China's rising energy demand will be increasing concern as it turns China's attention outwards.
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news.xinhuanet.com
BEIJING, Jan. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- China's demand for automobiles in 2020 is expected to reach 20.74 million units, including 20.43 million sedans, and the total number of cars in China by then willtop 156 million, reported Tuesday's China Automobile News.
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washingtonpost.com
China's oil and gas reserves satisfy a bare fraction of its demands. Production at its largest proven oil field near the northeastern city of Daqing is declining. Experts are skeptical about estimates for China's greatest potential oil and gas area, the Tarim Basin in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, a semi-autonomous region beset by ethnic strife.
Only a decade ago, China was a net exporter of oil. Now, it is the third-largest importer, behind only the United States and Japan. Imports leaped nearly a third during the first 10 months of 2003. By the government's reckoning, China will need as much as 600 million tons of oil annually by 2020, more than three times its expected output.
More than half of China's oil imports now come from the Middle East, stoking fears in Beijing that the country's economic stability is overly dependent on access to the world's most volatile region. To hedge its bets, China has been seeking to tap sources in other parts of the world. In 2002, China National Offshore Oil Co. became the largest offshore producer in Indonesia when it bought a stake from the Spanish firm Repsol. The company also signed a $12 billion, 25-year contract to purchase liquefied natural gas from Australia's Northwest Shelf project.
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fpeng.peopledaily.com.cn
"The breakneck pace of Chinese economic expansion is rapidly changing the oil demand map," said the agency, forecasting China would overtake Japan as Asia's biggest oil consumer in the second half of next year.
"At this juncture, China is the engine of global oil demand growth with significant room for further expansion in the industrial and transportation sectors."
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iht.com
''If and when Taiwan becomes reunited with the mainland, internal demands will grow for the settlement of China's remaining irredentist claims,'' he said. ''A resurgent China is reclaiming territories it says the littoral states have usurped during its recent period of weakness. We in Southeast Asia cannot underestimate the seriousness with which China is pursuing its claim to the Spratlys in the South China Sea.''
Mr. Almonte said that ASEAN countries eventually would realize that they could not allow a power outside their grouping to control the vital shipping lanes and resources of the South China Sea because it is Southeast Asia's strategic heartland. ''The great power that controls it will ultimately control Southeast Asia and play a decisive role in the future of the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean, together with their sea-lanes to and from the oil fields of the Middle East,'' he added.
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rand.org
Rand paper on Chinese military threat to SE Asia.
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wsws.org
Driven by a burgeoning demand for energy, the Chinese government has made securing access to the largely untapped reserves of oil and natural gas in Central Asia a cornerstone of its economic policy for the next two decades. Beijing's plans are ambitious, costly and have major geopolitical implications as China stakes a claim in a key strategic area of the globe. |
