China’s Industrial Grip on the World: Industrial Scale, Resource Control, and the Architecture of Global Power

Ignacio Sued, Alberto Alexandre, Mario Manconi, Oscar Brunel, Maria Giovanna Norgia

This paper examines how China’s industrial dominance translates into geopolitical influence, combining industrial scale, development diplomacy, high-technology innovation and strategic resource control. Through analysing its capacity in each of these sectors, it demonstrates how China uses this industrial strength as leverage, creating dependencies, establishing long-term financing ties or at times using it as a tool for economic coercion and deterrence. In doing so the study illustrates how China makes use of its rising position as a world superpower, and how the architecture of global power is increasingly built from supply chains and processing hubs rather than military and territorial control alone