China’s Marshall Plan is running on batteries

RICH democracies felt a collective shiver last week at the sight of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un exchanging pleasantries and tips on how to live to 150 at China’s military parade. They should be much more concerned about the ties Beijing is forging elsewhere in the world.

That is because the country’s clean energy industry is making connections across a swathe of the Global South with far more collective significance than the crumbling nuclear-armed autocracies in Moscow and Pyongyang.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) by China’s green-technology industry since 2022 has hit between US$227 billion and US$250 billion. That is roughly the size, adjusted for inflation, of the post-World War II Marshall Plan that cemented the alliance between the US and Europe.