China's 2024 primary energy figures tell a story that makes Europe's position look precarious by comparison. Coal supplied 58 percent of primary energy, almost entirely from domestic mines. Nuclear, hydro, and renewables contributed roughly 12 percent. Oil and gas accounted for the remaining 30 percent, of which about a quarter of the oil and 57 percent of the gas came from domestic production. The effective Chinese import dependence on total primary energy sits at around 15 percent. Europe's equivalent exposure stands at 80 percent on hydrocarbons alone.
The contrast, as "Hvylya" reports citing a Decouple analysis, runs deeper than headline numbers. Throughout 2025, China added roughly one million barrels per day to its strategic crude reserves and built coal stockpiles. It invested in coal-to-chemicals facilities that convert coal through gasification into synthesis gas, from which Fischer-Tropsch catalysis can produce diesel, aviation fuel, ammonia, and essentially any hydrocarbon compound a modern economy requires.
The analysis notes that Germany developed Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s under blockade conditions to fuel the Luftwaffe, and South Africa built a large coal-to-liquids industry during apartheid sanctions. No country builds capital-intensive, economically irrational coal-to-liquids capacity for fun - countries build it when they are planning for fuel denial or war.
China also moved to dominate processing stages of commodity supply chains. It produces roughly five million barrels of crude oil per day domestically and imports around 11 million, but it has built refining capacity of nearly 19 million barrels per day - a nameplate figure that dwarfs its own consumption and positions it as a swing supplier of refined products to the rest of the world.
When China banned refined fuel exports after the conflict escalated, Australia found itself in difficulty almost immediately. Australia had allowed most of its domestic refining capacity to close over the preceding decade on the assumption that cheaper Asian-processed products would always be available. Chinese jet fuel had supplied roughly a third of Australia's aviation needs. The vulnerability ran through three links: Australian dependence on Chinese products, Chinese dependence on Middle Eastern crude, and Middle Eastern supply now disrupted. Each link was visible. None prompted precaution.
"Hvylya" also covered how Washington launched a $12 billion mineral stockpile in an attempt to close the resource gap with Beijing.