The Achilles heel of consumer democracies is that there is precious little constituency for the future in the present. All the feedback signals — in politics, culture and the market — are geared to short-term gratification. In each case, the incentives of the system deliver what the most influential demographic wants, and when they want it, which is now.
From fast fashion to electoral contests to quarterly earnings reports, the system is responsive to the pursuit of happiness defined by the near horizon.
The consequence of this, which Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell argued more than half a century ago in his book, “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism,” is that the present ends up eating the future to the detriment of the long-term sustainability of society. The recent Noema essay by Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus titled “Americans Are Losing The Long Game” is excellent on this point.
While state-guided dirigiste policies that champion and support strategic industries deemed critical for the future are roundly frowned upon in market economies, the opposite rigidity of the short-term consumerist mentality is less appreciated as a critical failure of good governance. Yet, unless societies prepare for, subsidize and invest in the kind of future they want, they will never get there.
“The present ends up eating the future to the detriment of the long-term sustainability of society.”
China’s Market-State Modality
Of all the major powers, post-Mao China stands out in taking control of its future without sacrificing the present. Over recent decades, it has both lifted hundreds of millions into general prosperity while, at the same time, swiftly conquering the key industries of a sustainable future, from green technology to artificial intelligence.
One has to admit that the Middle Kingdom’s mix of a long-term planning framework checked by robust market signals and bolstered by strategically deployed subsidies has worked. Indeed, it has worked too well: Its overproduction is spilling out and flooding world markets, threatening to displace domestic jobs and industry elsewhere.
China has not arrived at this point overnight. It has been a long time coming. In 1987, the ideology chief of the Communist Party politburo at the time, Hu Qili, told me in Beijing: “The market is not a feature unique to capitalism. Capitalism does not have the patent right over the market economy. What we are trying to create is a new and unprecedented modality where planning is combined with the commodity economy, where the state regulates the market, and the market guides the enterprises.”
The overall economy is steered by a one-party political system designed to reach consensus over long-term goals that have the decisive thrust to be carried out over many years without a break in continuity. Once set, the policy path is followed with relative discipline by a leadership and administration that, while not based on popular appeal to an electorate, is systemically accountable for realizing its set objectives.
When a key strategic goal is ordained by the Party, the state fosters a “whole dragon” approach in which start-up subsidies, sourcing, supply chains and production capacity are vertically aligned, making it one of the most powerful production ensembles in economic history.
Flaws Linked To Strength
The chief flaw of China’s system, of course, is closely linked to its strength. To keep the consensus from fraying, it overcompensates on the side of repressive order and control of freedom. It is the opposite of the open societies of the West, where the flaw lies within the strength of diverse participation and electoral competition: a growing inability to forge a consensus on long-term goals out of the cacophony of voices, the welter of contending interests and the immediate wash of fickle public opinion.
When all-out competitive partisanship destroys consensus among the body politic, the democratic transfer of power can mean a complete rupture of policies endorsed by most voters only four years earlier. Sticking to the course for the time it takes to reach fruition is not a reliable feature of this system.
The extreme edge of this stark difference can be seen in the contrasting behavior of the current leadership in the U.S. and China. America’s leader relishes dominating the memes of the moment, battling his way through every 24-hour news cycle by firing off social media barrages at sundry foes. China’s near-dictatorial leader has used his amassed clout to chart out a roadmap for the next half century.
China’s Long March To Owning Green Technologies
Meeting in Mexico in 2012, the G-20 decided for the first time to put climate change on the agenda. In those days, the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council, a group of former heads of state and government, tech leaders and Nobel laureates, would meet with the chair of the G-20 each year to advise on its agenda.
That year’s chair, then Mexican president Felipe Calderón, invited the council for lunch in the garden of Los Pinos, the presidential palace, to discuss the upcoming meeting. When the topic turned to climate, Wu Jianmin, a top Chinese diplomat and executive director of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, related that a top priority of the then incoming Party leadership of Xi Jinping would be “ecological civilization.”
All those 14 years ago, he confidently laid out a trajectory of China’s decisive shift to electric vehicles and plans for massive R&D investment in battery storage for wind and solar as well as EVs. Everyone listened respectfully, but doubtfully, because China was then not even in the auto race.
In 2012, China already dominated solar panels, but the Chevy Volt was the world’s most produced EV. No nation commanded battery production, which then was only nascently entering global competition.
Wu’s confidence in China’s capacity to deliver was well-founded. Today, nearly 70% of all new car sales in China are EVs, and half of all sales globally are Chinese-made electric vehicles. China produces around 80% of the world’s batteries and holds 70% of global battery patents. Its hosts half of the entire world’s large-scale battery storage capacity, primarily to store solar and wind power for the grid when the sun isn’t shining or the wind blowing.
As part of its whole-dragon approach, China also built out the widely distributed infrastructure of rapid charging stations across the country necessary to boost EV use. It launched a strategic push to link battery storage to the grid, requiring developers to build or commission large-scale storage capacity as a condition for approval of new wind or solar installations.
China’s export of its technology has enabled the advance of large-scale batteries for integration into power grids in many countries. Some 70% of EV batteries worldwide are from China.
California has the most installed large battery storage facilities outside of China. Its capacity has grown from a mere 700 megawatts in 2019 to 21,000 MW in 2026. By 2045, the state aims to reach 52,000 MW capacity to support a 100% clean energy grid. For the entire month of May 2026, 51% of California’s total energy demand came from solar power. Blackouts during the intense heatwaves of recent years have been avoided because the grid was linked to off-hour battery storage from renewable energy.
Though often assembled in California, 90% of the cells and core components of the large-scale batteries the state has installed come from China.
Quotas And Dumping
From the standpoint of the race against time on climate, the widest possible dispersion of China’s green technology is a net plus for the planet. Yet, as in other realms of trade competition, its cheaper product and overproduction portends a vulnerable dependence on a political system which the West considers a strategic adversary.
To the extent domestic industries exist, China’s prowess threatens to run them out of business. Since green technology is critical to our future, the most sensible approach would not be to prohibit Chinese imports, but set a reasonable quota beyond which tariffs would kick in. That would both limit the damage while allowing competition from abroad to spark the scale-up of domestic industry.
Free-market ideologues aside, subsidies are not the end of the world when a livable biosphere is at stake. After all, up until the Trump administration, the U.S. did manage for a time to escape the pull of consumer immediacy. For years, it subsidized the purchase of EVs with tax rebates. And California has shown how regulation creates, not destroys, markets. Elon Musk’s Tesla empire would never have emerged if it were not for the state’s fuel efficiency and clean energy standards, which created the market for his technology.
“Given the urgency of addressing climate calamity, is it so impolitic to suggest that consumer democracies can learn something from China?”
Is It Impolitic To Learn From China?
Given the urgency of addressing climate calamity, is it so impolitic to suggest that consumer democracies can learn something from China? This is not, of course, to imply in any way that the West turn toward autocracy or authoritarianism. It is only to warn that unless democracies can look beyond the short-term horizon and find ways to reach a governing consensus that sticks, they will be left in the dust of the oncoming future.
To turn an old Chinese saying toward ourselves: “The stones from hills yonder can polish jade at home.”
The post When The Present Eats The Future appeared first on NOEMA.