar panels, EV infrastructure, and energy autonomy on terms that do not require mortgaging your sovereignty to the IMF? Or do you choose the US, which demands you buy its expensive fossil fuels, host their military bases, and will bomb you if you attempt to pursue sovereignty?

While Europe is making an ideological choice believing in superiority of its liberal capitalist model, the choice for most of the world is material. And on material grounds, China’s offer is simply better. China’s position of global authority is built on the material foundation of the world’s dominant clean energy supply chain.

Connecting the Dots

Stepping back from the daily headlines, the interconnected logic of the current moment comes into sharper focus. Several outcomes, surprising through the lens of conventional geopolitics, emerge clearly from the material dynamics at play.

America, through its efforts to preserve fossil fuel dominance, is actively accelerating both the clean energy transition and China’s rise as the uncontested leader of that transition. Every oil war makes renewables more economically attractive. Every threat against allies pushes them toward Chinese energy technology. Every dollar spent on bombs that could have been spent on solar panels widens the competitive gap. It is as if we are witnessing a classical Greek tragedy where the actions of the protagonist lead to the very outcomes they are trying to avoid.

A second key dynamic is the emergence of a grassroots energy revolution in the Global South. Pakistan’s rooftop solar boom was an emergent phenomenon driven by affordable Chinese hardware meeting local demand. This distributed, bottom-up energy transition creates forms of sovereignty where communities and nations generate their own power making them harder to coerce than those dependent on imported fuel. China benefits from this trend without having to orchestrate it, which makes the shift more resilient to geopolitical disruption than any top-down alliance system.

Another pattern worth noting is the inversion of the traditional development narrative mentioned earlier. For two centuries, the formula was that poor countries would have to industrialize by burning fossil fuels, following the Western path. China’s renewables industry makes this form of development obsolete. Solar and wind are now the cheapest sources of new electricity in most of the world. Battery storage costs are falling on a curve that mirrors solar’s decline. Nations are free to build modern energy systems without ever passing through a coal phase. This is a material fact that severs the historical link between development and emissions, and it positions China as the indispensable partner for any country seeking to build a modern economy.

All that said, there are several friction points that deserve attention. First, the U.S. retains significant military capacity and has demonstrated a willingness to use it. A nuclear escalation against Iran could cross thresholds from which there is no return. Likewise, a direct conflict with China in the South China Sea or a blockade of the Strait of Malacca could disrupt the clean energy supply chains on which the entire transition depends. Second, continued dominance by the U.S. over the West could slow adoption in wealthy markets, though it will do little to stop the flow to the Global South. Third, the sheer speed of climate breakdown may outpace even China’s rapid deployment of clean technology, creating cascading crises that overwhelm the capacity of any nation to manage. We already have many examples of the fragility of just-in-time supply chains the world operates on. A serious climate crisis could completely overwhelm them going forward. In that scenario, any nations that are heavily dependent on the global economy will be faced with disaster.

Thus, the world is racing to transition to clean energy before climate change spirals out of control. Rising temperatures and extreme weather are forcing countries to act, but the next few years will be messy. The U.S. depends heavily on oil and gas for its economy and exports, and fights hard to keep the old system alive. This struggle has concrete implications since transitioning to new energy sources is inherently disruptive. We’ll see more wars driven by resource scarcity and competition. There will be more climate disasters like wildfires and floods that destroy homes and disrupt supply chains. Far-right extremism will continue to fester as groups deny climate science and resist the need for change. Censorship and disinformation will become more prevalent as legacy energy interests attempt to hide what’s happening. The problems with the old system, stemming from dependence on finite fuels, environmental degradation, and deep inequality between rich and poor, will continue to exacerbate before they are resolved. These tensions lead to protests, political conflict, and economic shocks.

Yet, the long-term outlook for stability is more hopeful. A world organized on the basis of decentralized renewable energy is less likely to experience international friction than a world which depends upon oil and gas in a few countries. It is impossible to monopolize or weaponize renewables as it is with oil. Sunlight falls on every nation, and wind blows across every frontier, meaning that no nation can hoard these resources or cut off its neighbours from their use. A world based on renewable energy would not be free of conflict, but the causes of war would diminish. Energy would become a local matter, rather than an instrument of geopolitical pressure.

China has made itself the producer of new energy systems, and thereby aligned its economic interests with the progress of the world. Chinese factories churn out solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium-ion batteries on a massive scale, driving down the cost of clean energy everywhere. The United States has tied itself to a dying industry, thereby consigning its economic interests with those of the past. American policy still rewards extracting and burning fossil fuels, and locks the country into dependence on oil and coal. These two tendencies are diametrically opposed, and their opposition will dominate world politics for the rest of the century. One side places its bets on the future. The other side fights to kill it before it can mature. China invests in research, builds supply chains, and exports technology. The United States imposes tariffs on foreign clean-energy products and protects old industries.