Another bubble may be forming, and China has every reason to encourage it.
The objective is not necessarily to make the underlying technology work. It is to make the world believe that China is advancing while everyone else is falling behind.
That distinction matters.
People are naturally susceptible to panic. When a sufficiently compelling narrative takes hold, most people do not automatically stop and ask whether the proposition is realistic. They do not ask what the economics look like. They do not ask what the physics permits. They do not ask whether the technology can actually deliver what is being promised at the required scale and cost.
They ask what everyone else appears to believe.
Most people live inside their own informational bubbles. More importantly, most people will go to considerable lengths to defend those bubbles once they have invested part of their identity in them.
Because the alternative is uncomfortable.
It means looking at the world as it actually is rather than as they would prefer it to be.
China understands this.
It understands that voters are fickle. It understands that fear is politically useful. And it understands that politicians are particularly susceptible to narratives that appear to have momentum.
If voters become convinced that China is leading a technological revolution, politicians will want to be seen standing next to it.
If China supposedly leads in hydrogen, electric vehicles, batteries, solar, or whatever the next fashionable technology happens to be, then aligning with China begins to look politically intelligent. Nobody wants to be portrayed as the politician who missed the future.
So they jump on the bandwagon.
Not necessarily because they understand hydrogen.
Not necessarily because they have studied the economics.
And certainly not because they have carefully worked through the engineering.
They want to be elected.
That is the job they understand.
Their position on the technological ladder matters more to them than the technology itself. Being seen as progressive, modern and aligned with the supposed future is often enough.
China knows this.
And that creates an extraordinarily powerful feedback loop.
China promotes the narrative that it is ahead.
Politicians repeat it because they want to appear relevant.
Media outlets repeat it because everyone else is repeating it.
Investors follow the apparent momentum.
Voters see the apparent consensus.
And suddenly the narrative itself becomes evidence for the narrative.
But eventually the problem arrives.
Reality does not negotiate.
Physics does not care about political fashion. Economics does not care about press releases. Engineering does not care about diplomatic enthusiasm.
If the underlying proposition does not work at the required scale, no amount of narrative management can make it work.
This creates a growing incentive to keep the bubble inflated.
The more people have invested in the story, the greater the political and financial cost of admitting that the story may have been wrong. The more China is portrayed as the leader, the more difficult it becomes for governments to admit that following that leadership may have been a mistake.
So the effort required to keep the ceiling from collapsing becomes progressively greater.
More announcements.
More investment.
More targets.
More subsidies.
More partnerships.
More headlines.
More claims about inevitable technological breakthroughs just over the horizon.
But a bubble can only be maintained for as long as reality remains sufficiently distant from the narrative.
Eventually, the gap becomes too large.
Then the ceiling comes down.
And when it does, it will not matter how many politicians once stood underneath it insisting that everything was perfectly sound.
They were never building the future.
They were protecting their place on the ladder.