The scale is striking. In 2024, Chinese investors put nearly $1 trillion into clean-energy capital spending on renewables, electricity grids and energy storage. That has left Chinese companies making about 70% of the world's electric vehicles, 80% to 85% of global solar photovoltaic manufacturing and more than 75% of global battery production. Columbia University scholar Tim Wu, quoted in the piece, puts it bluntly: set AI aside and it is clear who is ahead if these technologies are the future.

The research picture points the same way. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Critical Technology Tracker, which assesses research capacity across 74 current and emerging technologies, found in December 2025 data that China led in nearly 90% of them, including nuclear energy, synthetic biology and small satellites. As Xiaoying You wrote in Nature, that is a drastic reversal: at the start of the century, American scientists led in more than 90% of assessed technologies while China led in fewer than 5%.

The headline numbers come with a catch: the tracker measures cited research rather than deployable technology, and the authors themselves ask whether being good at origami counts for much if you cannot yet make decent paper. Jet engines, which Chinese engineers still struggle to produce, show why that gap matters.

The drone market shows how the two combine. Shenzhen-based DJI holds more than 70% of the global consumer drone market, and its units are used by first responders, hobbyists and, notably, both sides in Ukraine for surveillance and artillery spotting. The article reports that US tech executives attributed DJI's scale partly to massive Chinese state subsidies, claims that Washington Post reporting on company documents supported, despite DJI's denials of government funding.