I don't think the problem is slave labour. I think it's just that the Chinese companies don't seem to care about undercutting themselves, and will instead sell

I don't think the problem is slave labour. I think it's just that the Chinese companies don't seem to care about undercutting themselves, and will instead sell as much as they can to whoever will buy. I can go on Alibaba and buy batteries directly from Eve Energy Co for reasonable prices-- batteries that I could stick in my homebuilt electric car, or do exactly whatever I wanted with. I can buy synthetic crystals, quartz, yttria stabilized zirconia monocrystals, sapphire boules, etc. In the west all these things are locked up. You can't buy them if you're an ordinary person, so no one buys them to experiment on. A western car manufacturer wouldn't sell batteries to an individual, nor would his supplier. But in China they don't care, if you pay, you get it. Of course, upon all this, they're also strategic. The government actually analyses things and figures out critical technologies for the future and makes sure that a decent number of people are working seriously on them, that they do this as a job, and with the intent of actually realising large-scale production with real impact.