The energy shock caused by the war in the Middle East caught China, the world’s top buyer of oil, by surprise. But Beijing has been preparing for a crisis like this for years.

中东战争引发的能源冲击让全球最大的石油买家中国措手不及。但北京多年来一直在为这样一场危机做准备。

China has stockpiled increasingly large amounts of oil. It has pursued renewable sources of energy like solar, wind and hydropower so aggressively that its demand for refined oil, diesel and gasoline is falling. And it has harnessed technology to reduce its reliance on the foreign-sourced raw materials that go into the massive output of its factories.

中国不断增加石油储备。它大力发展太阳能、风能和水电等可再生能源，以至于对精炼油、柴油和汽油的需求正在下降。它还利用技术减少对进口原材料的依赖，这些原材料是其工厂大规模生产所必需的。

China’s ruling Communist Party has long viewed its industries as the foundation of its national security strategy. It has sharpened — and expanded — that approach since President Trump’s first term. China has doubled down on policies to build up local industries, in turn strengthening its global dominance over resources and supply chains.

中国共产党长期以来将工业视为国家安全战略的基础。自特朗普总统第一任期以来，这一理念得到加强和扩展。中国愈发推崇发展本土工业的政策，进而增强其在资源和供应链上的全球主导地位。

“You have seen more top-down industrial policy, more guidance from the central government to develop certain strategic sectors that China believes they need to strengthen in order not to be controlled by a Western power,” said Heiwai Tang, director of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong.

“我们已经看到更多自上而下的产业政策，中央政府提供更多指导，来发展中国认为需要加强的某些战略部门，以免被西方大国控制，”香港大学亚洲环球研究所所长邓希炜说。

Energy was the linchpin.

能源是关键。

A decade ago, China was the world’s biggest market for internal combustion engine cars. Today, it is the top market for electric vehicles. China used to be the largest buyer of foreign-sourced petrochemicals, the raw materials derived from oil that are used to make plastic, metal, rubber components and other crucial ingredients in the goods its factories churn out. Now it uses mostly domestic coal to make certain chemicals, like methanol and synthetic ammonia. Government planning and investment were crucial to those advances.

十年前，中国是全球最大的内燃机汽车市场。如今，它已成为电动汽车的最大市场。中国曾经是外国石化产品的最大买家，也就是从石油中提取的用于制造塑料、金属、橡胶部件及其他工厂关键原料的原材料。现在，它主要使用国内煤炭来生产某些化学品，如甲醇和合成氨。政府规划和投资对这些进步至关重要。

2023年，中国潍坊的一座燃煤发电厂。

As the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for virtually all of the oil that flows to Asia, remains largely shut off, China has so far proved more resilient than much of the rest of the world.

几乎所有流向亚洲的石油的必经之地霍尔木兹海峡目前基本处于关闭状态，而中国迄今为止已证明其比世界其他许多地区更有韧性。

China can now power many of its cars and trains with electricity, greatly reducing its reliance on oil. China has also honed the use of coal — and not oil — to produce its own petrochemicals. This technology, developed by Germany and used to sustain its economy during World War II, gives Beijing an alternative to oil to make the raw materials its factories need.

中国现在可以用电力驱动许多汽车和火车，大大减少了对石油的依赖。中国还完善了用煤炭（而非石油）生产本土石化产品的技术。这种最初由德国开发，并在二战期间用于维持其经济的技术，成为石油的替代方案，为北京提供其工厂所需的原材料。

Vietnam and the Philippines, facing severe shortages of oil and other energy sources, appealed to China for help last month. “China stands ready to strengthen coordination and collaboration with Southeast Asian countries and jointly address energy security issues,” a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said.

上个月，面临严重石油和其他能源短缺的越南和菲律宾向中国求助。“中方愿同东南亚国家加强协调配合，共同应对能源安全问题，”中国外交部发言人表示。

Beijing has long been fixated on addressing its reliance on foreign sources of energy and materials.

北京长期以来一直专注于解决对外国能源和原材料的依赖问题。

At the turn of the century, officials worried about another narrow passageway through which oil traveled to China: the Strait of Malacca, which separates Indonesia and Malaysia from Singapore. In 2004, China created an emergency petroleum stockpile to address those concerns. In recent months, it has been expeditiously adding to its stockpile.

本世纪初，另一条将石油运往中国的狭窄通道——将印度尼西亚、马来西亚与新加坡分隔开的马六甲海峡——引起了官员们的担忧。2004年，中国建立了紧急石油储备以应对这些担忧。最近几个月，这一储备得到了迅速扩大。

As China was becoming a factory powerhouse for the world in the late 1990s, it needed foreign chemical companies like DuPont, Shell and BASF to set up plants to supply the chemicals its factories needed. In recent years, Chinese companies have come to dominate much of the world’s chemical supplies. Three-quarters of the world’s polyester and nylon, for example, are made in China.

上世纪90年代末，正在成为世界工厂的中国需要杜邦、壳牌和巴斯夫等外国化工公司在中国设厂，以供应工厂所需的化学品。近年来，中国公司已主导了全球大部分化工供应。例如，全球四分之三的聚酯和尼龙是在中国生产的。

去年在中国青海省，将阳光直接转化为电能的光伏太阳能板。

China is still the world’s largest buyer of oil and gas, and three-quarters of its oil is imported. While Beijing does not disclose the size of its reserves, its crude oil imports increased 4.4 percent in 2025 over the previous year, while its consumption grew 3.6 percent, according to the Chinese government. But after billions of dollars in direct subsidies to electric vehicle makers and hundreds of billions invested in renewable sources of energy, China’s efforts have paid off. Demand for refined oil, gasoline and diesel has fallen two years in a row, prompting experts to forecast that China’s oil and gas consumption has peaked.

中国仍是全球最大的石油和天然气买家，其四分之三的石油依赖进口。虽然北京不披露储备规模，但根据中国政府数据，2025年其原油进口较上年增长4.4%，而消耗增长3.6%。但在向电动汽车制造商提供数十亿美元直接补贴并在可再生能源上投入数千亿美元之后，中国的努力已见成效。对精炼油、汽油和柴油的需求已连续两年下降，专家预测中国的油气消费已达峰值。

At the same time, China’s oil consumption is growing in the petrochemicals industry as it further secures its supply chains.

与此同时，中国石化工业的石油消费仍在增长，以进一步巩固其供应链。

China’s industry boomed as the government invested heavily, provided cheap loans and encouraged universities to cater to chemical engineering, said Joerg Wuttke, who served as the chief representative in China for BASF, the German chemical company, for 27 years.

任德国化工公司巴斯夫驻华首席代表27年的伍德克(Joerg Wuttke)表示，这些努力得益于政府大量投资，提供廉价贷款，并鼓励大学培养化工人才，从而推动了中国工业的繁荣。

These efforts accelerated under Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, and during Mr. Trump’s first presidency.

这些努力在习近平领导下以及特朗普第一任期期间加速推进。

“Everything that Trump does triggers even more self-reliance from Beijing,” said Mr. Wuttke, who is now a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, a consultancy firm.

“特朗普所做的任何事都会促使北京更加自力更生，”现为咨询公司奥尔布赖特石桥集团合伙人的伍德克说。

During his first term, Mr. Trump confronted China on economic and business issues, setting off a trade war and a technology showdown.

特朗普在第一任期内就经济和商业问题与中国对抗，引发了一场贸易战和技术较量。

Mr. Trump’s confrontational approach to China set off alarms.

特朗普的对抗性策略为中国敲响了警钟。

中国一直在大力开发风能及其他可再生能源。

Chinese leaders began to send out signals. In 2019, Li Keqiang, the premier at the time, called for China to use coal to make both electricity and chemicals as part of an effort to reduce its dependence on seaborne oil. It was a deviation from China’s focus on eliminating coal.

中国领导人开始发出信号。2019年，时任总理李克强呼吁中国用煤炭发电和生产化学品，以减少对海运石油的依赖。这偏离了中国此前淘汰煤炭的关注。

By late 2020, as the pandemic raged, causing major disruptions to shipping and global trade, and tensions with the United States reached new heights, China put out an official road map, attributed to Mr. Xi, for how to get through the period of turbulence.

到2020年底，随着疫情肆虐导致航运和全球贸易严重中断，以及与美国的紧张关系达到新高，中国发布了一份据称由习近平主导的官方路线图，指导如何度过动荡时期。

Published in Qiushi, the Communist Party’s leading theoretical journal, the text was a call to arms for Chinese industries to hunker down. They were told to develop technologies faster than competitors overseas to achieve self-reliance and insulate China from supply chain disruptions.

这篇文章发表在中共主要理论刊物《求是》上，号召中国工业“卧薪尝胆”。文章要求业界比海外竞争对手更快地发展技术，以实现自力更生，并使中国免受供应链中断的影响。

“Trump 1.0 was a very clear rupture that changed China’s geopolitical calculus, and it reactivated old fears,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a co-founder of the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent research organization, who has tracked China’s growing use of coal to make petrochemicals.

“特朗普1.0是一场非常明确的决裂，改变了中国的地缘政治计算，并重新激活了旧有的忧虑，”独立研究机构能源与清洁空气研究中心联合创始人柳力(Lauri Myllyvirta)说，他对中国石化生产中的煤炭使用增加进行了追踪。

“Xi himself had spoken about supply chain resiliency,” Mr. Myllyvirta said. “All of this just enabled a petrochemicals boom to gain steam.”

“习近平曾亲自谈及供应链韧性，”柳力说。“所有这些都为石化产业的繁荣提供了助力。”

The signals from the top allowed the industry to expand and build plants to use coal instead of oil to make petrochemicals.

来自高层的信号让该行业得以扩张，并建设工厂，用煤炭而非石油生产石化产品。

去年，中国某农村庭院里的煤炭。

In 2020, China used 155 million tons of standard coal equivalent to make chemicals. By 2024, it was using 276 million tons. By 2025, that figure increased another 15 percent, eclipsing the total coal consumption in the United States of 230 million tons.

2020年，中国用1.55亿吨标准煤当量生产化学品。到2024年，这一数字增至2.76亿吨。到2025年，又增加了15%，超过了美国全年2.3亿吨的煤炭消费总量。

Chinese officials have said using coal is a temporary bridge to being more reliant on renewables, and they have also invested in technology that uses electricity to make petrochemicals. But using coal as an alternative to oil for now is paying off as shortages of oil and gas have sent prices surging.

中国官员表示，使用煤炭是转向更多依赖可再生能源的过渡，他们还投资了用电生产石化产品的技术。但目前，用煤炭作为石油的替代品正在发挥作用，因为石油和天然气的短缺导致价格飙升。

Take nitrogen fertilizer. China produces a third of the global supply, and 80 percent of it is made with coal instead of oil. Since the war in the Middle East began, international prices for urea, the main chemical in fertilizer, have surged by over 40 percent, while China’s domestically produced equivalent has stayed at less than half of the global rate.

以氮肥为例。全球三分之一的供应来自中国，其中80%是用煤炭而非石油制成的。自中东战争爆发以来，肥料中的主要化学品尿素的国际价格上涨超过40%，而中国国内生产的同类产品价格仍不到全球价格的一半。

Even before the American and Israeli militaries started exchanging combat fire with Iran, threatening one of the world’s most important regions for resources that power countries, China had a dominant position, said Johanna Krebs, an analyst at the Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies, a German think tank.

德国智库墨卡托中国研究所分析师约翰娜·克雷布斯说，甚至在美国和以色列军队开始与伊朗交火，威胁全球最重要的资源产区之前，中国就已经占据主导地位。

“The Chinese,” she said, “most likely will see this as encouragement on the path to self-sufficiency.”

“中国人大概率会把这件事看作是一种激励，”她说，“推动他们继续在自给自足的道路上走下去。”