Item — HN Reader

Saudi Arabia needs oil prices at ~$86.60/barrel to balance their budget, per Bloomberg. It is not the marginal cost to pump a barrel, but what a country needs to support their sticky spending from previously assured energy exports. Governments will collapse long before we approach low single digit oil prices on the global market.

The World Is Awash With Oil and Prices Are Poised to Keep Falling - https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-global-oil-supply-pr... | https://archive.today/hkhtI - December 18th, 2025 (Control -F "Crude Price Forecasts Are Below Levels Needed for Budgets")

> China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia). This is probably the biggest transition in the history of mankind. This is energy production, storage and all the appliances that use electricity. After this, its incredibly hard for any other country to compete.

Strongly agree. China is replacing petrostate economic demand with demand for their clean tech products, which keeps their deflationary economy afloat, provides them soft power, and will transition the yuan to a global reserve currency. Today countries by dollars to by petroleum ("petrodollar"); tomorrow, countries will want yuan to buy "manufacturing fiat," to trade with the world's factory (China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity, as of this comment). Stocks of assets vs flows of energy.

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Indeed. Electricity will be the only abstraction layer of energy, all end uses (transportation, cooking, heating, cooling, appliances) will switch to electricity.

Electricity can be generated from any source (dirty + clean), but the abstraction layer of electricity will allow the grid to continuously increase the clean fuels. It helps that the cleanest is also the cheapest. Solar panels are cheap as dirt. In 1975, a solar PV module cost $128.27 per watt. In 2026 it costs $0.1 - $0.2 per watt, a thousand times cheaper. In 1975, only satellites could afford solar. Today, its the cheapest source of energy.

China will be an electrostate. Are there any other electrostates? Maybe Bhutan, Costa Rica, but they are too small.

> China will be an electrostate. Are there any other electrostates? Maybe Bhutan, Costa Rica, but they are too small.

China for sure. The rest will come as they replace the last of coal and fossil gas with anything low carbon, solar, wind hydro, as well as the necessary battery storage and transmission for energy orchestration and agility. Like Norway is already at 100% of EV sales and other countries are still close to 0%, we're simply observing a global energy transition horse race. Exciting time to be on the timeline imho.

Ember Energy: Global Electricity Review 2026: Solar surge halts fossil generation rise as clean power meets all demand growth and renewables overtake coal - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-... - April 21st, 2026

The ‘profound’ global impact of China’s rise as an electrostate - https://www.ft.com/content/013e8a27-ade5-48ed-8f2e-ffbf70cc5... | https://archive.today/J0bew - October 10th, 2025

You are assuming that carbon negative countries are all electrostates. That's not true at all. Buthan and Panama which are carbon negative are very far from being electrostates. Costa Rica is not even carbon negative nor an electrostate. Carbon negative countries and Costa Rica due to their low GDP are very far behind on electrification.

Just look up the percentage of new car sales that are electric on each of those countries. It's around 5%. The reason? They cost 35,000 dollars at the low end even for a Chinese SUV whereas the average new car uses gasoline and costs 16,000 dollars for a Chinese SUV.

according to these countries' censuses, Cooking with electricity and drying clothes in a clothes dryer are rather rare too, around 10% or lower. although clothes dryers are more common in apartment buildings, apartments are only around 10% of all houses. Most people cook with small government subsidized 25 pound LPG tanks. Water heaters are used by 5% of the population because the water is actually desirable cold and not hot because the air is hot instead of cold and there is no winter.

They are carbon negative because their population is small enough to have most of the country still covered in virgin jungles and forests. They are big enough to offset the carbon emissions of their small populations. The ratio of forest to population works out to make the country carbon negative.

Also due to low GDP, they don't consume much energy and houses are small. For example most people don't run AC most the time unlike the US or don't have AC at all. Houses are usually 50 to 100 square meters. Electric service is 120 amps at 120 volts split phase. That's just 14 kilowatts. Running AC even for 8 hours a day can cost half the average monthly wage.

Everything is within walking distance and highly centralized in cities. Even suburbs are high density with almost no outdoor space.

China is currently pursuing all types of energy/solutions. They are not stuck on any particular one, is that because they’re run by engineers instead of lawyers/MBA’s…

>Saudi Arabia needs oil prices at ~$86.60/barrel to balance their budget

They can always cut down on candles, they will be fine.

If you buy yuan just to turn around and spend them you aren't holding the yuan.

But China is already in decline before reaching this ascendancy.

I think new models will result in new structures, not just a switch from the US to China.

Sure. What difference does it make if they're 1.2b or 800m? It's still huge by any metric. The current US administration is definitely clearly working in their favour. That's part of why Detusche Bank is a yuan clearing house now.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-thucydides

China's population is declining while building and operating the largest fleet of manufacturing robotics in the world. The US population is not declining as quickly while having limited capability to do anything. A recent example is $500M of taxpayer dollars spent on a munition manufacturing facility that did not build a single munition.

The US has coasted just about as far as it can go on it's exorbitant privilege while failing to invest in the future.

TLDR China builds, and will continue to build long into the future, the US prospers (for now) from financialization but cannot build, nor has the will to attempt to.

China Makes AI-powered Robots Core of National Strategy: China´s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) marks pivot to innovation - https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/china-makes-ai-power...

> Frankfurt, May 05, 2026 — China has launched its 15th Five-Year Plan by placing robotics at the heart of its modern industrial system. The aim is to pivot its AI research towards physical applications with robots as main drivers for economic growth. This is a next step in the country´s strong automation development: China´s manufacturing industry already has an operational stock of around 2 million units — approximately 4.5 times more than the global no. 2, Japan. 54% of annual industrial robots installed worldwide were deployed in China. This is according to the World Robotics 2025 Report, presented by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

General Dynamics Failed to Build Artillery Shells for the Army - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281711 - August 2026

Wikipedia: Exorbitant privilege - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

That sounds like a wish? China has 1.3 billion people in an area the size of 1/3 of the United States (basically the area from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi river Florida to Maine). Imagine if the United States had 1.3 billion people just in that area with the rest of the country being the equivalent of the Tibetan Plateau). One could argue that you would need/want to have fewer people not more.

I am arguing that population is not a component of success criteria, but steady state manufacturing capacity is. China has it, the US doesn't, China continues to cultivate and prioritize it, the US doesn't. If I want to build something of high value at scale, am I going to do it in the US or China? The answer to that remains clear, I'm on the next flight to Shenzhen.

For example, China can build ~20M EVs a year, the US ~1-3M per year, as of this comment.

Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly)

> As the world’s largest manufacturer of clean technologies, data on China’s cleantech exports provide an important early insight into the pace and scale of the energy transition. In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.

A multipolar world where every pole is a decadent husk or a former (or not even former) great empire.

Yeah, sounds about right for this timeline.