When the Iran war began in late February, China looked vulnerable. The world's largest crude oil importer, China has in recent years depended on imports for more than 70 percent of its consumption, with around half coming from the Middle East. The throttling of the Strait of Hormuz, months after the United States had disrupted global oil flows from Venezuela, seemed to present Chinese leaders with one of their greatest strategic fears: a crippling oil shock they could not control.

Instead, President Trump's war on Iran has been a welcome revelation for China, which absorbed one of the most severe oil-supply disruptions of the modern era, demonstrating that years of preparation had mitigated a huge vulnerability and potential source of U.S. leverage over Beijing in a geopolitical confrontation. China was self-sufficient in oil until 1993, when the escalating needs of its booming economy turned it into a net importer. Oil imports soared in the years that followed, prompting President Hu Jintao to warn in 2003 that hostile powers could seek to control the Malacca Strait, the sea lane in Southeast Asia through which much of the country's imported oil travels.

Beijing responded with a wide-ranging strategy to reduce that exposure. It diversified supply sources to limit the share of oil coming from the Middle East and began to build up what are now estimated to be the world's largest crude oil stockpiles, roughly equal to those of the United States and Japan combined. China has pushed aggressively to shift passenger cars from fossil fuels to electric power, making it by far the world's largest market for electric vehicles today, and it is extending that effort to trucks. Electricity generation relies almost entirely on domestic energy sources such as coal, nuclear, hydro and, increasingly, wind and solar.

That long-term strategy has been put through a real-world stress test by the Iran war — and, so far, it has passed. The Hormuz disruptions drove oil prices up. But unlike during a 2021 Chinese coal shortage, when the government instructed importers to urgently secure energy supplies, it didn't hit the panic button this time. Inflows of oil to China plunged as importers slashed purchases. The country fell back on its stockpiles while restricting exports of transport fuels to keep more at home. Higher fuel prices also appear to have pushed many Chinese drivers to use public transportation, taxis or ride-hailing services, much of which runs on electricity. As a result, while some governments in Asia were forced to take painful emergency measures such as rationing fuel, raising prices and reducing public services, China's economy was not materially disrupted.