How China takes over an industry, explained through caviar
Five steps: market opportunity, technological build-up, scale and chain integration, cost reduction with stable quality, and finally influence over the structure of the market itself.
By Jun Jiang
- 1Market opportunity
- 2Technological build-up
- 3Scale and chain integration
- 4Lower cost, stable quality
- 5Influence on market structure
It happened to solar: from about €5 per watt in 2000 to under €0.15 in 2024. To batteries: from $1,200 per kWh in 2010 to around $100 in 2024. To electric cars. And, improbably, to caviar, where a Caspian monopoly became a Chinese market share of over fifty percent.
The strength is not the low price. It is the ability to convert technology into industrial capacity: at scale, across the whole chain, consistently in quality. Whoever owns the full chain helps set the rules of the market, not only the price.
