Renewables Powering the March to Socialism?
Bappa Sinha
CHINA’s rise in renewable energy is nothing short of breathtaking. Last year, it added more solar capacity in a single year than the United States has in its entire history. By 2023, Chinese wind farms could generate 450 gigawatts - double that of the European Union, and equal to India’s entire power system across all fuels. 40 per cent of all cars sold in China in 2024 were electric. More than half (in some categories 80 to 90 per cent) of the world’s solar panels, wind turbines, and battery cells now come from China, where factory costs for producing these are less than half of those in the United States. The export boom in renewables is equally staggering: sales of solar panels, EVs, and batteries abroad nearly tripled from 2020 to 2023. Clean technology now makes up over 10 per cent of China’s GDP growth, cushioning its economy even as the property market faltered.
What do these numbers mean? Beyond climate or commerce, they signal a profound shift in the foundations of global production – one that recalls the great energy revolutions of history.
Humanity’s development has always been tied to how we harness energy. At first, it was our own muscles – the energy of arms and legs. For millennia, that set the limits of what we could build, carry, and create. The controlled use of fire added a leap. It cooked food, hardened tools, and gave warmth. The domestication of animals extended this horizon: oxen pulled ploughs, horses carried goods, camels crossed deserts. Later, sails and water mills expanded the scale of production and trade. Feudal Europe’s great water mills, grinding grain and powering forges, reflected this harnessing of natural forces. These forces underpinned agrarian societies and gave rise to stable surpluses.
The Industrial Revolution transformed the world by releasing the power of coal. Steam engines multiplied human labour beyond recognition, allowing a single machine to do the work of dozens or hundreds. As Marx observed, the hand-mill gave us feudal lords; the steam-mill created industrial capitalism. Factories broke the back of artisanal production, birthing the modern working class and its struggles.
Then came oil. Cheap, portable, and energy-dense, it drove the motor car, the airplane, the tank, and the container ship. Oil underpinned imperialism and US hegemony. Wars were fought to control it. Globalisation rested on its back.
Each energy regime, in other words, carried with it the underpinnings of an entire social order. Energy determines the productive forces, which in turn shape the relations of society. The type of power harnessed plays a significant role in shaping society.
RENEWABLES AND SOCIALISM
Renewables mark the beginning of another epoch. The sun and wind, unlike coal or oil, are abundant and free. Once the infrastructure is built, the ongoing cost of production plunges. Where fossil fuels breed monopolies and imperial rivalries, renewables open the possibility of decentralisation, abundance, and long-term planning.
For capitalism, however, especially the current neoliberal variety, the transition is difficult. Western capitalism, despite wealth and technology, is mired in fossil fuel interests. Giant fossil fuel companies resist change because their profits depend on oil and coal. Markets prefer short-term returns, not investments in national grids or new industrial systems. Short-term shareholder gains trump long-term planning. Even modest clean energy policies spark backlash from oil companies, auto lobbies, and politicians beholden to them, resulting in repeated withdrawals from even the modest climate change treaties.
The electricity grid itself was an innovation of the fossil and nuclear age – vast networks carrying electricity from giant centralised power stations to homes and factories. It electrified the 20th century economy. But today’s challenge is different: grids must be redesigned to handle millions of solar panels, wind farms, and batteries spread across wide regions. That kind of transformation demands planning, not the anarchy of the market. In the United States, even the existing grid is fragmented into disconnected systems and hundreds of private utilities, making coordination painfully slow.
China, by contrast, has used its socialist planning system to leap ahead. It identified renewables as strategic industries, directed massive subsidies and cheap finance, absorbed early failures, and scaled up successes. State enterprises, public banks, grid overhauls and industrial policy allowed coordination on a national scale. The result is not just speed but coherence: factories, grids, research, and supply chains all developed together. A whole ecosystem of companies - BYD in EVs, CATL in batteries, Goldwind in wind turbines, Longi in solar panels – has been nurtured. The result is historic: China is now not just leading, but dominating, every corner of clean energy.
This recalls Lenin’s formula of “Soviet power plus electrification.” In the 20th century, socialism meant harnessing electricity to build industry and improve lives. In the 21st, it means harnessing renewables to secure survival and open the path to socialism globally.
THE SCALE OF CHINA’S GREEN LEAP
The sheer numbers illustrate the transformation:
- Solar: China installed 200 gigawatts of solar in 2023 alone – more than the US has ever built in total.
- Wind: At 450 gigawatts of wind capacity, China is far ahead of Europe and America combined.
- EVs: In 2024, 40 per cent of cars sold in China were electric; in the US, the figure was below 10 per cent.
- Critical minerals: China dominates the supply chain for raw materials needed for the green revolution. China refines 91 per cent of the world’s graphite, three-quarters of cobalt, and nearly all rare earths. It deliberately invested in these processes since the 1990s, even when they were low-profit, securing strategic control.
- Exports: By 2024, nearly half of China’s green tech exports – EVs, batteries, solar –went to the Global South. The IEA estimates these exports will be worth $340 billion by 2035, on par with today’s oil revenues of Saudi Arabia and the UAE combined.
- Economy: Clean tech investment hit $940 billion in 2024, far ahead of the US and EU combined. Green industries contributed more than 10 per cent of China’s GDP growth, a record.
This is not a sideshow today – it is the beating heart of China’s economic strategy.
Why does China gain from this? Three reasons stand out.
- Cheaper Production: Thanks to scale, supply chains, and state support, factory costs of renewable equipment in China are far lower. Solar power equipment costs under $200 per kilowatt in China, compared to $450 in the US. That translates into cheaper electricity for decades to come, a direct boost to all of Chinese industry.
- Energy Security: By relying less on imported oil and gas, China shields itself from blockades, sanctions, and price shocks. Renewable energy is, in effect, national self-reliance.
- Export Advantage: Just as Britain exported coal machines in the 19th century and America sold oil technologies in the 20th, China is now exporting renewable machinery in the 21st century. The difference: renewables are the future, not a declining resource.
These advantages create not only growth but strategic independence, a foundation for global leadership.
TOWARDS A SOCIALIST FUTURE
China’s renewable surge is not just about saving the climate. It is about creating a material base for socialism in the 21st century. Cheap, abundant, and clean energy under public planning can liberate humanity from fossil fuel dependency, break imperialist chains, reduce the inequality rooted in energy monopolies and unleash powerful productive forces. New technologies, such as AI, for example, are major energy hogs and will need massive new supplies of cheap energy generation.
The numbers already show the qualitative shift: cheaper factories, massive exports, dominance in minerals, and record contributions to GDP. This is a comparative advantage rooted not in cheap labour or resource plunder, but in planning, science, and State direction.
If fossil fuels powered the age of capitalism and imperialism, renewables may power the age of socialism and, in the process, save the world from climate apocalypse, as even the Western mouthpiece, the New York Times, was forced to admit in an article titled “What Happens if China Stops Trying to Save the World?”. China’s path proves that this transition is not only necessary but possible. It is not a dream of the future; it is already happening.
