China is increasing its imports of raw materials, despite the fact that needs are actually decreasing.
The bunkering worries American analysts, writes The Economist.
The raw materials are exactly what China would need in the event of a protracted conflict – for example, in the event of a blockade of Taiwan.
– If you then add China’s military armament, it starts to become really worrying, says Gabriel Collins, former analyst at the US Department of Defense, to the newspaper.
Over the past two decades, China has gobbled up huge amounts of raw materials. A growing and increasingly affluent population has demanded more dairy products, more grains, more meat.
The country’s large industries have had an almost insatiable need for energy and metals. The majority of the raw materials – 97 percent of the cobalt, 70 percent of the oil and almost one hundred percent of several foodstuffs – need to be imported.
But in recent years, political mismanagement and a protracted real estate crisis have caused management to start looking towards less resource-intensive industries, writes The Economist, which should cause demand to decrease.
Bunkering depends on that
Instead, the country’s imports are increasing to record levels, also during a time when prices are unusually high.
Last year, China imported 16 percent more than the year before, and the increase continues this year – up six percent in the spring.
China has been bunkering since the end of the Cold War, and analysts The Economist spoke to believe that the bunkering in recent years is due to the corona pandemic, US trade tariffs and the war in Ukraine, which have pushed up prices and shown that the US is not afraid to sanction “big enemies”.
Over half of the entire earth’s stock
But in the past year, bunkering has accelerated further, worrying US analysts.
China has stopped publishing how much food it has in stock, but the US Department of Agriculture believes China will have more than half of the world’s corn and wheat stocks by the end of the year. They have also increased the supply of oil by a million barrels a day.
– Many of the oil bunkers are secret, but we see that the known stocks have grown rapidly in the past year, says Emma Li at the data company Vortexa.
What worries the analysts is that food, oil, gas and metals are exactly what China would need in the event of a war with Taiwan and, by extension, the United States – and which the United States and its allies could otherwise deny China as a means of power.