The Chinese are the heirs of mythical hero archer Hou Yi who shot down nine suns to save humanity from scorching heat and left just one to give them warmth. Today, they have mastered solar energy and the wind, and the five elements (wuxing). China has reinvented itself as the new electro-civilisation state.

Let us remember that in the yin/yang, the sun is the yang, and their intricately connected wuxing are metals (originally gold), wood, water, fire and earth. The elements make up nature itself, and the wind connects them as they manifest their powers.

Since Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin’s reforms and opening-up, China first mastered the generation of hydroelectricity and the production of rare earths from upstream to downstream.

In the past decade, China has reinvented its industrial economy with an emerging consumer society by harnessing renewable energies, again, through the mastery of entire supply chains. That’s the true meaning of energy independence or energy sovereignty.

While oil and gas are still significant energy sources, there is no question that China is already emerging as the first major post-fossil fuel society.

Let all that sink in. Every dominant civilisation throughout history has been defined by the particular energy source or sources it mastered. China today is an ancient civilisation made anew with its new technological mastery of natural forces; it may well emerge as the dominant clean energy civilisation, superseding the previously polluting Western civilisation that sparked the first industrial revolution.