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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21499 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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I listened to the radio today and CBS military analyst Mike Lyons (former Army Major and Desert Storm combat vetran) had a point about how this war is harming Chinese energy security in a way that is very bad for hypothetical Chinese military incursions. China buys almost all of Iran's oil and needs it very much.

China buys almost all of Iran's oil and needs it very much.

It's been very revealing how many Americans (sincerely) and Israelis (opportunistically) appeal to "China buys almost all of Iran's oil" and seem to believe this also means "Iran's oil is a big fraction of Chinese energy purchases". Well, it's known that Americans can't do fractions (see their per capita kryptonite), but still, I've updated in the direction of even greater disbelief in American capacity to reason quantitatively.

At $80/barrel (probably the sustainable market cost if this situation creates lasting damage to Gulf infra), Iranian volume of oil sales would amount to like $40B annually. China has $1.2T trade surplus. Yes, they've been buying oil at a huge discount, paying something like $4B instead. But this is all such small potatoes.

This military analyst on the radio could be correct. It depends on the marginal impact of losing that portion of their oil. I get they still have most of their supply of oil. But is that enough? Can they simply replace the loss by purchasing from other sources or would it be too expensive? I naively doubt it is going to be easy to replace a significant minority of all of China's oil consumption. There will be a global price impact at least.

China imports about 70% of its oil. About 13% of that imported oil is from Iran. That means about 9-10% of China's oil supply is being cut off here.

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