Oiling the Wheels of Foreign Policy? Energy Security and China’s International Relations

This paper offers a review of a broad set of issues that are recurrent in international discussions about interconnectedness of energy and security in China’s international relations. The primary purpose of this exercise is to identify points of convergence and divergence in Chinese and international commentaries about the motivations behind and consequences of the increasing presence of China in the international energy markets. As oil is the primary commodity that is of issue, in the paper ‘energy’ more or less equates to oil. The first part of the paper maps out the industry/policy contours leading to the emergence of an energy security discourse within China, and establishes the key distinction between self-sufficiency on one hand and security on the other. The paper then considers the main potential sources of instability that emerge from China’s search for energy security. Between China and the West, while mutual suspicion and lack of transparency over processes and objectives might result in pessimistic predictions, China has no choice but to accept that it is now a part of (and partly dependent on) a complex and interdependent global economy. And potential (energy) adversaries must accept that China too is an essential component of this global order. As such, any aggressive action would harm the perpetrator as much as the target – a form of mutually assured (economic) destruction for the post-Cold War era.