Militarized Oil-Mercantilism:an Asset Or Liability For China’s Energy Security?

China’s energy security is becoming of ever greater concern to the government and the Communist Party, as there is no replacement for oil which is crucial for high growth rates and raising living standards of the common population to legitimize the rule of the party. Yet, oil not only runs the civilian industry and large parts of the country’s infrastructure but also the military, providing a strong base for cooperation between both sectors.The state-ownership of the military-industrial complex and the oil-companies, together with China’s stance on non-interference and willingness to project its interests abroad, both parties have a strong rationale for cooperation out of structural and interest-based reasons. This thesis examines the points of connection upon a convergence of interests within the greater setting of China’s national interests and the structure of decision-mak-ing in foreign policy making based on network theories and ideas of neo-idealism. Hav-ing a rationale, preconditions and structure for a military-energy cooperation established, it is evident that China’s management of its bilateral ties and protection of interests within the current status quo further such cooperation as China is a late-comer on the interna-tional energy markets and so has to deal with weak governments where other oil-majors do not invest, and the need for keeping relations on a pragmatic, friendly and mutually beneficial level. This requires ever higher investments to satisfy the needs of the govern-ments concerned, which in many cases is about sanctioned or embargoed goods such as arms. However, this materialization of bilateral ties in terms of investment-flux and infra-structure projects in order to alter the structure of the current status quo in China’s favor is determined by China’s capacity to deal with externalities further abroad, intensity of market forces and the wider international setting that may, if China doesn’t open its pro-tection of interests as global common good, unleash forces harmful to its long-term ener-gy security interests and the geographic scope of their protection as both the international markets and counterbalancing efforts are sensitive to mercantilistic attempts, so that mea-sures to protect the status quo are likely to backfire on China’s energy security interests.