The bits of China where most of its people live are pretty mediocre for solar power. Like, Southern France at best, not Australia, not even California.

China is huge, and it does have huge solar farms, but the trouble is now you need a huge power transport infrastructure. Australia can move enough power from a desert where nobody lives to a small city 100 kilometres away on a few ordinary hundred kV pylons and be happy. China has huge cities, 2-3 thousand kilometres from those solar farms so it is building long chains of 1MV pylons which is the same idea but at this incredible scale.

> Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course)

This is a remarkable stat that's the opposite of what I expected, but I suppose China is (a) starting from a lower base and (b) much, much larger in absolute population. Australia's population would fit in Chongqing.

China’s problem is geography and density: they have plenty of ideal land for solar in the west, but people largely live in the east in tall apartment blocks in cities that are often cloudy. They build lines to send the power east, but can only build so much capacity per year while the problem is pretty big.

I reckon more Australians live in SFHs than apartment blocks (so have roofs where personal solar makes sense), and the major cities get more son than eastern Chinese cities do.

Apparently, Australia has ~3x times rollout of solar than china, what is mostly caused by a much higher per capita consumption in Australia, both countries having basically the same share of electricity generated from renewables.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-electricity-per-cap...

> ”Remember Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course).”

China is adding around 10X Australia’s total installed solar power generation every single year. Half of the entire world’s deployed solar is in China.

And while Australia’s solar growth is impressive, it’s worth remembering that it’s only possible because of China. It was Chinese government policy that pushed to develop the huge solar industry that exists today and supplies vast quantities of cheap solar panels to the world.

Why is China's government corrupt? specifically when it comes to solar? Are they not accused of the opposite, overdoing solar? Help me understand your critique.

>Bluntly China’s government is corrupt and inefficient (usa is even further behind china since their current government is also corrupt and inefficient).

So countries are only behind Australia because of corruption? And the US is only behind because of Trump, specifically?

Man, must be nice to have such a basic view of the world; everything so sinpmy explained.