In the manufacturing sector, one notable development was that China increased the value of its exports of automotive products in Q1 2022 by 30% year on year, using its strong position in the production of lithium-ion batteries to become the world’s second-biggest exporter of electric motor vehicles after the European Union.

America’s most economically important allies — Germany and Japan — are bearing the brunt of China’s most recent industrial assault. In the 2000s and 2010s, Germany’s manufacturing exports boomed, as they sold China high-tech machinery and components. China has now copied, stole, or reinvented much of Germany’s technology, and are now squeezing out

just think of China’s place as the largest manufacturer of consumer goods, of Russia’s enormous exports of energy and minerals, and of the (already noted) contingent of Indian software engineers in Silicon Valley.

When development of large wind-farms in China began in the late 1990s, all turbines were imported. But Chinese manufacturers acquired wind turbine technology through joint ventures, licensing, and acquisitions, and by 2009 China’s market was dominated by locally-produced turbines. Today, China’s Goldwind is one of the largest wind turbine manufactu

What we can say is that countries generally become more efficient in their use of raw materials as their economies develop, and so we should not be surprised to see the same thing happening gradually in China.