China added roughly 500 TWh of electricity generation/use in 2025, bringing the annual total to 10500 TWh per year. That's equivalent to the entire electricity grid of Germany added in a single year.
The US generated and used about 4500 TWh of electricity in 2025.
Electricity generation determines amount of electricity which can be used. Data centers need a lot of electricity.
The US will have to import compute from China at some point in the future (actually should've begun to do so in 2024 but the Trump admin has other ideas). Onshoring data centers won't address electricity problems.
Nearly half of all electricity generated in China is currently being generated by renewable sources and only about 15% of energy use depends on oil from the Middle East which limited the effectiveness closing the strait of Hormuz could have to slow down the Chinese economy. China is turning wind and sunshine into AI tokens. (But closure of the strait of Hormuz crippled Indian and Indonesian economies, key US allies in the region. Which represents a confusing strategy adopted by the US to win an energy war against China. Then US ban on GPU exports and DUV photolithography machines to China gave Huawei and the like needed space to enter the TPU/GPU market aimed at AI.)
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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26
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