The Burning Plasma Experiment Superconducting Tokamak, or BEST, is an intermediary reactor between China’s first-generation reactor and the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR)—a fusion plant demonstrator. BEST is planned to go online in 2027, and aims for net energy gain similar to the SPARC reactor currently under construction by Commonwealth Fusion Systems in the U.S. The promise of fusion energy is hard to overstate. This reactor builds on the work of China’s first-generation tokamak, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which is also located at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science. The U.S., on the other hand, is taking another approach by largely letting private industry invest in fusion, which is why the South China Morning Post compares China’s BEST reactor with the reactor built by Commonwealth Fusion Systems—a spinoff from MIT.