China's ambition to power the world's electric cars took a huge leap forward this week

China's grand designs to dominate the future of clean energy paid off spectacularly this week. In a public offering on June 11 in Shenzhen, battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. (CATL) raised nearly $1 billion to fund ambitious expansion plans, and its stock has been shooting up every day since. Thanks largely to the company's new plants, China will be making 70 percent of the world's electric-vehicle batteries by 2021, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The rapid rise of CATL is arguably the clearest, though certainly not the only, payoff from China's calculated efforts to bolster its domestic battery and electric-vehicle industries--two of the most promising sectors in clean energy. These efforts have largely followed the same playbook China used to get ahead in solar panels, including highly automated manufacturing; aggressive efforts to lock in global supply chains; foreign acquisitions and licensing; and hefty doses of government support and protectionism.