Not easy being green

What, exactly, does administration want?

We don’t understand everything we know about this:

(A) Red China is one of the worst pollutors in the world, and it creates more choking coal-fired plants every year. (B) The Greens in the West, and not only the Greens, think this is a bad thing—and wish the world would move toward more clean energy. (C) Red China is producing more clean energy, too, because it needs the power from all sources. (D) In fact, Beijing is producing more clean-energy stuff than it can actually use, so it exports a lot to the rest of the world.

(E) The Biden administration nags the ChiComs about “overcapacity” and threatens tariffs against clean-energy products.

Something seems off by the time we get to (E), doncha think?

The secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Janet Yellen, visited mainland China this past week, and we hope she had a good time. (They said she visited the Forbidden City, and ChiCom media says she handles chopsticks like a pro.) According to The Wall Street Journal, she has tiptoed around hot topics in the past with her Chinese counterparts, but this time:

“In China over the past few days, Yellen wasn’t so shy. She hammered Chinese officials for exporting too many clean-energy goods, warning regional officials, as well as Vice Premier He Lifeng and Premier Li Qiang, to scale back on industrial production.” Well.

Reading reports from The Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg, we can piece together this much: The Biden administration threatens to put tariffs on clean-energy goods from mainland China because said goods could overwhelm America’s clean-energy industry—which could put a dent in jobs here. And lead to some business closures.

If the Chinese ship all these batteries and EVs and other clean-energy industrial parts to the world, then prices on the global market might decrease.

But isn’t that the whole point of the clean energy effort? To get it to more places, cheaper, so it can do more good?

You’d be forgiven if you don’t know what the Biden administration wants, either.

But it isn’t embarrassed enough to keep its nose out of Red China’s internal business. Secretary Yellen lectured the Chinese, telling them that they should increase public-retirement benefits and put more money into education, which should spur domestic spending—probably so the Chinese could buy their own darned clean-energy products. No word if the Chinese were as puzzled as the rest of us.

“This is a complicated issue,” said Secretary Yellen, “that involves their entire macro-economic and industrial strategy. It’s not going to be solved in an afternoon or a month.”

No, it’s not. The Chinese take the long view on matters. Unlike a new country like the United States, the culture in the Middle Kingdom goes back thousands of years. They can certainly wait until this administration in Washington is replaced by something different.

The story goes that when Nixon went to China (as “only Nixon could do”), the president met one-on-one with Chairman Mao for a bit. While Henry Kissinger, his secretary of state, was left to make small talk with his Chinese counterpart, Zhou Enlai.

Mr. Kissinger, trying to come up with conversation, asked Zhou Enlai, jokingly, what the Party’s position was these days on the French Revolution.

Secretary Zhou thought for a minute, then answered: “It’s too soon to tell.”

The Chinese will have no problem waiting out this American administration on this matter. And then deal with another one (in one or five years) that will be seem rational in what it wants.