🇺🇸🇮🇷🇨🇳 China did what the Gulf’s traditional security architecture couldn’t... While missiles flew and the Strait of Hormuz stayed under pressure, Beijing quietly cut oil imports by 3–5 million barrels a day and tapped its own reserves. The result: oil prices never fully delivered the $100–$120 shock many had... priced in. But the broader picture is less forgiving. LNG prices in Europe and East Asia have climbed 40% or more, and emerging Asian economies and lower-income consumers are absorbing the sharpest cost increases, with limited ability to switch fuels. Oil’s relative stability, by contrast, underscores the growing weight of Chinese stockpile management and demand flexibility in global balances. That capacity is now shaping market outcomes more directly than the long-standing U.S. military presence that underwrote Gulf energy security for decades. Gulf producers, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are responding in kind. They are reassessing the reliability of American security guarantees amid policy uncertainty and expanding economic linkages with China as a hedge. Six months into the conflict, and the lasting shift may not solely be the higher fuel prices alone. It is a more multipolar energy order in which regional governments prioritize flexibility, U.S. security commitments carry less automatic weight, and Chinese demand and reserves play a larger stabilizing role. Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) YT / Writer: Valshow more

Mario Nawfal

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