alt Hacker NewsChina has almost certainly been dramatically drawing down their oil reserves. They don’t publish trustworthy numbers on it like western countries do, but their import rates dropped too fast for any other explanation.
That’s not to say they haven’t done a phenomenal job with demand destruction it’s just their own domestic usage is still very high and they have to import unlike other heavy users.
Replies
China is the 5th largest oil producer in the world and the 2nd largest consumer. It's not just pulling from reserves that has dropped their consumption: for instance they have been switching very rapidly to electric trucks. At the same time they've been increasing internal production. I'm sure their goal is to balance production and consumption, to electrify enough of their demand that internal production can cover the remaining demand that's more difficult to electrify: jets, tanks, plastic, etc.
China reducing their oil imports was a huge boon to the entire world. China basically said "look everyone, we're strong, we'll reduce oil imports to help the rest of the world, and that will benefit all of us together, and also we're manufacturing and selling EVs and solar panels".
China is showing the world they have reached the lofty ideal of being a functional society, and I hate that an authoritarian Communist government was how they did it. I don't want to live under such a government, but I can't deny it's looking like a stronger form of government right now.
For the rest of us, if we want democracy to be better than authoritarian Communism, then we actually have to do the "be better" part.
> That’s not to say they haven’t done a phenomenal job with demand destruction it’s just their own domestic usage is still very high and they have to import unlike other heavy users.
They will, just not as much as everyone was predicting a two decades ago. The fact that China isn't really feeling any pressure at all here should be a wake up call (they depend on oil, just less and less as time goes on). It isn't just that though, they basically took Nepal off oil completely, a bit of a special case since they had to import via India, which was always really expensive (and Nepal has lots of hydro). And the rest of the third world which simply can't afford much oil anyways now has a convenient other option.
Likewise, I don't see why ICE lovers are up in arms about people buying EVs. Shouldn't that just mean more oil (and less pricing pressure) for them?