Joe Leahy

So China becomes even more powerful as an exporter and as a global manufacturer as a result of the crisis.

If the crisis is too harsh, then even China's oil reserves will start to run out and China will have to buy more oil from Russia.

They'll have to use more coal because actually even though it's a huge green power, it's also still building coal thermal plants.

And that's kind of its backbone.

China has a lot of its own coal and that's why it's not going to run out of energy as a result of this crisis.

Right, right.

I'm going to say that was not the main objective.

Can you tell me, Joe, why did China...

so fortuitously build up its oil reserves?

Did they see into a crystal ball and see that the Strait of Hormuz was going to be closed?

Or was it just national policy to develop these immense backup tanks of crude oil?

Let's step back a bit.

The party's mentality has always been to prepare for the worst, basically.

Even back in the Mao days, he situated factories way back in the western part of China to protect them against possible nuclear attack.

The party's always been a huge planner.

Well, it was interesting in a way.

How China didn't come up that I think represents their preparation for this.

So to your point, it was like, what's going to become of Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia?

There was more talk, Joe, I don't mean this personally, there was more talk about Australia's energy problems than there was about China's energy problems.

So it was almost like China was conspicuous by absence in the discussions of the crisis.