China has delivered an uncomfortable lesson in the advantages of long-term central planning to Western liberal democracies as they struggle to play catch-up on building critical minerals processing and other battery supply chain elements needed for the energy transition.

These products are vital ingredients for the electrification and decarbonisation of the energy system, heavy industry and agriculture – in short, everything – that must happen urgently and at scale for the world to have any chance of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels and avoid more dangerous climate change.