Alan Kohler

Well, the first thing China did was to ban exports of fuel, that is to say diesel, petrol and jet fuel, that it was making from the Middle Eastern oil it was buying from Iran mainly.

And that's just stopped.

But also during the last 12 months or so, they've gradually been building up their stockpile so that by the time the war began, they've got and still have apparently got four months or 120 days of oil cover left.

in storage there, which is more than anyone else, certainly a lot more than Australia's got, which we went into the war with about a month's worth of storage stockpile.

They've got four months.

So they've done pretty well, really.

And it's not just their stockpiles of oil and fuel which they're holding.

It's also the way they've electrified their economy to get off fossil fuels and oil in particular more generally.

And they've been doing that for 20 years.

Yeah, that's right.

And Australia is very reliant on the Chinese economy and they've been pretty smart in the way they've dealt with it, for sure.

I mean, it actually began in 2003 when they began the electrification of the economy and also marshalling and looking after their oil storage at the same time.

And it was specifically because, in 2003, specifically because of the vulnerability they had because of all the oil coming through two narrow straits.

The Strait of Malacca, which is between Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula in Singapore, and

and the Strait of Hormuz.

And so they recognised then that they were vulnerable because of those two straits being able to be closed, and off they went.

They built an incredible amount of fast rail, more than the rest of the world combined.

They've really pushed on electric vehicles, and they've built a huge renewable energy solar power and wind power industry.

So that's helped.

And then as we've discussed, they've been increasing their stockpiles of fuel and oil.