Full Title: Mapping Chinese Direct Investment in the US Energy Economy
Author(s): Melanie Hart
Publisher(s): Center for American Progress
Publication Date: July 1, 2015
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
When China’s double-digit economic growth rates first began to affect global oil markets in the early 2000s, the energy sector appeared on track to become a new source of U.S.-China strategic competition, distrust, and potential conflict. On the U.S. side, many observers feared that China’s rising oil demands would strain global resource supplies, make it harder and more expensive for the United States to secure its own supplies, and potentially undermine security in the Middle East. On the Chinese side, leaders in Beijing worried that their nation’s growing dependence on oil and gas imports would make the Chinese economy more vulnerable to a potential U.S. military blockade, a fear that pushed Chinese leaders to strengthen their own naval capabilities and sign energy supply contracts with rogue nations not subject to U.S. influence—two moves that irritated Washington.
The clean energy technology revolution eased this competitive security dynamic. Once renewable energy facilities are installed, they can keep going regardless of what happens internationally. Thus, renewable energy gives Beijing an avenue to strengthen its energy security without impinging on U.S. interests. Since 2009, the U.S. Departments of Energy and State have been working to help drive this clean energy revolution in China—a nation whose energy policy choices have an unparalleled impact on the global economy. From an energy perspective—and from a climate perspective—it is in the interest of the United States for China’s economic growth to occur as efficiently and cleanly as possible. That growth will ideally also create new demand markets for U.S. clean energy products and services.