Business
How China’s Xi Jinping Turned Oil From a Weakness Into a Geopolitical Weapon
Before the U.S. attacked Iran, Beijing spent years and tens of billions of dollars amassing the world’s biggest stockpile of oil. Now, with the conflict likely to last for some time, those reserves have given China huge power over the global oil market—and a critical new defense against the West.
By some estimates, China’s reserves last year were nearly 600 million barrels bigger than those in the U.S. That stockpile allowed it to dramatically slash its oil imports when the war broke out, keeping a lid on global oil prices and safeguarding its own economy.
It has been a major vindication for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has sought to buttress China against what he sees as a hostile U.S.-led West. For decades, Chinese leaders have worried about the country’s heavy reliance on imported crude, most of which transits through straits that the U.S. or other militaries could seek to block in a conflict.
Now, the Iran crisis has demonstrated that China’s muscular energy policy has afforded Beijing a major tool it could use, for instance, in a war over Taiwan.
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