"How China Managed the Oil Shock" - by CWP alum Zoe Zongyuan Liu
Since what the International Energy Agency called “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market” arrived in February, China—the world’s largest crude oil importer, with more than 90 percent of these imports arriving by sea—has not scrambled to bid for every replacement barrel. By June, four months into the supply disruption, China had cut crude imports to the lowest level in nearly a decade. China began cautiously restoring crude imports in July, but its purchase rebound remained weak through August and September and far below precrisis levels.
China’s ability to endure the Strait of Hormuz stress test for so long shows that its decade-long efforts to build buffers and reduce dependence on oil for fuel have changed the socioeconomic pressure points of a supply disruption. The scale of China’s reduction in crude imports is striking, but the government did not directly order the cut.
Zongyuan Zoe Liu is Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development finance, emerging markets, energy and climate change policy, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Dr. Liu’s regional expertise is in East Asia, specifically China and Japan, and the Middle East, specifically Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press).
Prior to joining CFR, Dr. Liu was an instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC, where she taught courses on global economy, economic statecraft, and Chinese foreign policy. She joined the Bush School after post-doctoral fellowships at the Columbia-Harvard “China and the World Program” and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Dr. Liu was a research fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies and a research associate at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business. She was also a visiting research fellow at the Institute for International Monetary Affairs in Tokyo, Bank of Mitsubishi-UFJ, and the Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi. She taught courses on Asian energy security and political risk analysis at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Liu received her PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and her MA in international relations from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Studies. She received her BA in history from Shandong Normal University in Jinan, China. Dr. Liu is also a CFA charterholder.
Photo Credit: https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/10/02/china-oil-reserves-refiners-energy-crisis-coal-petrochemicals/
