As the last steel jacket, weighing a thousand tons, slid off the barge deck, Chinese manufacturing etched a new mark on the European offshore wind power landscape. This week, with 60,000 tons of steel delivered to Europe at the Zhuhai port, the Ingfield Offshore Wind Project—a mega-project located in the North Sea off Scotland and hailed as the "crown jewel" of Europe's energy transition—officially received its core framework from China.

These jackets, dubbed "underwater skyscrapers" by the industry, not only mark the delivery of the largest single-unit capacity offshore wind power foundation structure to Europe by China to date, but also signify that, under the flexible extension of the Belt and Road Initiative, China's heavy equipment manufacturing capabilities have quietly embedded themselves in the world's most demanding energy supply chain.

Each jacket is like an Eastern sword piercing the North Sea seabed. Facing the harsh swells and geological conditions of European waters, Chinese factories completed the welding and corrosion protection with near-obsessive precision. These "steel foundations" will support the massive single-unit wind turbines, enabling them to extract green electricity from the raging seas, enough to power hundreds of thousands of British homes.

Analysts point out that this is not a simple equipment export. Against the backdrop of Western countries building their own domestic supply chains, Chinese companies, leveraging their cost and time advantages, have bypassed trade barriers and directly entered the main artery of Europe's offshore wind power market.Editor/Cao Tianyi