Is China stockpiling resources in case of future war?

In the eastern Chinese port of Dongying, the start of 2024 has often seen several tankers docked simultaneously discharging Russian crude oil into a new 31.5-million-barrel storage facility completed late last year.

It is, traders say, all part of a concerted and deliberate Chinese effort to build up strategic stockpiles for a perhaps uncertain future.

Estimates of China's total strategic energy reserve vary from 280 to 400 million barrels, the upper amount exceeding the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve at roughly 364 million. China consumes some 14 million barrels a day of oil in peacetime.

What does seem clear, however, is that China is deliberately stockpiling at speed, part of a much wider national effort to accumulate essential raw materials and resource.

When it comes to energy, much of the new inflows now come primarily from Russia, whose energy exports to China rose by roughly one quarter last year to a record 2.14 million barrels per day.

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