Chapter 754: We Must Prepare for the Worst

"There's a saying in Xia: kill a thousand enemies, lose eight hundred of your own."

Lawrence took a sip of coffee.

Klinger fell silent; Lawrence was right—Xia urgently needed to find new markets, and spreading the conflict in controlled nuclear fusion into the battery sector would be counterproductive.

"Now it’s time for the politicians to play their favorite game of negotiation."

Lawrence shrugged.

Xia certainly won’t unleash its strongest cards right away, but it holds many cards—likely it will apply graduated pressure to maximize its gains.

Globally, 69% of artificial graphite and 100% of spherical graphite depend on China, with no short-term alternatives.

Most importantly, lithium is a critical material for tritium breeding in controlled nuclear fusion, and 70% of lithium processing comes from Xia.

Compared to broad issues like lithium dendrites and shuttle effects, Xia is more likely to counter through these supporting technologies.

"This is a dangerous move."

Klinger spoke in a low tone. He was also amazed by the speed of Xia’s progress in controlled nuclear fusion, especially by Xu Qingzhou—a formidable opponent, yet one who preferred fair competition.

"Regrettably, this will be an unprecedented blockade."

Lawrence sighed.

"Both the U.S. and Xia seek global dominance, and our task is to seek balance between these two super-economies, restoring Germany’s former glory."

Kyoto, conference room of the Materials Research Institute.

All key personnel under Ji Yunshi were present; no preliminaries, he said directly: "According to higher-up intelligence, the embargo may begin soon—led by the U.S., with Europe and Japan-South Korea likely to follow quickly."

"What areas are involved?"

Zhao Sheng asked, frowning.

"Full suppression," Ji Yunshi said heavily. "Every link in the upstream and downstream industrial chain of controlled nuclear fusion—technology, equipment, personnel exchange—all have been targeted."

"They’re preparing to fully decouple from us in the fusion field," Zheng Xu said grimly.

"The Americans are panicking."

Ren Nan smiled; his mindset was calm—he had endured even harsher times and was unfazed by U.S. actions. He firmly believed: the more frantic the enemy’s moves, the more certain he was that they were on the right path.

Xu Qingzhou received the Ministry of Science and Technology’s intelligence first and met with Ji Yunshi; he said slowly: "Domestically, we’ve long suffered from insufficient domestic production of fusion equipment—but viewed another way, this could force Xia to rebuild its foundational industrial system."

"In innovation, our investment has always been substantial."

"But achieving equipment domestication isn’t something we can accomplish alone."

Ren Nan sighed: "Yes, though development has been rapid, high-precision equipment is still monopolized by Europe and America."

"I called you all here just to inform you—we’ve already purchased all the equipment we needed; the U.S. actions won’t affect us much."

"But we need to prepare for the worst."

Xu Qingzhou paused, then mused again: "The U.S. actions may not stop there."

"Currently, they’re only uniting allies to contain us—I suspect they’ll even pressure ITER to freeze Xia’s access rights and block the plasma control code repository."

"In the end, even if we win our appeal, our progress will be delayed by a year or more."