China’s Increasing Energy Needs and Role as an International Superpower

Abstract

The rise of the People’s Republic of China to economic superpower status has affected the globalization process on many fronts, ranging from economics to politics, from telecommunications to the environment.  However, China’s economic ascent has had equally striking effects on global energy demand and supply.  China’s gross domestic product has grown at an average of 9 percent per year during the past decade.  This tremendous solid economic growth has caused an increase in the country’s oil consumption, reducing the global oil supply, and contributing to the spike in global oil prices in 2008, when a barrel of oil reached the price of $147.29 (Bradsher, 2009; Mouawad, 2009).  These important developments have led China to search for energy supplies all over the world and to negotiate, in some instances, with rogue regimes, such as the Sudanese and Iranian governments; the international community considers these governments rogue regimes due to the many human rights abuses sanctioned by them (Bradsher, 2009).