China Picks Up Pace In Global Race To Unlock Limitless Energy

As the world continues its search for power sources to feed an ever-expanding technological boom, China is racing to develop its own “artificial sun.”

China’s Institute of Plasma Physics completed and tested a 582-ton doughnut-shaped superconducting magnet in Hefei, on June 27, clearing a key hurdle in the country’s push to have fusion power by 2030, Forbes reported Tuesday. Manufactured entirely in China, the magnet is the largest ever built for a fusion reactor, highlighting the country’s diminishing reliance on the West for key technological developments.

“So, what could possibly go wrong with this plan by China to create an artificial sun?” David Blackmon, an energy public policy analyst, told Daily Caller News Foundation. “It makes the various plans pushed by Bill Gates and others to block the sun by spewing millions of tons of chemicals into the atmosphere look positively sane by comparison.”

The magnet is intended to generate the powerful magnetic fields needed to confine superheated plasma inside future fusion reactors, a key hurdle scientists must overcome before fusion can become a commercially viable source of electricity.

“If holding an enormous mass of burning plasma heated to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the sun in mid-air is the best way to achieve nuclear fusion, then perhaps the world would be wiser to stick with nuclear fission as the preferred technology,” Blackmon said.

As electricity demand surges, governments and energy companies are searching for reliable, around-the-clock sources of power that can meet the needs of an increasingly digital economy. The rise of AI, energy-hungry data centers and advanced manufacturing has accelerated that race, prompting companies to pursue new technologies.

In Chile, for example, Contour Energy recently unveiled a solar project designed to deliver electricity after sunset, highlighting the broader push to build out power sources capable of feeding an increasingly hungry grid. The project is being built near mining operations and emerging data center developments, where electricity demand is expected to remain high.

Historically, large superconducting fusion magnets have taken up to a decade to progress from design to final testing, making China’s roughly six-year timeline unusually fast.

Despite entering the fusion race late, China is now a decade or more ahead of the field on government timelines, Forbes reported.

“The only positive news out of this development is that no country other than China possesses the means to mount a similar project via materials and supply chains that are 100% domestic,” Blackmon told the DCNF.

The achievement comes as China continues investing heavily in fusion research, including its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). Meanwhile, competing projects in the West have faced delays, with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in France not expected to come online until 2034.

Although fusion power has long been viewed as a potential source of nearly limitless carbon-free energy, no country has yet demonstrated a commercially operating fusion power plant. China’s latest engineering milestone nevertheless positions the country as one of the leading competitors in the global effort to bring the technology to market.

“From core raw materials such as superconducting tapes, high-strength cryogenic stainless steel and special insulation materials, to the complete set of processes including structural design, precision winding, ultra-low-resistance joint fabrication and quench protection, we have completely broken foreign technological monopolies and achieved 100 percent localization, eliminating the risk of core components being subject to chokepoints,” Song Yuntao, director-general of the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Global Times, a Chinese state-backed outlet.

While China races ahead, the U.S. has stepped up its own fusion push. The Department of Energy announced $134 million in February 2026 for two fusion programs aimed at strengthening ties between private fusion companies, national labs and universities.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, DOE is unleashing the next frontier of American energy,”  U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a press release. “Fusion power holds the promise of limitless, reliable, American-made energy—and programs like INFUSE and FIRE ensure our innovators have the tools, talent, and partnerships to make it a reality.”

Big Tech companies like Microsoft signed the industry’s first fusion power purchase agreement, committing to buy electricity from Helion Energy’s planned Washington state plant by 2028. Google has invested directly in Commonwealth Fusion Systems and TAE Technologies, and signed a 200-megawatt power deal with Commonwealth Fusion for its planned commercial plant in Virginia. That plant is slated to come online in the 2030s.

Nvidia joined Commonwealth Fusion’s most recent funding round, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is Helion’s largest individual backer.

“If you care about AI, if you care about energy leadership … you have to make investments into fusion,” The Fusion Industry Association CEO Andrew Holland told CNBC. “This is something that if the United States doesn’t lead on, then China will.”