Two rows of storage tanks the height of 20-story buildings, filled with liquefied gas, help explain why China is better prepared than many countries to endure the interruption of gas supplies from the Middle East.

两排20层楼高的储罐，里面装满了液化天然气，这在一定程度上解释了为什么中国比许多国家更有能力应对来自中东的天然气供应中断。

Each of six tanks in Yancheng, an industrial port, holds enough natural gas to meet the household needs of Beijing’s 22 million people for more than two months. Adjacent to them are four more tanks that are only slightly smaller.

在工业港口盐城的六座储罐中，每一座都储存着足以满足北京2200万人口两个多月的家庭用气需求。旁边还有另外四个梯级略小的储罐。

The storage tanks are part of a huge effort by China over the past decade to accumulate stockpiles of all kinds of commodities, from pork and rice to rare-earth metals and coal, in case of a disruption of overseas supplies. But the natural gas stockpiles — the world’s largest above ground are in Yancheng, with more giant storage tanks in southern China — are conspicuously important now. They have helped China cushion the supply shock caused by the war in the Middle East even as its Asian neighbors, including India, Pakistan and Vietnam, are running low on natural gas.

这些储罐是中国过去十年来大规模囤积各种大宗商品（从猪肉、大米到稀土金属和煤炭）努力的一部分，以防海外供应中断。但天然气库存——盐城拥有全球最大的地面储气设施，中国南方还有更多巨型储罐——现在显得格外重要。它们帮助中国缓冲了中东战争造成的供应冲击，而包括印度、巴基斯坦和越南在内的亚洲邻国正面临天然气短缺。

On Tuesday evening, the United States and Iran reached a cease-fire deal that would open the strait and allow tankers and other freighters carrying oil, gas and other commodities to proceed through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait has been effectively closed since the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran five and a half weeks ago.

周二晚，美国与伊朗达成停火协议，霍尔木兹海峡将重新开放，使运载石油、天然气及其他大宗商品的油轮和货船得以通过。自五个半星期前美以对伊朗发动首次打击以来，该海峡实际上一直处于关闭状态。

No matter when regular traffic resumes, Qatar, a country on the Persian Gulf and one of the world’s top exporters of liquefied natural gas, has said it may take years to repair its gas facilities.

无论何时恢复正常通行，位于波斯湾、且是全球主要液化天然气出口国之一的卡塔尔表示，其天然气设施可能需要数年时间才能修复。

China is the world’s largest importer of natural gas and the largest consumer of fertilizer, much of which is made from natural gas. China also has the biggest chemicals industry, much of which requires natural gas as well.

中国是全球最大的天然气进口国，也是最大的化肥消费国，而化肥大多以天然气为原料。中国还拥有全球最大的化工产业，其中很大一部分同样依赖天然气。

The country has other supply options besides the storage tanks, which hold liquefied natural gas brought in by sea. It has constructed pipelines to gas fields in Central Asia and Russia. China has developed coal-based processes that can replace natural gas in making some kinds of chemicals. And China has more than doubled its domestic production of natural gas in the past decade through fracking and other technologies.

除了通过海运进口并储存在储罐中的液化天然气外，中国还拥有其他供应渠道。该国已修建通往中亚和俄罗斯气田的管道，还开发了煤基工艺，在生产某些化工产品时替代天然气。此外，通过水力压裂等技术，中国在过去十年中将国内天然气产量提高了一倍以上。

While the United States now leads the world in oil and natural gas production by a wide margin, China is the fourth-largest producer of natural gas, trailing only the United States, Russia and Iran. China is the fifth-largest oil producer, behind the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Canada.

尽管美国目前在石油和天然气产量上遥遥领先于全球，但中国已是全球第四大天然气生产国，仅次于美国、俄罗斯和伊朗。中国还是全球第五大石油生产国，排在美国、沙特阿拉伯、俄罗斯和加拿大之后。

Chinese government data shows that natural gas imports through the Strait of Hormuz represented only 6.9 percent of the country’s overall gas consumption last year.

中国政府数据显示，去年通过霍尔木兹海峡进口的天然气仅占其天然气总消费量的6.9%。

Beijing’s top leaders have long been preoccupied with their country’s vulnerability to pressure from the American or Indian navies on their seaborne supply of oil and natural gas from the Middle East. The country’s programs to develop solar and wind power and electric cars as alternatives to oil all moved into high gear 20 years ago.

北京高层长期以来一直担心从中东经海路进口石油和天然气易受美国或印度海军施压的影响。因此，中国在发展太阳能、风能以及电动汽车等石油替代方案上，早在20年前就已全面提速。

“They’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” said Geoffrey Garrett, the dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

南加州大学马歇尔商学院院长杰弗里·加勒特表示：“他们考虑这个问题已经很久了。”

China’s expansion of strategic stockpiles of fossil fuels is more recent, an effort pushed by its top leader, Xi Jinping. He has uttered dark warnings about the challenges facing the globe and the need for China to depend on commodities and technologies found within its borders.

中国扩大化石燃料战略储备则是更为近期的事情，是在最高领导人习近平推动下展开的。他曾多次就全球面临的挑战发出形势严峻的警告，强调中国需要依靠本国资源和技术。

In a speech in 2022, he called for China to “enhance coal, oil and gas storage capacity, promote the large-scale application of advanced energy storage technologies, and improve the capacity for self-sufficient energy supply.”

在2022年的一次讲话中，他要求中国“加强煤气油储备能力建设，推进先进储能技术规模化应用，提升能源自主供给能力”。

There are gaps in China’s stockpiles. Chinese officials have discussed the creation of a national reserve for helium, which is crucial to the manufacturing of semiconductors. China imports large quantities of helium from the Persian Gulf, and there has been no sign that China started a stockpile of the commodity before Iran closed the strait.

中国的储备仍存在一些短板。中国官员曾讨论建立国家氦气储备，而氦气对半导体制造至关重要。中国从波斯湾进口大量氦气，且没有迹象表明在伊朗封锁海峡之前中国已开始储备这种大宗商品。

China’s natural gas reserves, together with imports from places that are not affected by fighting in the Mideast, like Australia, Turkmenistan and Russia, are ample for home heating and cooking. Households, including residential electricity use, represent less than 15 percent of China’s natural gas consumption. China is also finishing its second consecutive warm winter, and residential gas demand has dropped steeply with the end of the heating season last month.

中国的天然气储备，加上来自澳大利亚、土库曼斯坦和俄罗斯等未受中东战事影响地区的进口，足以满足家庭取暖和烹饪需求。包括居民用电在内的家庭用气占中国天然气消费量的不到15%。此外，中国正经历连续第二个暖冬，随着上个月供暖季结束，居民用气需求大幅下降。

The country generates only 4 percent of its electricity from natural gas, and can easily replace that with coal and, to some extent, renewable energy. Within days of the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest official, called for the country to “create a safe, reliable, green, low-carbon, resilient, intelligent and flexible new power grid,” according to People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Communist Party.

中国仅有4%的电力来自天然气，可以轻易地用煤炭以及在某种程度上用可再生能源替代。据中共机关报《人民日报》报道，在美以对伊朗开战后的几天内，中国二号人物、国务院总理李强就要求“打造安全可靠、绿色低碳、坚强韧性、智能灵活的新型电网”。

Natural gas is particularly difficult to store. The easiest approach is to keep it underground by pumping it into salt caverns or into previously exhausted underground natural gas fields near big cities. But China has few of these caverns and fields relative to its enormous population.

天然气尤其难以储存。最简单的方法是通过将其泵入盐穴或大城市附近已枯竭的地下天然气田进行地下储存。但相对于中国庞大的人口，这类洞穴和气田很少。

That has prompted it to pursue a technologically audacious strategy: storing enormous quantities of supercooled gas as a liquid in aboveground storage tanks. The state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation disclosed in December that it had built 18 of its largest size of storage tanks for liquefied natural gas — more than twice as many as the rest of the world combined.

这促使中国采取一种技术上颇为大胆的策略：经超低温液化后，将天然气储存在地面大型储罐中。中国海洋石油集团在去年12月披露，已建成18个最大规格的液化天然气储罐——数量超过全球其他地区总和的两倍。

South Korea is constructing seven equally large L.N.G. tanks about 75 miles south of Seoul, to be completed in stages by the end of 2029. Japan has also begun building slightly smaller storage tanks.

韩国正在首尔以南约120公里的地方建设七个同等规模的液化天然气储罐，预计将在2029年底前分阶段完工。日本也已开始建设规模略小的储罐。

Each of China’s superlarge tanks, including the six at Yancheng, has a volume of 9.5 million cubic feet. By comparison, the arena at Madison Square Garden in New York City has a volume of 6.2 million cubic feet.

中国每个超大型储罐（包括盐城的六个）的罐容为27万立方米。作为对比，纽约市麦迪逊广场花园球馆的容积约为18万立方米。

2017年，中国保定的一处液化天然气储存设施。过去十年间，中国已发展出储存远超以往规模的技术。

The row of enormous storage tanks in Yancheng holds liquefied natural gas at a temperature of minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 162 degrees Celsius. When the gas is allowed to warm gradually to room temperature through a system of pipes, it expands 600-fold. The tanks in Yancheng are connected to a long pier into the Yellow Sea to unload L.N.G. from ships.

盐城这一排巨型储罐中储存的液化天然气温度为摄氏零下162度。当气体通过管道系统逐步回温至室温时，体积会膨胀600倍。盐城的这些储罐连接着一个伸入黄海的长码头，用于从船上卸载液化天然气。

Papers published in Chinese engineering journals reveal the design breakthroughs involved in holding enormous quantities of supercooled natural gas, which can be explosive if ignited or warmed too quickly.

中国工程类期刊发表的论文显示，在储存大量超低温天然气方面取得了一系列设计突破，因为这种气体一旦被点燃或升温过快，存在爆炸风险。

Each storage tank has an outer concrete frame to provide rigidity. Inside the concrete walls is a second layer of flexible plates made from a special steel alloy with a lot of manganese and nickel. Sophisticated robots weld the plates.

每个储罐都有一个混凝土外层框架以提供刚性。混凝土壁内部是由一种含大量锰和镍的特殊钢合金制成的柔性板材。先进的机器人负责焊接这些板材。

China has one more tool to make sure it has enough natural gas: making less fertilizer for export. Analysts say that since the start of the war in Iran, China has already halted most of its overseas fertilizer sales.

中国还有一项手段来确保天然气的充足：减少用于出口的化肥产量。分析人士表示，自伊朗战争爆发以来，中国已停止了大部分化肥出口。

While farmers in the United States, India and elsewhere have expressed concern about fertilizer shortages this spring, residents of villages near the Yancheng L.N.G. storage tanks said they had plenty. At a nearby store, tall stacks of fertilizer were displayed for sale.

尽管美国、印度等地的农民对今年春季可能出现的化肥短缺表示担忧，但在盐城液化天然气储罐附近村庄的居民表示，他们的供应十分充足。在附近的一家商店里，可以看到高高堆放的化肥正在出售。

The fertilizer store’s salesman, who gave his family name, Liu, said China’s authorities had made sure that fertilizer was abundantly available and that prices did not rise too sharply.

这家化肥店的刘姓售货员表示，中国的有关部门确保化肥供应充足，价格不会出现大幅上涨。

“I stocked up quite a bit of fertilizer in advance — after all, there’s a war going on in the Middle East,” he added.

“我提前囤了不少化肥——毕竟中东正在打仗，”他补充道。