According to Heatmap, “The World Is Responding to Iran by Becoming More Like China”. And yes, paeans to the end of American hegemony by people so accustomed to its benefits that they can’t really imagine how dismal a world without it might be are old news. But to their credit, the subhed is “That means more electrification, more stockpiling, and more coal.” And one part of that statement is in fact true. But it’s the one they hate, or should.

Clickbait being what it is, the article pretty quickly swallows its own premise:

“Much of the world – or at least much of Asia – seems to be responding to the energy stress caused by the Iran War by attempting to reshape itself in China’s image.”

So we went from whole world to much of Asia in one easy step. And we won’t get sidetracked by the strange enthusiasm of the Canadian government, and especially the incumbent party federally, for China which it recently dubbed a “strategic partner”. Instead we’ll focus on an accurate statement that follows up on that business about coal. Those Asian countries:

“are now learning a harsh lesson in the dangers of foreign fossil fuel dependence. One country whose economy has been relatively resilient to the crisis, however, is China.”

The strange enthusiasm of the Western left for China including its economic model long predates this supply-line issue or indeed the climate panic. Even the Beatles felt obliged to warn the naïve against “carrying pictures of Chairman Mao”. And as the Manhattan Contrarian recently observed, you should not believe much of anything Beijing says about its economy or that useful idiots repeat. He cites a Wall Street Journal piece by Jon Emont that slices through much of the nonsense then goes and gathers some of the shreds. It says:

“In dollar terms, China’s gross domestic product, as a share of the global economy, peaked in 2021 at around 18.5%, when it grew to be around three quarters of the size of the U.S. economy. Many economists predicted China’s explosive growth would eventually make its economy bigger than that of the U.S. Instead China’s share of the pie has decreased, ending 2025 at around 16.5% of the global economy. It is now less than two-thirds the size of the U.S. economy, according to International Monetary Fund data.”

Not good, huh? But “[China] is the global leader in strategically important industries such as electric vehicles, solar panels, shipbuilding and humanoid robots.”

This kind of thing is commonplace; journalists convinced wind and solar are better than oil and gas even if their proliferation is only proof that subsidies attract subsidy-farmers are forever making complaints like:

“Next year, solar is expected to account for half of all new electricity capacity in the U.S. And yet China is installing every year multiples more of it – 6x the U.S. total in 2025.”

But, the Contrarian retorts to the WSJ item, EVs and solar panels are subsidy-driven industries, and as the subsidies fade away the industries follow suit:

“Electric vehicles? Solar panels? Emont may call these industries ‘strategically important,’ but what they really are is industries that until recently were heavily subsidized in the West, but now many of those subsidies have been withdrawn. As subsidies were withdrawn during 2025, Western manufacturers have rapidly withdrawn from these industries, and taken write-offs of their investments. On EVs alone, in 2025 GM took write-offs in the range of $7 billion; Ford took write-offs of $19.5 billion; and in early 2026 Stellantis took an EV write-off of over $26 billion. All three also significantly cut back production of the EVs. But in China, that’s not how it works. They continue to produce EVs by the zillions.”

And then he cites a different Wall Street Journal piece that makes the key point:

“It’s widely understood that the government economic data concerning GDP growth are a lie intended to flatter the party.”

Which raises uncomfortable questions about what western journalists who regurgitate it are up to.

Now it is true, as Heatmap, says, that China may be a large consumer of oil and natural gas but it’s also a major producer and so by cutting back on exports it’s been better able to meet domestic needs than countries, from Asia to oh say the UK, who have deliberately avoided developing their own oil and gas reserves.

Heatmap observes of another Asian communist country that:

“In Vietnam, the developer behind a planned liquified natural gas project asked the government to allow it to instead build a solar and batteries project. The Southeast Asian nation also inked a deal with Russia to work on its first nuclear power project.”

If anyone in Hanoi cares what we think, nuclear is a better bet than solar. However the people who brought the world Chernobyl might not be the ideal architects.

The article then makes the obligatory green kowtow:

“China’s energy policy has seen huge pushes in electrification, renewables, and clean energy, both at home (38% of its electricity comes from clean sources, and it’s responsible for more than half of world solar and wind capacity additions) and abroad, where China is the leading supplier of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles, and has made deliberate efforts to dominate global supply of clean energy technology through exports.”

But then it delicately concedes that:

“the country is not pursuing a crash decarbonization policy in order to bring emissions down as fast as possible, in line with global targets…. China’s energy policy is based around several goals, some of which line up with decarbonization, and some of which don’t.”

Um yeah you could say that. And they would and did.