(Yicai) Oct. 24 -- China now supplies more than 60 percent of the world’s power batteries and about 70 percent of its battery materials, according to official data, giving a competitive edge to the country’s booming new energy vehicle sector.

China’s power battery production surged more than 10-fold to over 1,000 gigawatt-hours last year from 83.4 GWh in 2020, Yao Zhenzhi, deputy director of the Equipment Industry Development Center in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at a press conference today. 

The industry kept up its growth momentum in the nine months ended Sept. 31, with cumulative installed capacity surging 43 percent from a year earlier to 493.9 GWh, Yao said. Power battery exports climbed 33 percent to about 130 GWh.

Chinese companies are becoming more deeply integrated in the global supply chain through investments in factories and research and development centers in overseas markets, including Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

The domestic industry is likely to get a further boost from the 2025 World Power Battery Conference, which will be held from Nov. 12 to 13 in Yibin, Sichuan province. Since its inception in 2022, more than 200 major projects worth nearly CNY300 billion (USD42.1 billion) have been inked at the conference.
 

Yibin’s power battery production accounted for more than 16 percent of China’s total and 10 percent of the entire world’s in 2024, Mayor Du Haiyang said at the same press conference today. 

The city turned out more than CNY100 billion of power batteries in each of 2023 and 2024, Du said, adding that production grew 46 percent in the first three quarters of this year compared with the same period of 2024, despite ongoing deep adjustments in the industry.

Editor: Tom Litting