Summary

Alice Han discussed how disruption in the Middle East, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz, could affect China’s economy and its wider strategic position. The call highlighted that, despite China’s rapid renewable energy buildout, the country remains heavily reliant on imported hydrocarbons, especially crude oil from the Middle East. Strategic reserves, price caps and efforts to diversify supply are helping to cushion the immediate shock, but sustained oil price pressure could still feed through into manufacturing costs, export competitiveness and overall growth. The wider context was the growing importance of choke points in US-China competition. These include not only energy routes, but also Taiwan, semiconductors, rare earths, critical minerals and AI infrastructure. A major Taiwan crisis was framed as unlikely before 2028, partly due to political and military timing in Beijing, but grey-zone tactics such as a coastguard-led “quarantine” remain a key risk. The call also underlined how the technology race is becoming the central arena of strategic rivalry, with the US retaining advantages in high-end compute and models, while China benefits from scale, manufacturing depth, robotics, rare earths and lower-cost AI diffusion.

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