Senator Joe Manchin (I-WV), chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, in a hearing to examine fusion energy technology on Sept. 19, said that the U.S. was in a race with China to develop fusion energy. “The U.S. is still in the lead,” Manchin claimed, “but you can see China entering the field in a big way.” Manchin may be somewhat mistaken in his assumption that the U.S. is in the lead, given the full court press that China has put on fusion development over the last decade and more.
“And China is not only trying to beat us in science,” Manchin went on, “they’re also working to corner the fusion energy supply chain by securing the market for critical materials needed to build fusion power plants like they have for solar power and electric vehicle batteries. We cannot afford to lose our competitive edge in fusion energy technology,” he said.
The illusion that Manchin and others are laboring under is that China is somehow “copying” the U.S. program. What they copied was their own version of what we used to know as American System economics, which we have largely abandoned under British “free-market” policies. This may be changing because of fears of China, but the U.S. is still fettered to a bloated financial system that continues to call for its “pound of flesh” and the growing cost of wars abroad is also a drain on the system. In this respect, China has much less of a problem.
