Denis Staunton
speaker
115 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 15 Jul
Denis Staunton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, China has from the start wanted to get the Strait of Hormuz back open.
They wanted to stop the war.
They didn't like it in the first place, partly because they are the biggest customers, for example, for Iran in terms of its energy, but also for a lot of those states in the Gulf.
And it's not only energy products, but actually lots of other products and lots of other trade they do with these Gulf states, including the Emiratis, the Saudis and various others.
And so it's in China's interest to get everything flowing again.
Having said that, China was in a better position where energy was concerned than many other countries, partly because they had huge stockpiles of oil, huge reserves, and they had about three months supply.
And then also because of the way in which they've been diverting towards renewable energy.
It just meant that in terms of electrification, in terms of electrical power, they were less dependent on it.
So they're much more dependent, for example, on coal and on renewables in terms of generating energy.
But they still obviously need oil.
And so presumably, we don't know exactly how much, but they must have run down some of these reserves so that at a certain stage, if the oil doesn't start flowing again, then China is going to suffer the same as everybody else.
Up to a point, but I think that that's actually worth less to them than stability.
Because if you think about it, the Chinese economy has its own difficulties.
It's still suffering the effects of this years-long property slump, which has dampened domestic demand.
And it's really, you know, one of the reasons why they're exporting so much at the moment and they've hit record exports is because they don't have enough domestic demand.
And so people in the Chinese consumers aren't buying.
And so they really can't afford any kind of hit to the global economy.
And as a big exporting nation, their wealth depends on the wealth of other people.
And so from their point of view, stability is much more important than, say, any satisfaction at the discomfort of Donald Trump.
And then the other thing is that actually Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are getting on reasonably well at the moment.
Showing 61–80 of 115 · page 4 of 6
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