Protectionism will only slow the green energy transition and make the technologies of the future unaffordable for those most in need
3-MIN READ3-MINZhou XiaomingZhou Xiaoming is a senior fellow at the Centre for China and Globalisation in Beijing and a former deputy representative of China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva. Published: 4:30pm, 16 Jun 2026“Overcapacity” has become the buzzword in Washington and Brussels. American and European policymakers insist China churns out far more steel, electric vehicles and green technology than it can absorb, flooding the world with subsidised goods.Yet the economic data tells a different story: of double standards, protectionist impulses and a habit of moving the goalposts.
Start with steel. Western officials point to China’s massive output as proof of distortion. But China official data puts the capacity utilisation of its ferrous metals sector at 78.1 per cent for 2024 and 79.7 per cent last year, squarely within the range most in the European Union consider as healthy.
US political circles adopt an arbitrary alternative metric, branding any output exceeding domestic consumption as overcapacity. Try applying this standard to leading Western manufacturers. Germany produced 4.15 million cars last year and exported 3.17 million of them, over 76 per cent, while 42.2 per cent of cosmetics imported into China originate in the EU.
