Maciej Gaca
The crisis triggered by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is rapidly shifting from the military sphere to one dominated by pricing pressures, insurance costs, ship availability, delivery schedules, energy contracts, and the ability of industries to sustain production. For the People’s Republic of China, the blockade represents a major test of its vast industrial and energy system, carefully built in recent years to withstand external shocks. It has invested heavily in strategic reserves, coal production, domestic mining, imports from Russia and Central Asia, electrification of transport, renewable energy, nuclear power, expansion of the national grid, and strong state control over key enterprises.
Beijing is approaching the Hormuz crisis from the perspective of a country that has learned over the years that energy is a component of national security. The Chinese authorities do not treat oil, gas, and electricity solely as market categories. They are elements of social stability, industrial competitiveness, mobilisation capacity, and political autonomy from the West. Therefore, China’s energy transformation has two parallel meanings: a climate-industrial one and a strategic one.
Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) describes it as a process of “shock-proofing,” or securing the system against external instability. According to this analysis, China achieved approximately 85% energy self-sufficiency by 2024, and its investments in green technologies, electrification, diversification of fossil fuel imports, and expansion of coal-fired capacity increased the country’s resilience to the shocks caused by the war with Iran and the closure of Hormuz.
Administrative data from Beijing demonstrates why this system is more difficult to disrupt than the economies of smaller Asian importers. China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that in 2024, industrial enterprises above a certain size extracted 4.76 billion tonnes of coal, while importing 540 million tonnes. In the same year, domestic oil production reached 212.82 million tonnes, oil imports 553.42 million tonnes, gas production 246.4 billion cubic meters, and gas imports 131.69 million tonnes. Electricity production reached 9.4181 trillion kWh. These figures do not eliminate import dependence, but they do illustrate the scale of China’s own energy and industrial base.
When it comes to oil, China remains strongly linked to the Middle East. The Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy, based on Chinese customs and industry data, estimates that in 2025, about half of China’s oil imports and almost a third of its LNG imports would come from the Middle East. Official customs data indicate that 42% of China’s oil imports came from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar. Additionally, oil imports from Iran must be taken into account. Since 2022, these imports have not been included in official Chinese statistics, but according to tanker tracking data (Kpler), they reached approximately 1.38 million barrels per day in 2025 and were often declared as Malaysian or Indonesian oil.
China’s resilience to an oil shock has several layers. The first is its inventories. The CGEP reports that at the beginning of March, China had approximately 1.39 billion barrels of crude oil in storage, equivalent to approximately 120 days of net imports at 2025 levels. The second layer consists of Iranian barrels held in floating storage facilities in Asia and bonded warehouses in China. The third layer consists of Russian supplies and alternative import sources. The fourth is the state’s administrative capacity to manage refineries, fuel exports, margins, and raw material allocation.
Liquefied natural gas is China’s weaker point. Oil has greater market liquidity, broader reserves, and greater potential for short-term substitution. LNG requires specific infrastructure, contracts, terminals, ships, and regasification. In the event of a disruption in LNG supplies from Qatar and UAE, Beijing has a limited range of actions: it can limit demand or pay more for alternative cargoes. The first option seems closer to China’s crisis management approach, especially given weak domestic demand and the reluctance of state-owned companies to accept extremely high spot prices.
This point requires further attention in the industry analysis. The crisis in Hormuz isn’t affecting China solely through energy imports for households. It’s most severely impacting refineries, petrochemicals, fertilizers, maritime transport, chemical industry, plastics production, and sectors dependent on stable energy prices.
China’s advantage lies in the existence of systemic buffers: coal, domestic electricity, massive renewable energy capacity, battery production, transport electrification, and the ability to shift costs between state-owned enterprises, the budget, and consumers. The weakness lies in the fact that an economy as large as China’s cannot simply “escape” oil. Even the most aggressive electrification doesn’t replace petrochemicals, aviation, heavy transport, fertilizers, and parts of industrial processes.
It’s worth understanding China’s energy policy as a policy of excess. Beijing isn’t choosing a single source of security. It’s simultaneously building coal, renewable energy, nuclear power, gas pipelines, LNG, oil reserves, transport electrification, and its own energy storage technologies. From the perspective of the European climate debate, this appears inconsistent. From the perspective of a country preparing for a world of sanctions, blockades, and maritime crises, it’s coherent enough. China wants to be able to shift from one buffer to another, even at the cost of higher emissions and inefficiency.
Beijing’s Diplomacy
China’s official response was predictable. Beijing portrayed the crisis as a result of military escalation and called for the restoration of peace and the protection of civilian shipping. The Sino-Pakistani Five-Point Initiative dedicated a separate section to the Strait of Hormuz: China and Pakistan called for the protection of crews and ships, the safe passage of civilian and commercial vessels, and the rapid restoration of normal navigation.
This language serves several purposes. First, Beijing wants to portray itself as a defender of trade and energy stability. Second, it wants to avoid the impression that it benefits from Western-provided security without taking responsibility for it. Third, it attempts to speak on behalf of importers from Asia and the Global South, for whom rising energy prices are a real fiscal and social problem. Fourth, it maintains its distance from any naval operation that might appear to be a US-led coalition.
This is a weak point in China’s position. China requires free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, Malacca, the Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean, but its ability to independently stabilise these routes is limited politically and operationally. The Chinese navy is expanding its reach, with a base in Djibouti, anti-piracy expertise, and a growing ocean presence, but Beijing is reluctant to assume the role of guarantor of maritime order in the Persian Gulf. Such a role would require decisions that would be inconsistent with China’s image of a nation that avoids foreign wars.
Chinese Political Advantage
Beijing may attempt to exploit the Strait of Hormuz for propaganda purposes. Its message is predictable: a US-led security order breeds war and chaos; China offers stability, trade, and infrastructure.This message will appeal to audiences who already view Western security architecture with distrust.
For Beijing, Hormuz is a vindication of its policy of building surplus: reserves, alternative supplies, domestic mining, coal, renewable energy, nuclear power, electrification, and state control over strategic sectors. This model is costly and inefficient from a pure economic perspective, but in a crisis, it buys China time. And in such a scenario, time is as valuable a resource as oil.—INFA
Follow our WhatsApp channel
