Via Jonathan Fulton in agbi.com: Hardly a day goes by without a story about China’s growing presence in the Gulf, which is a remarkable transition. When I started working on a PhD focusing on China-GCC relations in 2011, an economist at a regional sovereign wealth fund dismissed the project out of hand: “How are you going to write 100,000 words on selling cheap stuff and buying oil”? Nearly 15 years later the narrative has shifted hard in the other direction, with China generally considered a major external power in the region. That does not mean its role in the Gulf is any better understood. First and foremost, the Gulf remains a place to get energy. For decades, China has had a voracious appetite for imported oil and gas and it will continue to be the world’s largest importer in the near term. Gulf countries typically provide it with between 40-50 percent of its crude oil imports and an increasingly large percentage of its LNG.
