After Mao Zedong's death in 1976 and the turn to "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", China opened up economically and, to a lesser extent, politically. That led to China being the second largest car purchaser in 2011 and the second largest energy consumer the year before. In the last two decades, the country doubled its need for energy. But fossile energy carriers like crude oil are rare and China has to import the black gold from abroad.
In PRIF Report No. 116 "A Thirsty Dragon: Rising Chinese Crude Oil Demand and Prospects for Multilateral Energy Security Cooperation" Amar Causevic argues Chinas engagement in the global energy sector does not necessarily lead to conflict, but offers chances for cooperation. He draws two scenarios: If everything goes wrong, the conflict for oil will exacerbate and lead to a military conflict. China already strengthened its marine in the Indian Ocean, the US and India could do the same. The second scenario shows how cooperation could work: China, the West and India are consumers and thus could foster a common strategy as oil importers. In addition, their economies are highly interdependent and starting off a military conflict would mean damage to all of them. The author rather proposes strong cooperation and China's integration into international organizations such as OECDS's International Energy Agency.
Amar Causevic is a second-year Master of Arts candidate at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. He studies in the academic field of Energy, Resources and Environment with additional emphasize in International Economics. He was a visiting fellow at PRIF in the research department "Policies for Security Governance of States"from June until October 2012.
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