Concerns are growing that the decoupling was soon expand to the two sides’ successful fusion power participation as the US and China exchange trade war salvos.  ,
Trump ordered a probe into whether American companies are excessively reliant on China’s electronics, medical products, and important metals in April and imposed a 145 % tariff on Chinese goods. Additionally, he tightened export control measures to stop China from obtaining AMD and Nvidia’s creative control devices for the development of artificial knowledge.
Despite all of this, the US has remained one of the seven contributors to the 2007 Southern French-founded International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ( ITER ), which was one of the group.
The ITER currently offers China’s state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation ( CNNC ) industry standards and contracts, while French companies, like Framatome, offer China fusion technologies.  ,
In a panel discussion at the The Economist’s London on April 14 panel discussion, Tone Langengen, a senior policy advisor for culture and power policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said,” At the moment, China is definitely doubling down on expanding their work.”
” This could turn into another illustration of the thermal or electric vehicle industry, where we essentially only allow one nation run away and end up locating the entire supply chain and all the power that comes with it in a single land.” She said,” I believe this fluid could be even more important with fusion than it was with solar.
” China has been sending people away, stealing a lot of information, and using their capacity to provide a ton of finance to operate very successfully and break down barriers we set for ourselves around rules and planning,” said one author.
It is crucial for other nations to realize that a true political race is taking place right now. Not just the tech itself, though. It has potential important effects on the potential power and geopolitics. This is the ideal time for the rest of us to work more together.
US vs. China
With its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak  ( EAST ) as a testbed for ITER technologies, China joined ITER in 2003. A hot plasma is confined by a donut-shaped container known as a Tokamak, which uses electromagnetic fields.  ,
China has tremendously increased its investment in integration energy since 2022 as a result of the past Biden administration’s restrictions on entry to the chips, AI, and quantum technology sectors.  ,  ,
According to the Fusion Energy Base, an business website, the US invested about US$ 1.35 billion in the fusion business next year, while China contributed about US$ 1.3 billion. In contrast to China’s$ 2.49 billion investment, the US has invested$ 5.63 billion in the field as of 2024. Canada made 321 million dollars, followed by the UK and Canada made 200 million dollars.  ,
The West furnace properly maintained a steady-state, high-confinement blood for 1, 066 moments in January 2025. WEST, formerly known as Tore Supra, achieved a record-breaking  of 1, 337 hours in February.
I want my country to get the [fusion energy ] competition as an American. However, we are all going to build plants worldwide in the end, according to Laban Coblentz, ITER’s head of communications. Even though China has been the target of our attacks, what I’d really like to see people doing is imitate it.
” China is working on 26 nuclear plants,” with 22 more in the network. With a robust security system, they are putting together it on time. How did that happen? I had no idea.
Coblentz recently discovered that China had 140 European companies in its supply chain when it was building its third-generation pressurized ocean nuclear fission reactor Hualong Two.
Some of my friends have told me that if we don’t move faster, China will get the fusion conflict. That’s fine, he said. However, if there is the perception that China steals another person’s intellectual house, we should take lessons from what they are doing. They’re engaging in some really clever issues. And integration will need to effectively rehabilitate some of those things if we want for our children to experience millennial change.
Although” the Hualong Two and the Hualong One [are ] largely indigenous, but they [are ] very similar to European pressurized water reactors. But, steal up instead of worrying about China stealing or anything like that! Imitatement is a very good way to look at how they are doing and what they’re doing well and look at how they are doing it.
Deep skills share
China has even created a native talent share by sending students to the US to study integration technology, in addition to obtaining solutions from ITER and European businesses.  ,
In China, there are many PhD students and scientists returning from the US to China to work on fusion energy projects, according to Jin Zhang, an assistant professor in microwave electronics at Queen Mary University of London, in an interview with Asia Times.
The first high-temperature superconducting ( HTS ) tokamak ever created was built by them. Things are progressing very quickly in China.
Zhang, who is connected to the EAST project in Hefei, claimed that if the US forbids Chinese students to study there, China’s progress will slow and be negatively impacted. He anticipates that the US won’t attempt to halt China’s fusion energy sector because any technological advancements there will benefit the entire world.
Fusion is a shared goal for all people, according to the statement. The sooner that will occur, he added.  ,
The European Union ( Euratom ), Japan, the Soviet Union, and the US all agreed in 1986 to work together to design ITER, a sizable international fusion facility. The members approved the members ‘ final design in 2001 after conceptual design work started in 1988.
With a$ 6 billion ($ 6.84 billion ) initial budget, the ITER reactor construction officially began in 2013. According to ITER, the total cost of the reactor would be about 22 billion euros in 2021.
When the facility can perform a fusion reaction using deuterium-tritium fuel, the US Department of Energy ( DOE ) predicted that the overall cost of ITER would be$ 65 billion by 2039. According to the DOE, US funding for ITER totaled$ 2.9 billion between 2007 and 2023, primarily through research, hardware design, and production for 12 ITER systems.  ,
The remaining six member countries ( China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the US) will each contribute 9.1 % of ITER’s total costs, while the European Union will contribute 45.6 %.
Read: China wants to have the first fusion-fission reactor in the world by 2031.
Read: China’s Jiangxi plans to construct a fusion-fission reactor