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China’s ‘artificial sun’ breaks nuclear fusion limit thought to be impossible
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
624 points (94.3% liked)
Technology
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I'm not a fan of China (government)... at all. But when I check all the technological breakthrough they are getting in these last years while the US was inflating his fucking ai-bubble. Objectively, they are getting so far ahead is not even funny. At least Europe is on a good track themself.
I'm no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.
Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don't play well with others.
But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.
While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.
A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it's the right one, amazing things can happen.
One thing I've been impressed with China for is moving towards greener technologies. They're a leader in solar, their EV's are apparently very good (not that I can get one here to verify that), and they're pretty dogged in their pursuit of nuclear energy.
Meanwhile USA is apparently still in "let's overturn regimes and take over other countries for the oil companies" mode
China has still fucked up its environment massively though. Being the world's factory produces a lot of byproducts. Sure, they're concentrating them and trying to detoxify the worst of it but the place is swimming in effluent that does great damage to life in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. "Green" in the sense of renewable energy and climate change mitigation is not green in the sense of preserving the last tracts of intact wilderness to limit mass extinctions.
Hey, Americans are hard working too. Some work 3 jobs just to make ends meet.
The US government threatens other countries with tariffs and sanctions to give American companies unfair advantage. Is that not using unclouth methods?
Americans are hardworking too, but the American government is not actively working to support those hardworking Americans, which is the difference.... the average American is working their ass off to earn less than ever to add wealth to the small percentage of ultra wealthy in power here. There are sanctions, tarriffs, and subsidies here, but the vast majority of them benefit the top of the pyramid, while leaving the majority to struggle.
The US government does everything in its power to make the wealthy even more wealthy. But hey, worker empowerment is communism.
Party’s don’t have to be part of democracy though. Nonpartisan democracy might more achievable for China than the west currently as the size of their single party continues to grow. Though I kinda doubt there is a lot of appetite for it. I’m a firm believer in democracy but it’s hard to look at the hyper polarization of today’s parties as beneficial in any way. Especially in the simple two party American system.
tax billionaires out of existence and the polarization will solve itself in short order
Yeah I suspect that’s right.
China is now the world leader in science by most metrics (largest proportion of the top 1% most cited papers, most publications to prestigious journals, etc). It makes sense, with their high population and their government willing to fund research. I'm guessing their culture is much less anti-intellectual than the West too, especially the US.
I wouldn't blame AI, I would say that overall the US is becoming more and more anti-science overall. Just look how people are against vaccines or flat-earthers. Even academics are leaving US because of funding cuts by the current administration. Schools are in bad shapes...
The overwhelming majority of their so called breakthroughs are just media fluff pieces though. Their sources are more and more often AI generated studies and their supposed advancements aren‘t going anywhere a lot of the time. By the time people start asking questions and want to know more details they have already prepared another story for you to be impressed by. It‘s shock and awe.
I've been seeing articles like these for the past at least 10 years, it is always "New China brrakthrough, can make drinkable water from enriched uranium" or some shit. It is never scalable, sustainable, or usable, and is never really widely, used or adopted. It is always technology, pharmaceutics, construction, or energy related.
They like to fake their image to the world and have been trying for very long. The only thing they succeeded at larger scale is oppresion, tracking of people, and selling knockoffs. Of course, mass manufacturing cannot be omitted.
And battery tech
Yea they are probably quite ahead in about %80 of critical tech. Not only that but they also seem to be investing quite alot in sustainable tech, public transport tech, medicine etc. I wouldn't be surprised at all if center of attraction for science shifts from US to China in near future.
It already has. The West doesn't like to advertise that though.
Given all the cuts to science, deportation of scientists, and blocking student researchersin the past year alone, I’d claim the US deserves half the credit for China’s impending science ascendancy
We’re not losing the competition, we’re throwing a tantrum and scattering the game pieces ….. somehow thinking that’s the same as winning
Makes me sad I got the oppressive dictatorship that also wants me to suffer instead of pretending to give me good stuff
ESPECIALLY when statistically China would be way more likely to be born in
But when China is running a huge energy surplus with new solar, wind, and battery technology, we'll still have the most oil! facepalm.
Thats the thing that truly pisses me off about the US govt right now.
Ok, China is doing all these things and we’re losing our advantage? Do what we did during the space race and pump cash into innovation, science, and research.
But noooo we do the polar opposite and also drive scientists out of the country because they can get funding elsewhere.
Hey, at least they've got evangelism down to a science. I'm sure militant devotion to [the parts they like from] the Bible will pay back dividends down the road. Who needs the disciplined and organized pursuit of modern science in earnest when some old book written by long-dead humans claiming to speak for a supreme being says it has all the answers (many of which involve smite-based solutions)?
Oh they are. For AI. Instead of scrambling to Fusion, they're putting the money into generating nudes of celebrities.
and kids. Look at grok
Nothing they've done in recent years is ground breaking.
Room temperature superconductors? Fake.
Self-driving bus using painted lanes for navigation? We have trains and trams for that.
Thorium reactor? Germany had one in the 80s, shut it down because it was expensive, there's around 20 different projects happening in Europe and North America to make it more efficient.
The fusion reactor from the article? They maybe potentially hypothetically achieved one breakthrough of the dozens still needed to make fusion viable.
Etc., etc.
What frustrates me is that China is indeed leading so much technological development on energy, but the amount of coal being burnt is just not budging... Please, China. Make the transition already.
It's a bit two sided I believe. The energy demand is increasing, so there's indeed more coal being burnt.
But at the same time, the share of clean energy sources compared to coal is also getting bigger and bigger.
So it's not all bad. Mostly seems the demand for energy is growing too fast to decently transition, let's hope they can catch up and get rid of coal as soon as possible.
Yeah, I hope that the renewables will continue exponentially... I agree that the growing share of renewables in the mix is awesome, but in the end what matters is each ton of CO2 emitted. And we're not going in the right direction :(
That's because 90% of these articles about their technological breakthroughs are bullsht.
At leas we won't have to repect their patent...
Whoever develops fusion will be in the history books forever. I think that's what they're going for.
Chinese government is much better than the US government
Sure, if you like to compare corrupt, totalitarian states, have fun. Don't forget russia.