中国去哪买石油？

飞雪寒冰

Even after three decades of rapid economic growth, during which China became the world’s leading exporter and second-largest economy, the country imports just 10 per cent of its annual energy requirement. That is thanks primarily to vast domestic reserves of coal, which supply 70 per cent of its energy.
尽管中国经济持续三十年快速增长，其间已成为全球第一大出口国和第二大经济体，但中国仍仅有10%的年度能源需求依赖进口。这主要归功于中国国内庞大的煤炭储量——中国70%的能源供应来自于煤炭。

The 10 per cent that China must import is, however, still the same amount of energy that is needed to power the UK, the world’s sixth-largest economy.
然而，中国必须进口的那10%能源，其规模仍相当于世界第六大经济体英国的能源需求。

飞雪寒冰

Most of China’s energy imports are in the form of crude oil. Despite being the world’s fifth-largest oil producer after Iran, China trails only the US as a net importer of crude oil.
中国大部分能源进口都是以原油的形式。尽管中国是排名伊朗之后的全球第五大石油生产国，但却是仅次于美国的第二大原油净进口国。

China consumes so much energy not because it is the world’s most populous country – in per capita terms, its energy consumption is quite low – but because it is the workshop of the world. China accounts for one-third of global industrial energy demand, up from 13 per cent in 1990. The US, by contrast, has seen its share of global industrial energy use shrink from 16 per cent in 1990 to 13 per cent.
中国消费了如此多的能源，并非因为它是世界上人口最多的国家（按人均计算，它的能源消费量很低），而是因为它是世界工厂。中国占到了全球工业能源需求的三分之一，这一比例高于1990年时的13%。相反，美国在全球工业能源需求中所占的份额，已从1990年的16%降至13%。

飞雪寒冰

While half of China’s crude oil imports come from the Middle East, Chinese companies have been expanding into countries that western oil companies tend to avoid, such as Sudan and Burma.
尽管中国一半的原油进口来自中东，但中国企业却一直在向西方石油公司通常回避的国家——如苏丹与缅甸等国——扩张。

The Chinese government is conscious of the fact that about three-quarters of its imported oil must transit the Strait of Malacca – and that it has no aircraft carriers compared with the US navy’s 11. To hedge its exposure to this strategic choke point, China is building oil and gas pipelines across Burma to the Indian Ocean, to central Asia and to Siberia.
中国政府意识到了以下事实：即本国约四分之三的进口石油运输须经过马六甲海峡，而且他们不像美国海军那样拥有11艘航空母舰。为了避免过多地经过这一战略瓶颈，中国正在修建从缅甸到印度洋、中亚再到西伯利亚的油气管道。

飞雪寒冰

For now, the pattern of China’s overseas oil dependency is complementary to that of the US. China is much more reliant on the Middle East and Africa, while the US sources more from its north and Latin American neighbours.
眼下，中国的海外石油依赖模式与美国模式互补。中国明显更依赖中东与非洲地区，而美国的石油进口则更多来自非洲北部及拉美邻国。

That lessens the short-term prospects for direct competition between the world’s two largest economies for sources of crude oil. The US, after all, is not used to dealing with an economic and military rival. Its traditional economic peers, Japan and Germany, were defeated enemies turned allies and ultimately dependent on the US military to secure global shipping
这弱化了全球最大的两个经济体短期内直接争夺原油来源的前景。毕竟，美国并不习惯对付一个经济和军事对手。美国传统上的经济对手日本与德国，都是战败国转化成的盟友，且最终都要依赖美国军队保证全球航运安全。

飞雪寒冰

But barring any breakthroughs in environmental technologies the two rivals could be heading for a collision. By some measures, China is already the world’s largest consumer of energy and accounts for half of the world’s growth in oil demand – even though its per capita energy use is less than one-third of that in the US. According to the International Energy Agency, per capita energy consumption in China could be above the global average by 2035. Should China ever come close to matching the US’s appetite for resources, the geostrategic equation would change dramatically.
但除非环境技术出现突破，否则，这两个竞争对手最终可能走向冲突。以某些标准衡量，中国已经是全球最大的能源消费国，占到了世界石油需求增长的一半——尽管其人均能源使用量不到美国的三分之一。据国际能源机构(IEA)预测，到2035年，中国人均能源消费可能会超过全球平均水平。一旦中国的资源需求开始接近美国的水平，地缘政治平衡将发生明显变化。