Personally I think they are in best position out of the rest of the planet, due to their investment in innovation, which is rarely acknowledged in the West. If they were well up on solar hydrogen implementation, we would probably never acknowledge it. I find it very interesting the amount of hydrogen components we see in alibaba, stuff that we only know experimentally in the West, yet seems in full production in China. Somebody must be using it, and it doesn't seem to be us, as yet.
Also on the issue of food. We know about "Solein" in the West. I bet they already have something like that already stitched up. Again we wouldn't know if it hit us over the head.
It strikes me that if they were well on the road to going completely solar, we wouldn't know any metric to measure its economic effects, GDP would be not so relevant, after it is known that Joules of energy received for free are added to economy, and all convert to work done for free.
The effect of that externally would be for us to be wondering why we don't see standards of living or life expectancy dropping in China in direct response to their incredible lockdowns. If we locked down like they way they do, we would be done in only a few months, yet it seems to have virtually no impact on them. How is that possible, if it is not by realising value from a hidden energy source?
The energy source is not hidden at all, if we see how Kardashev Money works, I think :)