Chinese technology companies are paving the way for a world that will be powered by electric motors rather than gas-guzzling engines. It is a decisively 21st-century approach not just to solve its own energy problems, but also to sell batteries and other electric products to everyone else. Canada is its newest buyer of EVs; in a rebuke of Mr. Trump, its prime minister, Mark Carney, lowered tariffs on the cars as part of a new trade deal.
Though Americans have been slow to embrace electric vehicles, Chinese households have learned to love them. In 2025, 54 percent of new cars sold in China were either battery-powered or plug-in hybrids. That is a big reason that the country’s oil consumption is on track to peak in 2027, according to forecasts from the International Energy Agency. And Chinese E.V makers are setting records — whether it’s BYD’s sales (besting Tesla by battery-powered vehicles sold for the first time last year) or Xiaomi’s speed (its cars are setting records at major racetracks like Nürburgring in Germany).
A lot of things in China fall apart in a few years. You can build things fast when you don’t care about people’s rights and just force them off whatever land you need, and make people work insane hours. A lot of the amazing things China brags about is a Potemkin village, just made to show the authoritarian leaders they did got the project complete on time and they in turn use it in their propaganda. Authoritarians always love to brag about making the trains run on time, right? The reality is often different from what the media portrays it to be in an authoritarian country.
But still, China is slightly preferable to the US at the moment.