China Is Already Building 2045 – Europe Is Still Debating 2026

 Why I Suddenly Wanted to Understand How China Thinks

There are subjects we do not choose for ourselves. At some point, they choose us.

For me, it began with a simple observation. The same name appeared in the news more and more often: China. One day, the subject was electric cars achieving top results in European crash tests. Then it was batteries, without which hardly any modern electric vehicle can be built today. Soon afterwards came reports about artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computers, solar technology and eventually even lithography machines – the highly complex systems required to manufacture powerful computer chips.

Each of these reports was interesting in its own right. Taken together, however, they formed a picture that I could no longer ignore. At some point, I stopped asking what China had developed this time. A very different question began to occupy me: Why does China appear in so many future technologies at the same time?

There are, of course, several obvious explanations: a vast domestic market, an enormous population, lower production costs than in Europe and massive state support. All of these factors undoubtedly play a role. Yet the longer I researched, the more strongly I felt that these explanations alone were not enough. They explain some of the story, but by no means all of it.

That was the point at which the subject became truly interesting to me. When a country succeeds in one industry, that may be due to fortunate timing, an exceptionally innovative company or even a certain amount of luck. But when the same development can be observed across an increasing number of sectors, it is worth looking more closely. Then the issue is no longer limited to individual products or companies. The real question is whether there is a system behind them.

I am not an economist, and I have no intention of pretending to be one in this article. What interests me are connections. When I notice a pattern repeating itself, I want to understand why. That is precisely why I began to look more closely at China.

Something happened during that process that I had not expected. The deeper I went into the subject, the less I thought about cheap mass production or the famous “workbench of the world”. That image belongs to a time when China mainly produced goods for other countries and their companies. Today, the country increasingly appears determined to help decide which technologies will matter tomorrow. That is an enormous difference.

I also noticed that in Europe we often talk about results but surprisingly rarely about their causes. We discuss Chinese electric cars when they are already driving on our roads. We talk about Chinese batteries when they dominate the global market. We worry about semiconductors when supply chains begin to falter. In other words, we often focus on the visible consequences of a development, even though the real story began many years earlier.

That was the story I wanted to understand. At first, I thought I was going to write an article about Chinese Five-Year Plans. Today, I believe those plans are only one part of a much larger story. They are a tool. The real question is how a country organises its future and why China appears able to align research, industry, infrastructure and education around shared objectives.

Does that always work? Of course not. Does China make mistakes? Plenty of them. We must talk about those as well. My intention is neither to admire China nor to disparage Europe. I am interested in something else: I want to understand why the economic map of the world is changing and why, in Europe, we so often begin debating developments only after other countries have already started putting them into practice.

There may be no simple answers. Even so, I am convinced that it is worth asking the right questions in the first place. Sometimes, understanding a great transformation begins neither with a political debate nor with an economic statistic. Sometimes, it begins simply with the honest curiosity to discover why the world suddenly seems to be changing faster than we are accustomed to.

The Discovery Behind the Headlines

During my research, something happened that I had not expected at all. I had originally wanted to understand why China had become such an important force in so many future technologies over recent years. I expected to encounter statistics, company reports, economic data and perhaps the occasional political decision. Instead, the same term appeared again and again: Five-Year Plan.

To be honest, the term did not immediately fill me with enthusiasm. Until then, a Chinese Five-Year Plan had sounded about as exciting to me as a badly translated instruction manual for a washing machine. You know that important information must be hidden somewhere inside it. After the third page, however, you begin to wonder whether you should switch on the machine or leave the house as a precaution.

That was exactly why I had paid hardly any attention to the subject for years. I regarded the Five-Year Plans as dry administrative documents that might be interesting to politicians and civil servants but had very little to do with my own life. I could hardly have been more mistaken.

The more I read, the more curious I became. Eventually, I stopped looking at the plans in isolation and began placing them next to one another in chronological order. At that moment, I felt for the first time that I was following the trail of a much larger story.

China’s first Five-Year Plan began in 1953. I had to let that sink in. This instrument has therefore accompanied China for more than seventy years. Naturally, its contents changed repeatedly during that period. The China of the 1950s had little in common with today’s high-tech nation. A society still dominated by agriculture first became an industrial nation, then the workbench of the world and eventually a country determined to compete at the highest level in areas such as artificial intelligence, battery technology, robotics, space travel and semiconductors.

The longer I compared the individual plans, the clearer it became that although the subjects had changed, the underlying idea had remained remarkably consistent. China does not appear willing simply to let its development happen. Instead, the country repeatedly attempts to define where it wants to stand in ten, twenty or even thirty years. The Five-Year Plans seem less like self-contained programmes and more like successive stages of a long journey.

At that point, I could not help thinking of a familiar saying: “The journey is the destination.” I genuinely like that sentence. For the Camino de Santiago, the walk to Canossa or a pleasant hiking holiday, I would endorse it immediately. When it comes to developing a national economy, however, I would be more cautious. If no one knows where the journey is supposed to lead, even the most beautiful road will eventually cease to be useful.

Perhaps the opposite is true in this case: only a destination turns a route into a journey. You can certainly start walking without one. Whether you will ever arrive where you actually wanted to go is another question entirely.

That thought stayed with me. Suddenly, many of the reports I had encountered during the previous months began to form a coherent picture. Perhaps China is not investing simultaneously in batteries, artificial intelligence, quantum computers, advanced nuclear reactors, robotics and semiconductors because it knows with certainty which of these technologies will shape the future.

Perhaps China is following a different logic. The decisive question would then not be: Which technology will win? It would be: In which technologies can we under no circumstances afford to be absent?

That is an enormous difference. At that point, I put my papers aside for a moment. Not because I had found the answer, but because the real question had changed. I no longer wanted merely to understand why China had become successful in an increasing number of future industries. I wanted to know whether a genuine long-term plan existed behind these developments or whether I had simply begun seeing connections that were not really there.

That was why I continued my research. With every additional source, the impression grew stronger that I was not reading individual Five-Year Plans but chapters of a book that had been written continuously for more than seventy years. Whether that book tells a success story or contains serious errors remains to be seen. One thing, however, had become clear to me by the end of that evening: I had completely underestimated China’s Five-Year Plans.

Suddenly, Everything Made Sense

Up to this point, someone could quite reasonably object that anyone can write impressive plans. I had exactly the same thought. Strategy papers exist everywhere. Germany writes strategies, the European Union writes strategies and companies write strategies. On paper, the future is usually organised brilliantly. Paper is patient. It does not protest when grand visions later produce modest results.

That was why I decided to put the Chinese Five-Year Plans aside for a while. I was no longer interested in what China announced. I wanted to know what had actually become of those announcements.

So I began looking at individual industries. I had expected to find one success story accompanied by several failures. Instead, China suddenly appeared everywhere: in batteries and solar panels, electric cars and high-speed trains, robots, artificial intelligence and drones, modern electricity grids, the processing of rare earths and eventually even lithography technology – an area in which, only a few years ago, hardly anyone seriously expected China to make significant progress in the foreseeable future.

At first, I regarded this as a collection of unrelated success stories. Eventually, however, I put the documents aside because I realised that I might have been looking at the wrong section of the picture all along.

My mistake had been to treat batteries, semiconductors, energy, education and infrastructure as separate subjects. China does not appear to do that. Instead, these areas seem to be regarded as parts of a shared system in which each development creates the conditions for another.

In Europe, we have spent years discussing how far the state should remain outside the economy. There is a legitimate idea behind that position. Competition can produce innovation, and companies often react more quickly to change than public authorities. Without competition, many of the technological advances we now take for granted would probably never have emerged.

Companies, however, primarily pursue their own objectives. They have to. They compete, develop products, enter new markets and try to outperform their rivals. That is where their strength lies. What does not automatically emerge from this process is a common direction for an entire national economy.

To put it differently: a company must think first about its own success. A country must also consider which capabilities it wants to preserve, develop or recover in the long term.

China appears to be taking a different path at precisely this point. The longer I researched, the stronger my impression became that the Chinese state does not act merely as an administrator but as a strategic coordinator. Research, education, energy, infrastructure, industrial policy and raw-material supply are not considered independently of one another. They are intended to complement and reinforce each other.

At first, my research made me think of the famous Gordian knot. The longer I considered the comparison, however, the less suitable it seemed. A knot represents something that is difficult to untangle. China appears to be attempting something entirely different.

I imagined many individual fibres: research, education, industry, energy, infrastructure and digitalisation. Each fibre is thin and vulnerable on its own. Carefully woven together, however, they form a rope capable of absorbing enormous forces.

Perhaps that is where the real strength lies. Not every individual sector must be world-class at every moment. What matters is that the different areas support one another. Research strengthens industry, industry finances further research, universities educate skilled workers, those workers develop new technologies, those technologies create companies, and successful companies then help finance the next generation of research.

Once such a network becomes dense enough, it creates more than economic strength. It creates resilience. A country becomes less vulnerable to individual crises, supply shortages or technological setbacks because its future no longer depends on one sector alone.

In Europe, we often trust that the market will eventually find the right answers. Perhaps it will. Perhaps it will not. That would be a subject for an article of its own. The working title is already waiting: “The Myth of the Fair Market Economy”.

For now, a different conclusion is enough. China’s real strength may lie neither solely in its factories nor in its billions of investment. It may lie in the attempt to align many separate developments with shared objectives.

Is that model always successful? Of course not. China makes mistakes, some of them enormous. Even so, it is difficult to deny that a remarkable number of long-term objectives have become economic reality over the past few decades. That led me to the next question: What does all of this mean for Germany and Europe?

The Matter of the Orchard

There comes a moment during research when you realise that you have been asking the wrong question all along. That was exactly what happened to me.

I had originally wanted to understand why China had become so successful in electric vehicles. It seemed like a manageable question. A few statistics, a look at the largest manufacturers and perhaps some export figures – and the job would be done.

Not a chance. Less than two hours later, I was surrounded by information about battery cells, rare earths, lithium mines, chemical companies, electricity grids, universities, semiconductors and port expansions. The car itself had almost disappeared from the story.

It was rather like becoming interested in an apple pie recipe and finding yourself shortly afterwards standing in the middle of an orchard. The pie was still there, but suddenly you understood that its story had begun many years earlier.

That was the moment when my perspective changed. Perhaps China’s success does not lie in individual products. Perhaps it begins with the question of what the country wants to be capable of doing in twenty or thirty years. Not: What can we sell today? But: Which capabilities must we still possess tomorrow?

At first, that sounds like a minor difference. I now believe that it is an enormous one.

Consider the electric car again. Most of us think about range, design or price. China appears to have started much earlier by asking what must exist before the first electric car can be built at all.

Suddenly, the perspective changes. The subject is no longer merely cars. It becomes a question of raw materials, chemistry, battery materials, universities, skilled workers, software, electricity grids, factories and ports. Only quite late in this long story does an actual car finally appear.

Let us be honest: who has ever had a lively dinner-table conversation about cathode materials? Probably about as many people as voluntarily read the instruction manual for their washing machine. Yet precisely such an inconspicuous subject can determine who will supply the global market ten years later.

Perhaps this is one of our mistakes. We like to fall in love with the finished product. China seems to take an interest first in the entire system behind it.

The longer I thought about it, the more it reminded me of an orchard. Two neighbours want apples every year. One buys them at the supermarket. The other plants fruit trees. At first, the first neighbour clearly appears to be the cleverer one. While the other is digging holes, pruning branches and waiting for the first harvest, he is already sitting on his terrace enjoying his apple pie.

Ten years later, the picture has changed. One of them is still driving to the shops. The other is harvesting.

Perhaps China plants orchards surprisingly often, while we are still debating which apple variety might be the best in the future. Naturally, that comparison is exaggerated. Yet thoughts of this kind returned repeatedly throughout my research.

An orchard, however, does not come into existence simply because someone decides they would like to harvest apples one day. It requires land, water, care, knowledge, patience and people willing to invest for years before the first yield appears. Applied to a national economy, that means research, universities, energy supply, infrastructure, capital and industrial production must work together.

China has spent a long time building these conditions systematically. That does not mean every investment succeeded or every government decision was sensible. It merely means that many developments were not begun only after a finished product had already become commercially attractive.

During my research, I eventually came across an article about BASF. I actually read it twice. Not because I had misplaced my reading glasses, but because two pictures suddenly no longer fitted together.

For years, I have heard that Germany must become less dependent on China. At the same time, one of our most important industrial companies is investing billions in new production facilities there. At that point, it became obvious that the economy is far more complicated than any television debate or newspaper headline.

China is neither an economic miracle without weaknesses nor an infallible model. The country is struggling with a property crisis, an ageing population, high levels of debt and a continuing heavy dependence on coal. Anyone who conceals those facts tells only half the story.

The other half, however, is equally clear: long-term objectives have produced factories, supply chains and world-market leaders. Europe’s real task may therefore not be to copy China. Perhaps we should first relearn how to ask ourselves the same simple question: What do we still want to be able to develop and manufacture ourselves in 2045?

The future rarely begins with the right answer. It almost always begins with the right question.

Perhaps the Problem Begins with the Calendar

Perhaps the greatest difference between China and Europe does not lie in economics at all. Perhaps it begins much earlier: in the calendar.

The longer I thought about it, the more strongly this idea imposed itself. Democracy possesses an enormous strength. It allows governments to be replaced peacefully. New ideas can emerge, bad decisions can be corrected and no one is supposed to remain in power indefinitely. That is precisely what makes democracies strong and alive.

Yet every strength can also possess a weakness. Anyone who must fight for re-election every four or five years inevitably thinks differently from someone able to pursue political objectives over twenty or thirty years. That is not, in itself, an accusation. It is a consequence of the system.

There is another factor as well. Companies often think as far as the next financial report, politicians as far as the next election, the media as far as the next headline and the rest of us probably as far as the next electricity bill or tank of fuel. Life has become expensive enough.

That leaves one crucial question unanswered: Who is thinking about the year 2045?

This was the point that occupied me most throughout the entire research process. Not the size of Chinese factories, not the number of new high-speed railways and not even the billions being invested. What fascinated me was the fact that China has institutions whose explicit task is to deal with long-term questions.

Naturally, that does not mean every decision is therefore correct. Anyone who plans for the long term can also remain mistaken for a very long time. China has demonstrated this more than once. The property crisis shows it just as clearly as failed investments, regional debt problems and the country’s difficult demographic development.

Long-term thinking does not protect against mistakes. At most, it protects against having no direction at all.

Perhaps this is the decisive difference. In Europe, we often debate which individual technology will shape the future. China appears more likely to ask which technologies it must master in case they become decisive for the future. It is only a small difference in wording. Its economic consequences, however, may be enormous.

Consider energy policy. Germany has spent years arguing passionately about which technology is the right one: nuclear power, wind energy, solar energy, hydrogen, geothermal energy or nuclear fusion.

Sometimes, this debate reminds me of a family argument about which tool in a toolbox is the most important. The hammer naturally declares, “Nothing works without me.” The screwdriver understandably disagrees, while the spirit level is convinced that everyone else is out of line.

A tradesperson would probably smile and ask only one question: “What are you actually trying to build?”

Perhaps strategic thinking begins precisely there. Not with the question of which tool is best, but with the question of which house is supposed to be built. Only when the objective is clear does the choice of tools begin to make sense.

That was the impression I gained from China repeatedly. There appears to be less argument about which single technology will ultimately win. Instead, the aim seems to be to develop as many technological possibilities as possible at the same time: solar power, wind energy, battery storage, new reactor designs, nuclear fusion, artificial intelligence, robotics and space travel.

Not all of them will succeed. Some will fail. Yet those who open several doors at least increase the probability that the future lies behind one of them.

Europe sometimes appears remarkably cautious by comparison, perhaps even too cautious. Understandably, we would like to make as few mistakes as possible. The problem is that anyone determined to avoid every mistake may eventually stop making courageous decisions altogether.

Standing still is also a decision. It is simply one that we often recognise only many years later.

During my research, Ludwigshafen became a symbol of this development for me. For decades, the location represented German engineering and industrial strength. Today, the discussion there revolves around energy prices, international competitiveness and the relocation of production.

This is not about criticising individual companies. A company must make economically sensible decisions. That is precisely why such decisions reveal so clearly the questions Germany now faces.

How do we preserve our industrial strength without losing touch with new technologies? How do we invest in the future without abandoning proven capabilities too quickly? And above all: how do we pursue objectives that last longer than a parliamentary term?

Perhaps we do not merely need more money. Perhaps we first need a shared idea of where we actually want to go. Anyone without a common destination will eventually walk in circles, even with the finest map in the world.

What We Can Learn Without Losing Ourselves

While I was working on this article, one question repeatedly forced itself upon me: Am I suggesting that China has the better system?

No. Absolutely not.

China does not impress me because everything there supposedly works better. That would be an absurd claim. The country is dealing with an ageing population, a property crisis, high levels of debt, serious environmental problems and political restrictions that I could not reconcile with my understanding of an open society.

That is precisely why this article is not about admiring China. It is about having the courage to look more closely. Perhaps that is exactly what we sometimes find difficult.

Human beings have a peculiar habit of judging ideas first by their source and only afterwards by their substance. From my own experience, I know there are people with whom I would probably never voluntarily have a beer. Even so, I would work with them immediately if they were exceptionally good at what they did.

Not because we share the same views or values, but because good work does not depend on mutual affection. Life can become surprisingly uncomplicated once we stop taking everything personally.

Perhaps the same principle applies to countries. I do not have to like China. I do not have to approve of its politics or adopt its ideology. It would nevertheless be foolish to close my eyes to everything the country does well.

A good idea does not become worse merely because it comes from China. Nor does it become better simply because it comes from Germany, Europe or one’s favourite political party. Ideas do not carry passports. They are entirely indifferent to party manifestos. They work or they do not.

Perhaps the most important thing China has created over the past few decades is a strong starting position for the future. Not because everything was done correctly – that is clearly not the case – but because many sectors began early to ask what the country should be capable of doing and mastering in twenty or thirty years.

That is what impressed me: less the individual answers than the willingness to ask such long-term questions at all.

Perhaps we should dare to ask those questions more often ourselves. Not as Germany alone and not separately as France, Italy or Poland, but as Europe.

Where do we want to stand in 2045? Which technologies do we want to master ourselves? Which industries do we want to preserve, and which new ones do we want to build? Simply engaging seriously with those questions might already change a great deal.

Sometimes, however, I have the impression that we stand in our own way. Not because we lack ideas, but because we occasionally reject them too quickly. Because they come from the wrong country, are proposed by the wrong political party or fail to fit our familiar view of the world.

That makes about as much sense as rejecting an umbrella because you dislike the person selling it. The rain will not be impressed.

Perhaps this is the true strength of an open society: not having to adopt everything, but being able to examine everything; not having to approve of everything, but being free to learn from anywhere.

Anyone willing to learn only from people, companies or countries that think exactly as they do makes their world a little smaller every day.

Europe has always been particularly strong when it was curious, when ideas were judged not solely by their origin and when foreign thoughts were transformed into new solutions of its own. Perhaps that is where our greatest opportunity lies.

We do not need to copy China or the United States. We need the courage to examine the best elements of different approaches and use them to build our own European path.

In the end, the future belongs neither to China nor to Europe. It belongs to those who are prepared to ask intelligent questions today so that they can find better answers tomorrow.

Perhaps the most important dividing line therefore does not run between East and West. It runs between those who believe they already know everything and those who remain willing to learn something new every day.

Featured image created by ChatGPT based on a prompt I wrote.