Abstract
Oil was a crucial factor in China’s relationship with the world during the Reform Era. This chapter analyzes Bei**g’s oil policy under Deng ** and its significance to China’s economic statecraft in the 1980s. Bei**g became increasingly concerned about the energy balance at the beginning of the 1980s, when China’s oil production plateaued at two million barrels per day. Rising energy demand due to economic development and declining production in onshore oilfields due to depletion made the prospect of an energy crisis even more daunting. Lacking technology and capital, Bei**g decided to explore and develop offshore oilfields through joint ventures with foreign companies, including firms from Japan, the United States, France, and Great Britain. Between 1979 and 1989, 45 companies from twelve countries selected by public biddings undertook 43 offshore development projects in the South China Sea and Bohai Bay. Bei**g strove to maintain these projects through adept diplomacy. While confronting Vietnam, a country that cooperated with the Soviet Union to explore offshore oilfields in the South China Sea, Bei**g tried to detach the joint ventures from diplomatic turmoil in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Through energy conservation campaigns, Bei**g kept the increase of oil consumption proportionate to the annual production growth of approximately 70,000 thousand barrels per day, and thereby achieved rapid economic development without experiencing an energy crisis during the 1980s.
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Notes
- 1.
For economic reforms in the 1980s, see Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
- 2.
Thomas G. Rawski, An Overview of Chinese Industry in the 1980s (Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Department, February 1993), 37, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/482401468914767526/pdf/multi-page.pdf, accessed 15 October 2020.
- 3.
Kang Shi’en, Kang Shi’en lun Zhongguo shiyou gongye [Kang Shi’en of the Chinese Oil Industry] (Bei**g: Shiyou Gongye Chubanshe, 1995), 365–366.
- 4.
Christopher M. Clarke, “China’s Energy Plan for the 80s,” China Business Review 8: 3 (May–June 1981): 48–51.
- 5.
“Jianjue yasuo shaoyou jieyue yongyou” [Resolutely Reduce Oil Burning and Save Oil Usage], People’s Daily (12 September 1979): 1.
- 6.
Kevin Fountain, “The Development of China’s Offshore Oil in the Next Decade,” China Business Review 7: 1 (January–February 1980): 23–36.
- 7.
Vaclav Smil, Energy in China’s Modernization: Advances and Limitations (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1988), 98.
- 8.
Thomas J. Lueck, “Plumbing China Oil Reserve,” New York Times (18 August 1983): D1, 2.
- 9.
Qin Wencai, Shiyou shiren: zai haiyang shiyou zhanxian jishi [Oil Brigade: The Record of the Battle for Offshore Oil] (Bei**g: Shiyou Gongye Chubanshe, 1997), 37–38.
- 10.
Dori Jones, “China’s Offshore Oil Development,” China Business Review 7: 4 (July–August 1980): 55.
- 11.
Jianguo yilai Li ** Oil,” New York Times (22 April 1984): F9.
- 37.
Denny, “China’s Oil Industry.”
- 38.
Edward A. Gargan, “China Looks for Help to Keep Its Oil Flowing,” New York Times (16 May 1988): D12.
- 39.
China Oil News, ed., Huiyi Kang Shi’en [Remembering Kang Shi’en] (Bei**g: Zhongguo Gongye Chubanshe, 1995), 105.
- 40.
Armand Hammer, “On a Vast China Market,” Journal of International Affairs 39: 2 (Winter 1986): 19–25.
- 41.
Christopher S. Wren, “Occidental’s Shaky China Deal,” New York Times (14 October 1984): A8.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Chinese Communist Party Central Archives and Manuscript Division, ed., Deng ** sixiang nianbian [Chronicle of Deng ** Thought] (Bei**g: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2011), 407.
- 44.
Deng ** sixiang nianbian, 459. Parenthesis in original.
- 45.
Zhang Weitian and Wang Qin, “Wo jianxin Zhongguo de shiye bi jiang chenggong” [Firm Belief That Chinese Oil Business Will Inevitably Succeed], People’s Daily (23 October 1987): 6.
- 46.
Martin Weil, “The Rise—And Fall—Of Antaibao,” China Business Review 18: 2 (March–April 1991): 39.
- 47.
Gargan, “China Looks for Help.”
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Hammer, “On a Vast China Market,” 21.
- 50.
Kang, Kang Shi’en, 517–518.
- 51.
Lueck, “Plumbing China Oil Reserve.”
- 52.
Kang, Kang Shi’en, 502–503.
- 53.
Ibid., 543.
- 54.
Qin, Shiyou shiren, 27.
- 55.
Ibid., 20–21.
- 56.
Kang, Kang Shi’en, 532.
- 57.
Ibid., 535.
- 58.
Ibid., 552.
- 59.
Deng ** sixiang nianbian, 689.
- 60.
Ibid., 696.
- 61.
Johanna Knapschaefer, “Area Business Ties Resume with China,” The Journal Record (1 July 1989).
- 62.
Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Ex-Im Bank Resumes Aid to China,” New York Times (6 February 1990): D1, 8.
- 63.
Memorandum of Conversation, 2 July 1989, Chinafile, George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, https://www.chinafile.com/library/reports/us-china-diplomacy-after-tiananmen-documents-george-hw-bush-presidential-library, accessed 15 October 2020.
- 64.
Chinese Communist Party Central Archives and Manuscript Division, ed., Deng ** nianpu [Chronicle of Deng **] (Bei**g: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2004), 1311.
- 65.
Sheryl WuDunn, “Hopes Fade as Oil Output in China Lags,” New York Times (3 September 1990): 32.
- 66.
Daniel P. Reardon, “The Lure of Oil,” China Business Review 18: 2 (March–April 1991): 7.
- 67.
China Oil News, ed., Huiyi Kang Shi’en, 105.
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Minami, K. (2022). The Bottleneck of Reform: China’s Oil Policy in the 1980s. In: Roberts, P. (eds) Chinese Economic Statecraft from 1978 to 1989. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9217-8_10
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