No Oil for the Lamps of China?

The ubiquitous Made in China stickers and labels on consumer products remind us daily of China’s incredible economic rise. The world is accustomed to this powerful phenomenon and seems to expect that China’s economy will grow at 10 percent annually for at least another decade. Such remarkable economic progress has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty and also substantially benefited the global economy. It is also arguably the cornerstone of Chinese Communist Party legitimacy. Western and Asian hunger for inexpensive Chinese goods fuels much of this growth, but China’s economic engine cannot run without imports of raw materials, such as bauxite, iron ore, timber, and, perhaps most significantly, crude oil. Once a significant exporter, China became a net importer of crude in 1993 and now struggles to deal with this dependency. Chinese security analysts fear that oil import dependency is a potential pressure point that could be exploited by future adversaries of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Approximately 80 percent of China’s 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in crude oil imports passes through the Straits of Malacca. Such funneling could facilitate interdiction of China’s oil lifeline in times of crisis. The United States, India, and Japan are all seen as potential blockaders, but Chinese observers appear to believe that only the United States has both the capability and the will to blockade oil shipments to China. One recent Chinese article postulates that the most Mr. Collins is a research fellow in the China Maritime Studies Institute who focuses on energy and shipbuilding. He is a 2005 honors graduate of Princeton University (AB, politics) and is proficient in Mandarin and Russian. Professor Murray spent twenty years in the U.S. submarine service and qualified to command nuclear-powered submarines. A founder of the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, his research focuses on China’s naval and maritime development. The authors welcome reader feedback and can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].