Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 52, no. 3, June–July 2010, pp. 137–158
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Over the past ten years, China’s soaring demand for energy has complicated its foreign relations on many fronts. China’s growing oil imports have sparked criticism that this demand puts upward pressure on world oil prices. Investments by China’s national oil companies have vexed governments trying to isolate regimes such as Iran, Sudan and Myanmar. China’s growing energy-related interests abroad have raised concerns that Beijing will build a powerful navy that could challenge the United States for control of the seas. And China, continuing to rely heavily on coal, has become the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases. As the December 2009 Copenhagen conference revealed, this last development may pose the most difficult challenge of all.
While Chinese leaders seem increasingly self-assured on the world stage, Beijing has watched the growth of China’s energy needs with considerable concern. Indeed, the past decade has seen a surge of interest in the problem of energy security in China, with a growing number of government officials, military officers, think-tank experts and academics publicly pontificating on the subject. Traditionally, Chinese commentators have been preoccupied with the country’s mounting oil imports and the external dependence these imports imply. This focus reflects a wariness of international energy markets and institutions, which are seen as heavily influenced by the United States. But alternative perspectives have become more noticeable in China’s domestic energy-security debate in the past five years. While external dependence remains a concern, some Chinese analysts now take a more sanguine view of the challenge it presents, and have openly criticised many of Beijing’s more mercantilist policies, urging a more positive approach to international markets and institutions. At the same time, as the weaknesses of China’s domestic energy system have become more apparent, an increasing number of analysts have argued that their country’s biggest energy-security challenge lies not in growing imports, but in internal disarray. In this view, China should worry less about external dependence and more about reforming its domestic energy sector, making it more reliable, more efficient and less polluting.
The evolution of China’s thinking about energy security presents an opportunity for the outside world, and in particular the United States and its allies, as they respond to China’s rise. To appreciate the nature of this oportunity, a more thorough understanding of China’s deliberations about external dependence and domestic energy challenges is needed.
Rethinking external dependence
In the early years of the twenty-first century, most commentators on energy security in China had a traditional view of what ‘energy security’ means. Commentary tended to be state-centric, focused on energy supply more than demand, infused with the belief that insecurity arises from external dependence, and fixated on oil in particular. This preoccupation with oil was no accident. While coal meets more than two-thirds of China’s total energy consumption, the country has abundant reserves with which to meet this demand. In contrast, China became a net oil importer in 1993, and within a decade it was importing more than a third of its supply. At the same time ...
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Andrew B. Kennedy is a Lecturer in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University.
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