What is Western Economists’ Disease?

Western Economists’ Disease, we define as a chronic underestimation of Chinese economic and industrial capability, dressed up as sober analysis. This has been around for some time but now features climate change politics.

Western economists, journalists and security analysts routinely downplay, dismiss or simply ignore China on a whole range of things, but especially on leadership in decarbonisation and renewables, the tools for net zero.

We are not suggesting China needs special treatment, just better understanding as providing climate change leadership is clearly something the world needs. Europe is burning now with an expected average increase in temperature of over 4^(0)C. 

The evidence

The data and evidence reveals the symptoms of the Western Economists’ Disease.

In March 2026, when the Iran war closed the Strait of Hormuz and triggered the world’s fourth oil shock, “petro-economists” predicted China’s clean-tech export machine would stall.

Instead, China’s solar exports doubled in a single month to a record 68 gigawatts, battery and EV exports jumped 38%, and clean-tech sales hit US$26 billion — the highest monthly total ever. Fifty countries set new records importing Chinese solar, led by nations hit hardest by the oil crunch, like India and the Philippines. 

The Disease is illustrated powerfully by the common statement that the global economy was declining because oil was not being consumed like before. The scramble for oil is a stopgap only as its decline is well underway.

Cleantech is becoming the backbone of the whole global energy system: coal and gas were threatened first but now its oil (Figure 1) shows how rapidly is the growth of EV’s displacing oil. 

Figure 1: Oil demand is being displaced by electrification of transport

China now controls roughly 80% of global solar, 80% of battery cells, 70% of EVs and over 90% of heavy electric trucks. Its new carbon-peaking plan requires new EVs (NEVs) to reach 30% of its entire national fleet by 2030 – implying over 100 million EVs on Chinese roads, more than double today’s level. 

In June 2026, China exported over a million vehicles in a single month for the first time, with new-energy exports overtaking combustion exports. Thailand, following China’s playbook with BYD-led investment, is emerging as a second EV export powerhouse, the EU hangs somewhere in the middle with a fascination for more hybrids and less EVs, while Japan, the US and (to a lesser extent) stay anchored to hybrids and ICE (Figure 2).

So after the Dutch engaged in piracy and tries to steal Nexperia from its Chinese owner Wingtech, they have lost supply chain in China and have only an R & D facility in Netherlands left. Nexperia in China has got production chains going using alternate suppliers while Nexperia in Netherlands is stuck.

Now whatever assets Nexperia had they had left in China is gone too. Europeans seem to be losing to China faster than they are losing to Russia.

As per the wiki summary

It Can't Happen Here is a 1935 dystopian political novel by the American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator (in allusion to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany), and Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip's most ardent critic.

The novel was adapted into a play by Lewis and John C. Moffitt in 1936.

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Given what's happening in the last few decades in America, I think the novel almost feels prescient. The rational side of me though would argue its just the author was making an allusion to Hitler's rise to power. History being what it is, its always possible for fascism to arise somewhere else and these novels serve as a warning rather than a prediction per se. There is a human tendency to find patterns and attribute more to it, and one could argue other works of fiction where the rise of fascists played a part in the story or background, eg V for Vendetta, Babylon 5 etc and it would be a stretch to argue those authors predicted fascism will come.

Nevertheless I think its worthy to note people have been warning about how fascism could rise in one's own country for ages but the lesson never seems to be learnt.

Never heard the term urban mining before to describe recycling of gear we would normally dump. This obviously saves the amount of stuff we need to mine.