It is therefore increasingly difficult to divide the world neatly between Chinese "State intervention" and Western "market competition". A more credible approach would examine whether specific policies create identifiable distortions and address them through transparent, proportionate and rules-based measures.

　　There is another weakness in the overcapacity argument: capacity cannot be assessed solely against today's demand, particularly in industries central to the global energy transition.

　　The world is still far from completing the shift to low-carbon energy. The International Energy Agency expects renewable energy deployment to expand substantially through the end of the decade. Electrification will require enormous quantities of solar panels, batteries, power equipment, EVs and support infrastructure.

　　Viewed against those requirements, the challenge may not be too much high-quality green manufacturing capacity, but whether enough affordable capacity can be supplied at the speed and scale required.

　　Chinese production has helped reduce the cost of solar panels, batteries and other clean-energy technologies. This matters particularly for developing economies, where affordability can determine whether large-scale energy transition projects are commercially viable. Cheaper machinery, components and technologies can also lower barriers to industrialization and help emerging economies develop manufacturing capacity of their own.

　　The intensity of the Western debate therefore points to a broader source of anxiety: the changing geography of industrial competitiveness.

　　For decades, advanced Western economies dominated many high-value manufacturing industries, while China's role in global value chains was largely concentrated in labor-intensive production and assembly for multinational companies. That division of labor has changed rapidly.