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Gavekal Technologies: Briefing
China’s Supply-Chain Security Strategy
Arthur Kroeber, Laila Khawaja, Tom Hancock, Huang Shichan, AJ Cortese
21 Apr 2026
China would like the US to roll back its restrictions on semiconductor exports and the US would like China to loosen up rare-earth export licenses, but neither side is likely to oblige. Although its rare-earths card is solid for now, China is taking out some extra insurance with new regulations. In today’s China Tech Brief we assess their impact.
Gavekal Technologies: Briefing
Can The World’s Biggest Grid Get Smarter?
Damien Ma, AJ Cortese
13 Apr 2026
In the first issue of our new biweekly New Energy Insight, Damien Ma takes a close look at where the world’s biggest electricity system is headed. China’s grid is easily the best and most technically advanced in the world, but it is still plagued with problems: most important, that vast new quantities of wind and solar generation are not reliably connected.
More research
In Pharma, The US And China Need Each Other
China’s effective use of its rare earths leverage has created a cottage industry of figuring out what the next chokepoint might be. Pharmaceuticals are a popular candidate but there is very little chance that Beijing will seek to weaponize pharmaceutical ingredients. China depends at least as much on the US for pharma inputs as the US relies on China.
The Electric Vehicle Consolidation Challenge
China’s electric vehicle industry is going through a soft patch that signals the start of a consolidation phase that will make the top players stronger, both at home and abroad. In this edition of Gavekal Technologies Briefing, we lay out the key EV trends for this year.
Will AI Supercharge The China Shock?
Most coverage of US-China AI competition assumes that the two countries are in the same race to build the best frontier AI model. But China is running a different race—to deploy artificial intelligence through its massive industrial system. The chances are that smart automation will entrench China’s dominance of global manufacturing, even if no Chinese AI model ever matches the top model from the US.
US Biotech Is Safe From China (For Now)
Today in Gavekal Technologies Briefing we assess the growing fear in the US that its biotech industry is about to be overwhelmed by a flood of low-cost Chinese competition. The fear is overblown: the American edge in underlying innovation is solid, and US and European big pharma will reap most of the financial gains from the new drugs starting to come out of China. But to maintain its lead into the 2030s and beyond, the US biomedicine industry needs some serious regulatory reform.
Beijing’s ‘New Energy System’
In today’s Gavekal Technologies Briefing we explain China’s ambitious plan to become an electricity superpower. Major investments and policy reforms aim to make electricity the nation’s top source of energy, and renewables the top source of electricity. A clean electricity-based economy could give China a global edge.
The Lidar Revolution
Our lead article explains how Chinese companies have seized control of the market for lidar sensors, a key part of autonomous driving technology, through technical innovations that drove down cost and enabled economies of scale. Assisted and autonomous driving may advance more rapidly as a result. But Chinese lidar makers will remain reliant on a global supply chain.