This is the reality of globalization.

Slavery is outsourced, environmental destruction is outsourced, and corruption is rampant.

With minerals extracted without any regard to the environmental impacts and with significant subsidies and dumping practices to ensure no other area could compete on the mineral extraction and processing side of things, China established a huge and insurmountable lead in energy storage (and capture when it comes to solar panels).

This doesn't even count the near slave labor and the decades of corporate espionage, the years of questionable safety and materials qualities, and other corners that were cut that drastically reduced engineering costs, material costs, and regulatory costs.

Then it gets into the automotive manufacturing front and there have been billions upon billions in direct and indirect subsidies, even more billions in shady government contracts that have driven tens of thousands of models to be built and 'sold' but never actually titled or driven.

With tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of advantage, lower material costs, lower regulatory costs, lower labor costs, and stolen engineering, it should be difficult to compete with China.

This isn't Nationalism, this is reality. I've been a supply chain manager and there simply isn't a way to compete on a purely economic front.

Quality consistency is still a problem at times, but ultimately with the amount of cost manipulation that exists, quality can be afforded because the goal isn't short or medium term profits. The goal is to actively destroy all competition in strategic areas.

When China decides they will own a market, there is a level of alignment that can't be matched in nearly any other country.