I’ve seen different perspectives say its either a winning strategy ( they stand to alienate little brother Europe from daddy US, and possibly make them dependent on US natural gas ), or that its a losing strategy ( that in the long term it will only stand to unite China, Russia, India, etc more closely, contribute to de-dollarization, etc)
Do you think the west’s strategy is sound, or are they merely making mistakes typical of dying empires?
They made three of the largest world influencers that aren’t America break free of the dollar hegemony and they think that’s somehow some epic gotcha. I’m willing to bet now countries are going to start buying their oil directly from Venezuela and China quite soon (Russia later when people stop caring), once it’s finally realized that allying with America will not save you during conflict. They screw over their ‘allies’ almost as much as their enemies.
You know what’s funny, too? If they do start buying directly from China, guess where 80% of Chinese oil comes from? Xinjiang.
Was it not 30% of China’s oil demands fulfilled by Tarim Basin?
Yep, that along with the Junggar Basin which IIRC is in the top three crude oil producers in the country. Xinjiang’s up there with Heilongjiang and Shandong in oil production.
80% was probably way too much of an overestimate though, I incorrectly recalled seeing that number to describe it before. Nobody’s put together a formal list on which provinces produce the most amount of oil since 2012, so I don’t have any actual percentages on hand.