Qamar Bashir
For more than a century, global economic and geopolitical power has revolved around energy. Coal powered industrialization; oil transformed transportation, warfare and international commerce; natural gas became another artery of modern civilization. Control of these resources—and the routes carrying them—created fortunes, alliances, dependencies and conflicts.
China’s rapidly advancing nuclear-fusion program now raises an extraordinary possibility: technology may eventually loosen the relationship between energy, geography and geopolitical power.
Its celebrated “artificial sun” refers to experimental fusion machines designed to reproduce the fundamental process that powers stars. But China’s recent achievements are remarkable enough without exaggeration. They demonstrate that fusion is moving progressively from theoretical physics toward an immensely difficult engineering challenge—and potentially, one day, toward electricity generation.
The scale of that challenge is illustrated by China’s enormous new superconducting fusion magnet. The toroidal-field magnet weighs approximately 582 tonnes and measures about 21 metres by 12 metres. Its function is extraordinary: creating the magnetic environment necessary for controlling plasma at temperatures no ordinary physical container could withstand. Chinese scientific authorities say its magnetic-energy storage capability substantially exceeds that of the comparable ITER system.
The apparent contradiction at the heart of fusion engineering is astonishing. Plasma must reach temperatures of tens or even hundreds of millions of degrees, while superconducting magnetic systems operate at extremely low cryogenic temperatures. Scientists must therefore maintain one of the hottest environments humanity can create extraordinarily close to some of its coldest engineered equipment, while preventing either environment from destroying the other.
The magnets create what can be imagined as an invisible cage. Fusion plasma consists of electrically charged particles, which respond to powerful magnetic fields. Instead of attempting to build a material wall capable of directly containing such temperatures—something impossible with existing materials—the tokamak uses magnetic confinement to keep most of the plasma separated from the reactor walls.
China’s EAST—Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak—has already demonstrated the importance of long-duration confinement. In January 2025, EAST maintained high-confinement plasma for 1,066 seconds, or 17 minutes and 46 seconds, breaking its previous 403-second record. The achievement did not produce commercial electricity, but it demonstrated progress toward one of fusion’s essential requirements: sustaining controlled, high-performance plasma for increasingly long periods.
China followed this with another significant development in August 2026. EAST researchers experimentally accessed a theorized “density-free regime,” maintaining stable plasma at densities beyond conventional limits. Density matters enormously because useful fusion requires enough fuel particles to interact, yet increasing plasma density has historically created instability problems. Overcoming that constraint could provide another pathway toward the conditions required for fusion ignition. citeturn0search1
China is now attempting to connect these scientific achievements with engineering. Its next-generation Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak, BEST, is scheduled for completion by the end of 2027.
According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, BEST is intended to conduct deuterium-tritium burning-plasma experiments targeting 20–200 megawatts of fusion power and net energy gain. China is therefore moving beyond merely producing extremely hot plasma toward attempting to demonstrate whether fusion can become an energy-producing system.
This progression is no longer isolated from national economic planning. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, covering 2026–2030, identifies nuclear fusion among the future industries Beijing intends to cultivate alongside quantum technology, hydrogen, biomanufacturing, artificial intelligence-related technologies and 6G. Fusion is therefore increasingly being approached not merely as laboratory research but as a potential future industrial sector. citeturn0search10
China did not begin this journey alone. Its early superconducting tokamak experience benefited from Soviet technology, including the T-7 machine transferred and reconstructed as HT-7 during the 1990s. But China used that foundation to develop domestic expertise in superconducting magnets, plasma physics, cryogenics, materials, diagnostics and precision engineering. What began partly through technology acquisition has evolved into an increasingly indigenous scientific and manufacturing ecosystem.
China is also not alone in the global fusion race. The United States has pursued laser-driven inertial confinement at the National Ignition Facility while American laboratories and private companies simultaneously pursue magnetic-confinement systems. Europe, Japan, South Korea, India and Russia remain deeply involved in fusion research, while ITER represents a vast multinational effort. Fusion is consequently becoming a technological competition involving several different scientific pathways. This competition could ultimately prove more consequential than competition for another oilfield.
Modern strategic geography rests heavily upon fossil fuels. The Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, pipelines crossing Eurasia, LNG terminals and maritime transportation routes possess enormous importance because interruption of energy supplies can cripple economies. Major powers therefore devote military, diplomatic and financial resources to protecting access to energy and the routes through which it moves.
Commercial fusion could gradually change this equation. If countries eventually become capable of manufacturing enormous quantities of reliable electricity domestically from fusion, their dependence upon distant oilfields and vulnerable transportation corridors would decline. Hormuz and other chokepoints would remain important to world trade, but their capacity to threaten the entire global energy system could diminish.
The greatest economic shock would fall upon countries heavily dependent upon hydrocarbons. Governments whose budgets, exports and foreign-exchange earnings rely substantially upon oil and gas would confront declining demand and potentially lower prices. Those that convert today’s petroleum wealth into education, technology, manufacturing and diversified investment could survive and prosper. Those that remain overwhelmingly dependent upon extracting hydrocarbons could face profound structural adjustment.
If fusion eventually becomes reliable and economical, inexpensive electricity could power massive desalination plants, produce hydrogen and synthetic fuels, electrify transportation and industrial processes, support cleaner steel production, operate enormous AI data centers and potentially enable large-scale carbon removal. Instead of humanity simply dividing today’s energy market differently, the total amount of useful energy available to civilization could expand dramatically.
For developing countries, that could be transformational. Energy poverty restricts industry, agriculture, healthcare, education, water availability and technological progress. Abundant electricity could remove one of the most persistent constraints upon economic development and provide poorer societies opportunities that historically required access to coal, oil or gas.
In a fusion age, strategic advantage could increasingly belong to countries possessing scientific talent, superconducting technology, advanced materials, artificial intelligence, plasma-control expertise, precision manufacturing and intellectual property.
Economic power could gradually migrate from nations fortunate enough to possess hydrocarbons beneath their soil toward nations capable of manufacturing sophisticated energy systems above it.
The Chinese direction is unmistakable. EAST’s long-duration confinement, the 2026 density breakthrough, the enormous superconducting magnet, BEST’s scheduled 2027 completion and China’s decision to elevate fusion within its national industrial strategy collectively demonstrate a progression from understanding fusion toward engineering fusion. That progression should command the attention of every hydrocarbon-dependent economy.
The oil age will not end tomorrow, nor will fusion automatically replace every existing energy source. But technological revolutions rarely announce precisely when an established economic order has reached its peak. They advance experiment by experiment until the economics suddenly begin changing.
China has not yet sounded the death knell for the oil age. But its laboratories are demonstrating that an alternative energy order is becoming scientifically imaginable and increasingly technologically tangible. The bell has not yet tolled for oil—but China may already be forging it.
The writer is Press Secretary to the President (Rtd),Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France,Former Press Attaché to Malaysia and former MD, SRBC . He is living in Michigan, USA
