As the Speaker of the House celebrates the unveiling of an energy bill today defined more for what isn’t in it — energy, for instance — than what is, it’s worth noting that China has been busy celebrating a very different accomplishment. Just this past week, the Communist country of 1.3 billion budding capitalists surpassed Germany as the proud owner of the third-largest economy in the world.

But with four consecutive years of double-digit growth — soon to be five — China doesn’t plan to be in third much longer. And thanks to a national commitment to investing in new energy infrastructure at home, and securing additional energy resources abroad, it shouldn’t be long before the country finds itself in an economic class by itself. In many ways, it already has.

It’s instructive to contrast the Chinese model of economic development — in large part dependent on access to affordable energy — to the model this Congress will be asked to endorse today. It’s a model premised on the notion that when it comes to providing energy for our country, less is offered as more.

And so armed with this principle, Democrats will endeavor to pass legislation that adds billions in new taxes on those who produce American energy for American consumers. And remarkably, they’ll offer that plan under the guise of “energy independence,” at the very moment they will be acting to ensure that dependence grows by leaps and bounds in the years to come.

Putting aside the inconvenient truth that no country in the world is truly energy independent — even Saudi Arabia imports gasoline — it’s difficult to reconcile how the majority’s vision of a future in which American energy supply meets 100 percent of American energy needs squares with a plan that seeks to restrict that supply.

After all, the realization of “energy independence” does require some real energy. But if this bill becomes law, not only would we be surrendering our ability to produce the energy in the future needed to meet our growing demand, we’d actually be setting in motion a plan to ensure we produce less.

Less energy means less economic output and fewer good-paying jobs for American workers — it’s that simple. But for those who remain unconvinced of the connection between economic advancement and access to energy, last week’s tumble on Wall Street should’ve provided all the proof they need.

Keep in mind that our key indicators and fundamentals were very respectable — the American economy having added 132,000 new jobs the month before, continued to keep unemployment at historic lows, and topped out on growth at an upright 3.4 percent. But there it was: the worst five-day trading cycle in half a decade. The Dow dropped 4.23 percent in a week; the Standard and Poor’s index fell even further.

A few defaulted mortgages aside, the real issue could very well be the economies of our competitors around the world. China posted a growth in GDP of nearly 11 percent last year. India grew by 9.4 percent. Russia by seven. And in a global economy defined more by relativity than proximity, the growing perception that we no longer have the horses to compete in the long-term has led investors to shift their capital abroad at the expense of investing in worthy projects here in the United States.

Who can blame them? The Chinese energy sector will add 40 new nuclear plants to their infrastructure in just the next 15 years — and 562 coal-fired plants in less than half that time. They’ve increased offshore energy production to reduce their own dependence on foreign oil, growing that sector by an average of 15.3 percent a year. And they’ve invested $24 billion in large-scale coal liquefaction technology — at a time when Democrats in the Congress successfully banished from their so-called “energy bill” a modest coal-to-liquid pilot project of our own.

And what China can’t produce at home, they’re more than willing to find abroad. It’s no secret that Chinese geologists are in the process of testing oil wells right now off the coast of Cuba — only 45 miles from the American mainland. And just this past week, Chinese energy producers inked exploration deals with the governments of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and submitted a bid on an offshore tract in Jamaica.

Not a bad week for them. And if the House succeeds in passing this energy bill today, it may just get a whole lot better.

— Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) is House Republican whip.