#China was quite openly talking to its internal audience about its strategic goal of creating a dependency on themselves in “international supply chains”. Here’s Xi Jinping speech from 2020:
Firstly, we should stretch the long board, consolidate and enhance the international leading position of advantageous industries, forge some “ace card” technologies, continuously enhance the advantages of the whole industrial chain in the fields of high-speed railway, electric power equipment, renewable energy, communication equipment, etc. and improve the quality of the industry, so as to tighten the dependence of the international industrial chain on our country, and to form a strong counter-control and deterrent ability against artificial supply cut-offs by the foreign side.
Xi explicitly mentions two elements: energy systems and deterrence which leaves no place for ambiguity - this dependence is intended to be used as a weapon. This is literally what #Russia wanted to achieve in 2021 when it artificially raised gas prices, creating an artificial energy crisis in EU, hoping it will deter Europe from engaging on the side of Ukraine in 2022. But in case of Russia, the strategic dependence was gradually disarmed since 2000’s with initiatives such as EU Gas Directive (only one country continuously sabotaged it, actually increasing its strategic dependence on Russia with a new gas pipeline). In case of China the dependence is growing according to China’s plan - where Xi mentioned “renewable energy”, China now controls 80% of the global supply chain for PV manufacturing.
@kravietz
Renewables are much less sensitive to extortion tactics.
A Transnistrian cut-off of electricity to Moldova would have hit in seconds (this is much improved now). Russian gas cutbacks hit in months.
Breaking off PV to Europe would take years/decades to hurt (USA already cut themselves off). The sun would keep shining and we would have time to scale up our own production.
I think we should tax fund a low-level uneconomic EU PV supply chain just in case we need the scale up.
China can not leverage finished products the same way as russia could energy exports.
Also their business model is export of manufactured goods.
I also suspect that there will be more and more protective moves from the US and the EU to protect domestic industries in view of Chinese overproduction and lack of private consumption.
that 60 GW means ~150 millions of panels installed
Each year some panels stop working - some due to quality issues, some to hailstorm, some to wind, sand, electric damages etc. If this is just 1%, then each you need to replace 1.5 million panels or you’re losing this capacity.
But China doesn’t merely control the panels - it controls the whole supply chain which means the original mined materials and their processing, manufacturing of silicon wafers etc.
While EU is shutting down mines, China is opening new ones. While EU is moving manufacturing to high energy prices and carbon taxes, Chin is happily accepting them (this is exactly what happened to German PV manufacturing companies).
So whatever plants you want to reopen in EU, you will first need to also rebuild the whole supply chain. In case of Russia, it took around 10 years to rebuild their food production supply chain after EU sanctions.
There’s one EU initiative that can help rebuilding the industry is CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) but it’s only starting in 2026.
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