By Michael T Klare
Recently, the country's leaders seem to have become far more sensitive to the risks of excessive reliance on coal. Massive emphasis is now being placed on the development of renewable energy systems, especially wind and solar power. Already, China has become the world's leading producer of wind turbines and solar panels, and has already begun exporting its technology to the United States. (Some economists and labor unions, in fact, claim that China is unfairly subsidizing its renewable-energy exports in violation of World Trade Organization rules.)
China's growing emphasis on renewable energy would be good news if it resulted in substantial reductions in coal use. At the same time, the country's drive to excel at these techniques could
push it into the forefront of a technological revolution, just as early American dominance of petroleum technology propelled it to the front ranks of world powers in the twentieth century. If the United States fails to keep pace, it could find the pace of its decline as a world power quickening.
Whose Saudis are they?
China's thirst for added energy could also lead quickly enough to friction and conflict with the United States, especially in the global competition for increasingly scarce supplies of imported petroleum. As its energy use ramps ever upward, China is using more oil, which can only lead to greater political economic, political, and someday possibly even military involvement in the oil-producing regions - areas long viewed in Washington as constituting America's private offshore energy preserves.
As recently as 1995, China consumed only about 3.4 million barrels of oil per day - one-fifth the amount used by the United States, the world's top consumer, and two-thirds of the amount burned by Japan, then number two. Since China pumped 2.9 million barrels per day from its domestic fields that year, its import burden was a mere 500,000 barrels per day at a time when the US imported 9.4 million barrels and Japan 5.3 million barrels.
By 2009, China was in the number-two spot at 8.6 million barrels per day, which still fell far below America's 18.7 million barrels. At 3.8 million barrels per day, however, domestic production wasn't keeping pace - the very problem the US had faced in the Cold War era. China was already importing 4.8 million barrels per day, far more than Japan (which had actually reduced its reliance on oil) and nearly half as much as the United States. In the decades to come, these numbers are guaranteed only to get worse.
According to the DoE, China will overtake the US as the world's leading oil importer, at an estimated 10.6 million barrels per day, sometime around 2030. (Some experts believe this shift could occur far sooner.) Whatever the year, China's leaders are already enmeshed in the same power "predicament" long faced by their American counterparts, dependent as they are on a vital substance that can be acquired only from a handful of unreliable producers in areas of chronic crisis and conflict.
At present, China obtains most of its imported oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Angola, Oman, Sudan, Kuwait, Russia, Kazakhstan, Libya, and Venezuela. Eager to ensure the reliability of the oil flow from these countries, Beijing has established close ties with their leaders, in some cases providing them with significant economic and military assistance. This is exactly the path once taken by Washington - and with some of the same countries.
China's state-controlled energy firms have also forged "strategic partnerships" with counterpart enterprises in these countries and in some cases acquired the right to develop major oil deposits as well. Especially striking has been the way Beijing has sought to undercut US influence in Saudi Arabia and with other crucial Persian Gulf oil producers.
In 2009, China for the first time imported more Saudi oil than the US, a geopolitical shift of great significance given the history of US-Saudi relations. Although not competing with Washington when it comes to military aid, Beijing has been dispatching its top leaders to woo Riyadh, promising to support Saudi aspirations without employing the human rights or pro-democracy rhetoric usually associated with American foreign policy.
Much of this should sound exceedingly familiar. After all, the United States once wooed the Saudis in a similar way when Washington first began viewing the kingdom as its overseas filling station and turned it into an unofficial military protectorate. In 1945, while World War II still raged, president Roosevelt made a special trip to meet with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and establish a protection-for-oil arrangement that persists to this day. Not surprisingly, American leaders don't see (or care to recognize) the analogy; instead, top officials look askance at the way China is poaching on US turf in Saudi Arabia and other petro-states, portraying such moves as antagonistic.
As China's reliance on these overseas suppliers grows, it is likely to bolster its ties with their leaders, producing further strains in the international political environment. Already, Beijing's reluctance to jeopardize its vital energy links with Iran has frustrated US efforts to impose tough new economic sanctions on that country as a way of forcing it to abandon its uranium-enrichment activities.
Likewise, China's recent loan of $20 billion to the Venezuelan oil industry has boosted the status of President Hugo Chavez at a time when his domestic popularity, and so his ability to counter US policies, is slipping. The Chinese have also retained friendly ties with President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of Sudan, despite US efforts to paint him as an international pariah because of his alleged role in overseeing the massacres in Darfur.
Arms-for-oil diplomacy on a dangerous planet
Already, China's efforts to bolster its ties with its foreign-oil providers have produced geopolitical friction with the United States. There is a risk of far more serious Sino-American conflict as we enter the "tough oil" era and the world supply of easily accessible petroleum rapidly shrinks.
According to the DoE, the global supply of oil and other petroleum liquids in 2035 will be 110.6 million barrels per day - precisely enough to meet anticipated world demand at that time. Many oil geologists believe, however, that global oil output will reach a peak level of output well below 100 million barrels per day by 2015 and begin declining after that. In addition, the oil that remains will increasingly be found in difficult places to reach or in highly unstable regions. If these predictions prove accurate, the United States and China - the world's two leading oil importers - could become trapped in a zero-sum great-power contest for access to diminishing supplies of exportable petroleum.
What will happen under these circumstances is, of course, impossible to predict, especially since the potential for conflict abounds. If both countries continue on their current path - arming favored suppliers in a desperate bid to secure long-term advantage - the heavily armed petro-states may also become ever more fearful of, or covetous of, their (equally well-equipped) neighbors.
With both the US and China deploying growing numbers of military advisers and instructors to such countries, the stage could be set for mutual involvement in local wars and border conflicts. Neither Beijing nor Washington may seek such involvement, but the logic of arms-for-oil diplomacy makes this an unavoidable risk.
It is not hard, then, to picture a future moment when the United States and China are locked in a global struggle over the world's remaining supplies of oil. Indeed, many in official Washington believe that such a collision is nearly inevitable. "China's near-term focus on preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait ... is an important driver of its [military] modernization," the Department of Defense noted in the 2008 edition of its annual report, "The Military Power of the People's Republic of China". "However, analysis of China's military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also developing capabilities for use in other contingencies, such as a conflict over resources ... "
Conflict over planetary oil reserves is not, however, the only path that China's new energy status could open. It is possible to imagine a future in which China and the United States cooperate in pursuing oil alternatives that would obviate the need to funnel massive sums into naval and military arms races. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, seemed to glimpse such a possibility when they agreed last November, during an economic summit in Beijing, to collaborate in the development of alternative fuels and transportation systems.
At this point, only one thing is clear: the greater China's reliance on imported petroleum, the greater the risk of friction and conflict with the United States, which relies on the same increasingly problematic suppliers of energy. The greater its reliance on coal, the less comfortable our planet will become. The greater its emphasis on alternative fuels, the more likely it may make the 21st century China's domain. At this point, how China will apportion its energy needs among the various candidate fuels remains unknown. Whatever its choices, however, China's energy decisions will shake the world.
Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, ofRising Powers, Shrinking Planet. His previous book, Blood and Oil,was made into a documentary film and is available atwww.bloodandoilmovie.com. To catch Klare discussing China's energy superpowerdom on Timothy MacBain's latest TomCast audio interview, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.
(Copyright 2010 Michael T Klare.)
(Used by permission Tomdispatch
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