Surprisingly good intro and article:

Imagine if a Chinese company announced plans to build the biggest electric-vehicle battery factory the world had ever seen.

Up to $5 billion would be spent on a single plant to manufacture more power packs every 12 months than the world produced last year. The sprawling facility might cover 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers), employ an army of 6,500 people, and drive costs down 30%, devastating any competitors that failed to keep pace. The company in question, furthermore, had racked up more than $1 billion of losses over the past seven years, and would post another $5 billion over the coming seven.

Does that sound like the definition of predatory overcapacity, hollowing out the world’s manufacturing sector in the service of aggressive Chinese mercantilism? If so, it’s worth considering that the facility we’re talking about is how Elon Musk pitched Tesla Inc.’s Gigafactory One, a half-hour drive east of Reno, Nevada, when he first announced it 10 years ago.

Can we talk about the BS that is called “comparative advantage”?

Other than certain raw materials (minerals, gas, oil, etc) that only can be extracted from certain regions in the world, and thus these regions are more efficient at producing said resources, this concept is absurd.

In this case, there is nothing mystical about China that makes them so efficient at producing clean tech, it is just the quality of their current productive forces after years of investment, continuos improvement and political will.

Imagine what internalizing this “comparative advantage” concept means for global south nations with economies stuck on raw materials exports, should they keep at it because they’re more efficient? (Aka cheap labour). No, they have to develop their own industry even if it is cheaper to import at that current moment, especially if said industry uses raw materials that are produced there.