Challenges China Faces In Its Oil And Gas Cooperation With Kazakhstan

China is the world's largest importer of crude oil and natural gas,and its dependence on foreign oil and gas resources is growing.In 2018,China's external dependence on oil is close to 70%,and that on natural gas is 45.3%.Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producing countries and Russia are China's major crude oil suppliers.Influenced by geopolitical games and regional stability,China is facing energy security threats.In order to alleviate the "Malacca dilemma" and realize the diversification of energy supply channels,China entered the energy sector of Kazakhstan in the 1990 s and established a long-term energy cooperation relationship with Kazakhstan.(ChinaKazakhstan energy cooperation mainly focuses on oil and gas.The energy cooperation between China and Kazakhstan here and below mainly refers to oil and gas resources,while other energy resource cooperation is outside the scope of this paper.)Due to the particularity of Kazakhstan's geographical location,which is located in the "heart" of Eurasia,an important transportation hub connecting Eurasia,the security barrier of other four countries in Central Asia facing Russia,and rich energy resources,Kazakhstan has already become a cooperative target for the major countries outside the region.Fierce Energy Geopolitical games are staged in Kazakhstan,and China's energy activities in Kazakhstan are facing multiple challenges.This paper takes the energy competition in the era of globalization as the research background,based on the theoretical perspective of energy geopolitics.This paper sums up three basic theoretical propositions of energy geopolitics as the guiding ideology,i.e.the pursuit of national energy dominance and energy security interests,the competitiveness of energy geopolitics,the regional and global problems faced by the international energy system,combined with China-Kazakhstan energy cooperation,Kazakhstan energy foreign policy and the history and current situation of energy strategies of other foreign powers in Kazakhstan,to study the challenges faced by China-Kazakhstan energy cooperation.Three types of challenges are identified,described and analyzed.The first is Kazakhstan's geopolitical strategy,that is,the pursuit of energy autonomy,Central Asia's leadership and domestic security interests,as well as the challenges posed by China's geopolitical strategy and limited ability.The second challenges are brought by Russia,the United States,the European Union and other major countries and groups of countries competing in energy Geopolitics in Kazakhstan,that is,Russia seeks energy dominance in Central Asia,the United States establishes "Regional Anchor" in Central Asia,and the European Union seeks energy supply security.Finally,there are challenges from regional and global issues,such as the exclusiveness of the sovereignty dispute in the Caspian Sea,the turbulence of the international energy market caused by economic sanctions and crude oil production reduction agreements,and traditional and non-traditional security threats.In the end,some preliminary suggestions are put forward on how to deal with the above challenges.