About China’s quest for oil, its African links and future focus on renewables

China’s quick development and modernization programme entails a soaring demand for energy in order to power its heavy industry and its expanding transport systems. By 2010 the country had become the second largest world economy, surpassing Japan. As an illustration of the scale of its rapid modernization, it is worth mentioning that 74000 km of express railway have been built in just 10 years, making China’s the second longest expressway network in the world after the US. Also in 2010 Chinese people bought more cars than any other country, more even than America (13.5m compared to 11.6m in the US). All these bring a huge thirst for energy that significantly changes the geopolitical and geo-economic landscape not just of the Asian Pacific area but of the entire world.