Major Essay for GOVT2921, Received Distinction (82/100)

2 Found helpful • 9 Pages • Essays / Projects • Year: Pre-2021

Fuel and Conflict? Understanding Chinese Energy Security and Potential Conflict Geopolitically Introduction The rise of China and Chinese massive economic scale suggests that insufficient domestic oil supply cannot fulfill its insatiable demand. Therefore, capability of extracting fuel and securing oil transport route is crucial for China to ensure its energy security. Recent Chinese growing naval power and intensifying territory disputes between China and Southeast Asian countries reflect the ambition of Chinese government in military, which further instigate the argument about whether Chinese ever-growing demand for fuel may lead to regional or global conflict or not. In this essay, current status of Chinese energy security and dependency will be analyzed with the support of empirical data and evidence. For the doubt about Chinese energy demand will lead to conflict or even military confrontation, this essay will employ geopolitical and offensive realism perspective to demonstrate that energy and oil is not the direct element that leads to conflict, but other combination including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the challenge to the existing power structure in Asia-Pacific area. Chinese Dependency on Oil import As Chinese government introduced Opening and Reform Policy in 1978 which aimed at transforming Chinese economy into market economy system (Tarzi, 2009), China’s economic growth has created another miracle in East Asia. However, sooner the Chinese discovered that with the rapid pace of industrialization, the oil demand was also increasing that in 1993, China has become net importer of oil product—which represents the end of nearly three decades of energy self-sufficiency (Chun, 2009, p. 91). Statistics have revealed that in 2017 China imported 8.4 million barrels of crude oil per day, which has surpassed United States as the world biggest crude oil importer (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2018). This suggests that Chinese energy security is highly depend on the oil importation, while the economic scale in China is still full speed ahead, the dependency on foreign import will continue and if, the amount of oil couldn’t fulfill its demand, economic downturn and social unstable would be the inevitable consequences. Of course, China’s increasing dependence on the imported oil triggered both individual and collective concern about energy security given the fact of energy dependency, Chinese government spared no effort in securing the oil supply to meet the domestic demand. Currently China has built several pipelines from Central Asian countries and Russia, as a substitute of crude oil import through maritime transport (Ogle, 2010). Meanwhile, overseas investment has been adopted as a tool to stabilize the oil supply, with Beijing’s strong belief that ‘joint development of overseas resources is one way of securing future energy supplies’ (Ogle, 2010). But the effect of Chinese effort in exploring alternative way didn’t decisively change the current status as the maritime import is still the major way that China gets oil from, with up to nearly 50% of imported crude oil comes from Persian Gulf area (Statista, 2015). Therefore, concerns about whether Chinese oil demand will lead to regional conflict is a heating topic, since it is crucial for China to secure the maritime transport line, and the South China Sea issue also involves in the oil and energy realm, with massive oil reserve contained in this region. Geopolitics of energy The geopolitics of energy, as defined by Yergin (1988), is basically related to the effect of the geographical proximity of resources on the state politics. With the increasing oil consumption, currently it is hard for most countries to satisfy their demand with domestic oil production, therefore, this situation has forced major power to rely on long and often fragile supply lines to get more fossil fuel.

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