On a remote mountain ridge in southeastern Laos, a gigantic white blade emerged from the clouds, seemingly suspended in midair. The blade rose to the height of a 50-story building, more than 600 feet above a nearby cluster of wooden houses, and spun back into the clouds. Another blade followed, then another. The clouds shifted, unveiling a phalanx of giant wind turbines marching down the ridge far into the distance.
This was not the first time that some villagers in the district of Dak Cheung had seen powerful new technologies materialize in the skies over their isolated homeland. More than half a century ago, American warplanes dropped millions of pounds of bombs in this region during the Vietnam War. In Dak Cheung, where most inhabitants are members of the Triang ethnic minority, many huts still stand on stilts fashioned from the shells of American bombs. Earlier this year, a tribal elder pointed his bamboo cane at the dirt road in front of his village. “This is the old Ho Chi Minh Trail,” he said, reminiscing about the concealed transportation network built by the North Vietnamese Army and targeted by relentless American attacks. “The bombs fell like rain.”
Where once American bombs fell, Chinese wind turbines now rise. Today, along the same stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a state-owned Chinese company has just finished constructing what is touted as the largest onshore wind farm in Southeast Asia — 133 turbines planted across a vast swath of one of Asia’s poorest countries. The $950 million Monsoon Wind Power Project whirred into commercial operation at the end of August. Built by the Power Construction Corporation of China, or PowerChina, and run by a Thai-led consortium, Monsoon is expected to save more than 32 million tons of carbon emissions over the next 25 years. All of the electricity it generates, however, will be sold across the border to Vietnam, a deal that bolsters Laos’s role as “the battery of Southeast Asia” even as it brings limited benefits to the people of Dak Cheung.
For months, the elder would have seen turbines and their 275-foot-long blades hauled slowly up the road at night. Born in a distant village that he said still has no electricity, the old man was awe-struck by the size of the Chinese-made turbines. Their exact purpose, though, eluded him. “I see them,” he said, “but I’m sorry, I don’t know what they’re used for.”
The first wind farm in Laos hardly stands out amid China’s clean-energy revolution, but it illuminates how the world’s most prolific producer of greenhouse gases has come to dominate the global trade in renewable energy. China’s investments in clean tech — $625 billion in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency — have fueled a staggering transformation. China now produces about two-thirds of the world’s electric vehicles, more than 60 percent of its wind turbines and more than 85 percent of its battery capacity. Last year, the I.E.A. predicted that China’s export of clean-energy technologies in 10 years will reach $340 billion annually, roughly the same as the current oil exports from Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. combined.
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