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Global clean-tech dominance hasn’t necessarily meant profits for Chinese firms. Beijing has been phasing out subsidies such as the feed-in tariffs that had guaranteed high prices for renewable power. That’s as over-production has driven down prices to near break-even levels.
Spazzapan from Systemiq says shareholder interests in China “have been largely disregarded, with chronic overcapacity and relentless price wars eroding company equity.”
It’s a system that favors “scale over profitability,” she says.
This is exactly what a socialist government should do with renewables.
Right after your quote:
For companies and investors caught in the fray, it’s been “total misery,” says Dan Wang, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab and the author of Breakneck. China’s model relies on “a lot of state power, a lot of consumer power, but not very much financial investor benefit,” he says.
won’t someone think of the poor shareholders? 
No.Dan Wang, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab
Opinion immediately disregarded
I hear what you’re saying, but one thing that comes along with no American investment is no American jobs.
The United States is going to be unable to form a socialist government. Thus, it will be unable to resolve this problem, and its economy and working classes will contribute to suffer.
The United States is going to be unable to form a socialist government.
Disagree
I think the dissolution of the United States government is a pre-requisite to forming a socialist government in the territories it occupies. The United States may be able to adopt some social democratic reforms but that’s a stretch. Definitely happy to have it all wrong, though.
Well, we’re making great progress in destroying the country.
Well the goal is a revolutionary overthrow of the current state and the establishment of a worker’s state controlled by a communist party, so all of that should go together. I’m not talking at all about a reformist transition to socialism. I think the impossibility of reforms under the current state are one of the reasons for it being a plausible revolutionary situation.
No yeah we are both on this site so we agree more than we disagree. I just don’t think even the borders of a future socialist state (states?) will be aligned with the current borders of the United States.
In the short to mid-term this is very likely true. There’s not even one historical example of a developed, industrialized society transitioning to socialism
In the short to mid-term this is very likely true.
Depends what time frame that is
There’s not even one historical example of a developed, industrialized society transitioning to socialism
True, but we’re entering an unprecedented era globally largely due to China’s economic and industrial power dramatically reshaping global trade. There’s only one capitalist empire today and it is in an extremely precarious position. Its internal politics are erratic and understandable while its internal economy has devolved almost entirely to self-cannibalism without the capacity to generate innovation or new value. When that house of cards tumbles, there will be new opportunities.
Yeah but historically crumbling capitalist empires turn to fascism to prevent socialist movements, it will take the collective west a lot of suffering to get through the coming internal fascist repression and coming out victorious as socialist countries. As of now, there’s only anticommunism or revisionism, establishing a strong communist party takes decades. I really hope China will help us in this endeavor and that the global south will emancipate itself and become socialist soon, but I fear the west has a hard and long path to socialism.
America’s decision to wage war on the climate and destroy its renewable industry is its own damn fault. China is putting out the tech to solve climate change - something the US could’ve done decades ago but chose not to over and over. Should the rest of the world suffer to protect some American jobs?
Sounds like a you problem
shareholder interests in China “have been largely disregarded
China is actually trying to move away from this competition. There have been public communications about moving away from zero-sum competition or whatever.
True but I don’t think that’s for the benefit of the investors, it’s more to benefit of the workers who won’t lose their jobs when the companies collapse.
Given the market situation, isn’t it a good time to get some consolidation in these industries? Get down to 2-3 companies and once a monopoly forms, start considering nationalization.
Given the market situation, isn’t it a good time to get some consolidation in these industries?
No, the so-called “overcapacity problem” is really just a symptom of a much larger problem that nobody is willing to admit: wealth inequality.
You have an oversupply because… nobody has the money to consume, or, people are being extremely reluctant to consume because of the perceived poor economic outlook, and that they are going to lose their jobs at any given moment due to the uncertainty in the economy.
What the government should immediately be doing are:
- Provide social welfare so those who are laid off have a safety net
- Provide free healthcare so people aren’t so burdened by potential healthcare costs if they get sick or in an accident
- Raise the wages of the working class, especially the bottom 40% (600 million people) who are still living on an average income of 1000 yuan (~$150) per month - raise their income and you won’t have an overcapacity problem
This is a wealth distribution problem, and that wealth is being funneled into the financial sector because local governments had taken out huge loans to finance the infrastructure and housing market over the past decade, and find themselves unable to pay back after Covid decimated the local finances, and as the property market bubble bursts since 2021.
And the local governments had to self-finance because back in 1994, the central government decided that their tax revenues were inadequate to finance the SOEs all across the country (it received only ~20% of the total tax revenues while local/municipal governments, especially the rich coastal provinces with export market, kept the rest). This is because China’s economic model follows the neoclassical theory - that the government is run like a household: it has to earn the tax revenue before it is allowed to spend.
As such, we have the Tax Sharing Reform that further decentralized the economy, with the local governments having to pay much more tax to the central government (~75% goes to the central government) while being burdened with financing the SOEs themselves.
This led the Northeast Three provinces (where China’s heavy industrial SOEs were concentrated) to mass privatize. It is estimated that at least 40 million workers became unemployed during the mass privatization wave from 1996-2002, a trend that would not be reversed until China joined the WTO and turned itself into a “world factory” in the early 2000s.
But the most important legacy of the 1994 Tax Sharing Reform was that local/municipal governments realized that they could no longer rely on the central government funding, so they had to seek their own sources of non-tax revenues (that would not be taken by the central government), and that include private investments and land revenues. The ticking time bomb was already laid back in the 1990s due to how the decentralization of the economy was arranged.
So, it comes back to wealth inequality. The wealth are being used to service the massive amount of debt that the local governments had taken out and save the investors, and did not go to the working class. And this is allowed to happen because the central government believes in the IMF “balance the budget” formula, and is extremely hesitant to run a deficit to give people the money to spend.
I would add the impact of lack of central government funding on health services in the 80s and 90s, but agree 100 percent
the only thing the us would ever put before profit is even more profit
It reeks of the same liberal bs which gave us “High Speed Rail isnt profitable!”
They may be trying to save the planet, BUT AT WHAT COST
Socialism is the most cost-effective solution to climate change. The longer they put off the transition the more it will cost to make the switch. Capitalism is barreling toward a terrible business decision. It’s a bit of a coincidence.
Energy, food, clothing, construction, computing, media and entertainment are the essential components of every modern society. If you have all of them you will be stable, if you’re #1 in many of them you will be in defacto leadership of global modern society as everyone will look to you for the latest innovation. What remains after that is predicting what shakeup is next and leading in that too.
China is already leading the world in the first 4 and will be leading in the last 3 before 2030.
Yeah media and entertainment are the hardest ones. American soft power from propaganda in both of these is incredibly strong and will be the last to get taken.
Means have been seized
Should have built those solar FREAKIN’ roadways.
That was such an American solution to solar
Me explaining renewables to an American: “So imagine a highway…”
I’d prefer solar burgers
NGL that sounds like a kickass diner name.
