China Stockpiled Oil, and Now It Could Dominate the Energy Landscape

One of the most important lessons from the war with Iran is one that few saw coming.

The conflict has made clear that China, which has long been highly vulnerable to oil supply shocks, has managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power. The country made that big shift by stockpiling huge amounts of oil, building extra oil refining capacity and investing in coal and other alternatives. And in the early months of the war, it flexed that power by cutting off supplies of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel to neighboring countries.

That has big implications for the global energy industry, where oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the United States — not importers like China — have traditionally held most of the cards.

Already dominant in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles, China now appears to have an unparalleled position across the energy landscape. As a result, the threat that a foreign power would restrict the country’s access to oil may no longer deter leaders in Beijing from taking aggressive steps like invading or blockading Taiwan, former U.S. officials said.

“If they come to feel that in this domain, they are less vulnerable than they and many others may have assessed previously, that is a profound and important shift in one of the key inputs to how China makes decisions about its global strategy,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former White House and State Department official who worked on China issues in the Biden administration.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/business/energy-environment/china-oil-iran-war.html