It looks to me like China will move from using cheap labour to cheap electricity from renewables for its manufacturing a lot faster than the rest of the world can keep up.
That clean energy is even cheaper than their already cheap coal powered power stations - they are going to go even further eating our manufacturing breakfast.
Capability to manufacture full hardware stack is critical. China might not be top at the silicon chips, but they have extreme competence for below that.
China does not have a monopoly on the ability to invest in renewables.
It is doing an outstanding job of doing that, but if India wakes up, India can do it, too.
At the end of the day - few countries have better solar radiation than India: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/energy/publication/solar-...
That's going to matter more than your ability to produce panels slightly cheaper.
India can just buy the panels from China and be in nearly the same position, because India has a much better solar profile.
If Greenland was a solar panel production powerhouse, they would never be able to compete with someone like India for solar energy generation...
China has a decent profile, but India's is significantly better.
Can it though? This will be impossible because of Indian domestic politics. You will also never get the same benefits by buying as in producing them yourself.
India added 7.5 GW of solar in CY 2023, a 44.1% drop from 13.4 GW installed in CY 2022.
So India 7.5GW vs China 216 GW.
"China is already the largest industrial robot market in the world. It accounted for 52 percent of robot installations worldwide in 2022" [2][3]
I don't see how they can compete in renewables or robots. Catching up to China will be extremely difficult.
1. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol...
2. https://itif.org/publications/2024/03/11/how-innovative-is-c...
Not like they have much choice given where their demography is going.