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Glenn Profile picture
@GlennLuk
Jun 9, 2023 • 7 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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Must-read case study on how we went from discovering key enabling technologies to being behind in the battery race.

Some key takeaways …
▪️ We have a world-class university system that can consistently make breakthrough discoveries

Driven by ability to attract talented immigrants

Our scientific and research capabilities at the university-level are second to none ImageImage
▪️ We are not world-class at commercialization

China is relentless at commercialization

Who is our MITI?

ImageImage
Key charts and data:

▪️ Global sales of EVs
▪️ Lithium-ion Battery manufacturing capacity ImageImage
The original A123 founding team and early hires.

Many of the core tech employees were immigrants. ImageImage
This has proven to be extremely shortsighted.

IBM "I think there's a world market for maybe five computers” vibes Image
Are polarized politics going to get in the way, again?

Both sides are at fault here!

Image

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More from @GlennLuk

Glenn Profile picture
Feb 8
This is something that many folks still don’t understand — or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge.

China is moving away from coal-fired generation to renewables because it is less expensive to do so. Coal will account for less than half of power generation today, down from ~80% just 15 years ago.

The key to its renewables and related electrification boom was lowering its production cost below fossil fuels.
Recently enacted policies like RPS now mandate a minimum amount of renewables-source power for heavy industry.

New datacenters must be built with at least 80% renewables sourced power.
The key to this inflection point was economics: Driving down the manufacturing and deployment cost of the entire supply chain and key enabling technologies, from solar cells to wind turbines to battery storage to high-voltage transformers to robotics and machinery for installation and maintenance.

And since cost/performance gap continues to widen (renewables cost ↘️ while extraction costs of fossil fuels ↗️) the pace of transition to renewables will not slow down, but accelerate.
Read 11 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Dec 7, 2025
Because:

(1) it's actually ~57% today (2025)
(2) it was ~81% in 2011
(3) at the current trajectory it is headed to sub-20% over the next decade

China has found a way to grow its economy without incremental emissions, which have plateaued.

This may not be especially titilating for Robin, but I think it is exciting for policymakers in many countries, especially developing ones for whom lack of access to fossil fuels has historically been a growth constraint.
(1) Robin's chart doesn't have a source, and I don't know how he's calculating 65%.

What I do know is that China's power grid will generate ~10.6 PWh in 2025 and solar/wind/hydro/nuclear will account for ~4.6 PWh. This is up from 10.1 PWh and 3.4 PWh, respectively, in 2024.
My suspicion here, given that this is a monthly series, is that Robin is drawing from the NBS monthly data series which he may not know excludes small-scale plants.

These figures are adjusted for in the annual numbers.

Read 11 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Nov 19, 2025
Nice tale, but one not supported by data measuring socioeconomic inequality.

Gini coefficient for wages peaked in the late 2000s under Hu.

For a broader version incorporating capital income, it did not peak until 2019 when multi-year efforts to rein in (i) corruption and (ii) uneven land appreciation started to take effect.Image
Gini coefficient for wages peaked in 2008.

See this 🧵 from last year + follow-on discussion below explaining how.
Gini coefficient incorporating wealth effect (my own analysis) peaked in 2019 👇.

In the following posts I will also explain why and provide further context.
Read 11 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Nov 1, 2025
There are multiple potential explanations for why trade between China and certain developing countries like Morocco are growing robustly beyond the narrowminded explanation Robin offers below (and consistently, in other threads).

Indeed, the most obvious one is that this is simply a continuation of a multi-decade trend of increasing trade between the two countries.

Often the most obvious explanation is the correct one, and I think that is the case with Morocco (and developing economies in general) as I will explain here in this 🧵.
To prove his "transshipment" hypothesis at this level, Robin needs to provide more than just unsupported assertions.

The obvious approach would be just looking at the key categories that the U.S. imports from China and compare to the large import growth areas in a country like Morocco.

OEC is a nice place to start.Image
Image
Cursory review of recent growth drivers suggests minimal correlation between the categories that are driving export growth in Morocco (cars, cranes, iron blocks) vs. declines in the U.S. (packaged medicaments, telephones and computers). Image
Image
Read 9 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Oct 31, 2025
Free cash flow is a measure after capital expenditures and incorporates fluctuations in working capital.

Since founding, BYD's modus operandi has been to re-allocate every dollar of operating cashflow + as much capital as it can raise — as non-dilutively as possible — to support the needs of a rapidly growing business.

Frankly, it is financially illiterate to describe re-investment back into a growing business as "losses". Negative cashflow is a cashflow item and — especially if related to CapEx and working capital fluctuations (which I will address below) — is conceptually different from "losses" which is an income statement term.
A better approach is to consider how much long-term capital the company has raised an compare it to the scale of operating capacity that capital has enabled.

We can look at this from BYD's latest balance sheet, which I have summarized here: Image
To date, BYD has taken in a total of ¥340B in debt and equity funding.

This number includes ~¥82B of ST/LT borrowings and ¥258B of equity (or equity-like) funding.

The equity funding includes ¥107B of "undistributed profit" which is similar in concept to retained earnings (we'll get back to this point in a bit).Image
Read 13 tweets
Glenn Profile picture
Oct 30, 2025
For all the flak about "lack of a social welfare safety net", China has one of the lowest pension/retirement ages in the world.

Further, it's hard to imagine that China — a "loud and proud" socialist country — not investing significantly into its social welfare programs in the coming decades, especially as it has officially crossed the "high income" threshold.
The problem with the "China does not spend enough on social welfare" narrative-pushers is in part a data one.

A large part of its social welfare spending comes in the form of social transfers in kind (STIK) (~6-7% of GDP).

In this 2024 paper, the World Bank highlighted how "in-kind" health & education transfers are the main form of socioeconomic redistribution in China.

Any social welfare comparison that ignores STIK should be questioned.

Read 12 tweets

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