In recent years, I’ve noticed that two words—”but China”— are often used to parry any argument in favor of limited government.
We should cut Pentagon spending.
“But China…”
A free society shouldn’t ban TikTok.
“But China …”
Tariffs are taxes and will make stuff cost more.
“But China…”
The idea seems to be that sound policies that uphold the values of a free society are well and good, and everyone would be in favor of them if not for the Chinese, who don’t play by our rules and represent a clear existential threat.
The latest example came from a confirmation hearing involving Scott Bessent, the man President Donald Trump has tapped to be secretary of the Treasury Department. During questioning, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) alleged that the incoming Trump administration was looking to reverse “the biggest transformation on clean energy in American history,” which would be a gift to the Chinese Communist Party.
“…our package…basically said the tax code as it relates to energy is a broken-down mess. And we basically said we’re going to have a technology-neutral system: the more you reduce carbon, the bigger your tax savings,” Wyden said. “Now there is a big effort in the Trump administration to reverse it. I think that’s going to be bad for the economy, but it is going to be damn good for China because we are in an arms race in clean energy with them.”
Bessent, an investor and founder of the Key Square Group, rejected the idea that the US is in a “clean energy arms race” with China.
“Sen. Wyden. Just so we can frame this for everyone in the room, China will build a hundred new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race, there is an energy race,” Bessent began. “China will build 10 nuclear plants this year. That is not solar.”
Whether China will build a hundred new coal plants in 2025 is uncertain. Nobody, including Mr. Bessent, has a crystal ball. Yet his larger point about China is correct. Though China is often lauded as a world leader in renewable energy (and in some ways it is), in recent years it has ramped up coal production.
In 2022, China was rolling out two new coal plants every week, on average. This was a stark contrast to the rest of the world, where just seven countries even had new coal plants under construction. The following year China built 47 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity, tops in the world—by far.
“China accounted for 95 percent of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023,” the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) stated in its annual report.
The Associated Press and others would have you believe that China’s coal expansion is slowing, and in a sense they are right. In 2024, China somewhat slowed its expansion of coal, approving ten new plants with 9 gigawatts of capacity in the first half of the year.
Yet it’s difficult to claim with a straight face that China is fighting a “clean energy arms war” when it uses more coal than any country in the world and is increasing coal production faster than anyone on the planet (see below).
None of this is to say that China isn’t also investing in renewable energy. It is, including a massive expansion of its nuclear capabilities, as Bessent noted in his testimony. All of this only drives home Bessent’s point: we’re not in a green energy arms race with China—we’re in an energy race.
Wyden and many others would have you believe that there are “good” energies (renewables) and “bad” energies (fossil fuels). This is why numerous US states and European countries have trotted out plans to run solely on renewable energy at some future date.
The reality is, all forms of energy come with economic tradeoffs. Solar power might be a renewable energy source with minimal carbon emissions, but solar panels are expensive, difficult to recycle, and produce massive amounts of toxic waste.
Wind farms run on wind, but turbines are constructed using significant amounts of steel, concrete, and advanced plastics. According to the United States Geological Survey, producing 1 MW of wind capacity typically requires 103 tons of stainless steel, 402 tons of concrete, 6.8 tons of fiberglass, 3 tons of copper, and 20 tons of cast iron. Wind farms come with other costs, of course. They kill lots of birds, destroy fisheries, and threaten adorable reindeer.
Additionally, both wind and solar are intermittent energy sources.
Those windmills don’t create energy when the wind isn’t blowing, and those solar farms don’t produce when the sun isn’t shining. This is why any sober analysis of energy recognizes that renewable energies are at best a complement to fossil fuels, not a replacement for them. (Indeed, we should recognize that fossil fuels are hardly a curse, but vital sources of energy that humankind should be grateful for.)
This brings me back to China. Those who invoke the Red Dragon are often simply preying on a primal human emotion: fear. This is unfortunate, but hardly surprising. Thinkers from Cicero to Machiavelli and beyond have understood that fear (for better and worse) is a powerful weapon in shaping public opinion.
“Without popular fear, no government could endure more than twenty-four hours,” the economic historian Robert Higgs has noted.
Remember this the next time someone objects to a sound policy proposal with the words, “But China…”.