From a geopolitical point of view it is very intelligent for China to reorient their natural gas and oil imports to friendly nations with over-land transportation. Same as attempting to ramp up domestic natural gas production. This helps remove their oil and gas imports as a weakness that the USA can utilize in a conflict (just like with Japan just before Pearl Harbour). They have also built up a very large strategic oil reserve.
They should also be going full speed with EV's as they replace imported oil with domestic electricity production (coal, natural gas, nuclear and renewables). Their removal of subsidies to EV's and the renewable sector is very short sighted geopolitically and really bad for the climate. Even at 80% coal share in electricity production EV's generate less CO2 due to the efficiency of the electrical engine (and power generating stations).
Removing subsidies actually makes perfect sense for China, although it does suck for climate. Although, it could potentially even out.
They "plant 1000 seeds", scale up, start to corner markets, and then they drop subsidies to encourage further cost efficiency, separating the wheat from the chaffe, and monopolize global markets. That's how they do it, and it's very efficient. They did it with solar, EVs, and will do it with batteries (probably). And they've cornered silicon, solar, and will outpace everyone in battery production by multiple times, while having the biggest EV market that will dominate exports to SE Asia, and anyone who imports them, as well as having a huge presence in global electric buses.
It's actually very effective, in a cutthroat kinda way. They are very good at it. I say it may even out, because they drop costs so significantly through scale, and then optimization + innovation and iteration in manufacturing. They're basically the reason why solar is as cheap as it is, and why batteries will drop in costs as well, at economies of scale. So, it's a catch 22.
What we can expect is that they'll do a "tick, tock" type installation with renewables. They're also going to scale up offshore wind with all their coastal population. By tick tock, I mean they installed a large amount, now they're letting domestic suppliers scale up massively and corner markets, also dropping costs, and when this new expansion has optimized processes and cost efficiency with a whole bunch more supply, they'll do another series of large installs, so it doesn't hamper their global supply too much and they maximize value domestically.
It also has the effect of letting them catch up on grid utilization. As can be expected, they had a good amount of grid problems adding all those renewables, lot of curtailment, bottleneck issues, transmission/distribution. A period of slower growth means they can alleviate some of these issues, while letting them plan better for the future. In the near term, they'll likely be adding grid storage while building their grid, to try and get the most effective options, to aid in transmission/distribution and ancillary services for example.
I guess the positive with China is knowing that they actually want energy independence. Besides the global markets, their rate of oil consumption was projected to be astronomical, which has pushed them towards EVs more. Removing subsidies was actually to reduce costs as fast as possible. No one should be too surprised if they renew some EV subsidies in the future, when their markets stabilize a bit and EVs are even more cost efficient and producing more at scale.
It's no surprise about natural gas, it allows them to flex their muscles in Central Asia as well as strategic agreements in the Middle East, part of the Belt n Road. It also allows them to get plentiful of cheap supply, and to them it's less damaging than coal, so it's a win/win for them as it also helps influence + good faith with all those countries as well as pipelines and $$.
I don't really agree with their methods, but removing subsidies has been an effective way to reduce costs. They'll probably renew some of them at a later date. They know their current rates of consumption are basically unsustainable, so that's a silver lining I guess. There is a method to their madness though, so we'll see. If the world goes into a recession, it will probably hurt renewables + EVs, but I imagine we'll see efforts pick up again in the near future. Hopefully, anyway.
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