Oil-hungry China welcomes alleged war criminal al-Bashir

BEIJING — If there’s one thing that gets discussed a lot regarding China’s relationship with Sudan, it’s the oil interest.

As the world’s largest energy consumer and one of the fastest-growing economies, China needs oil. Since 1995, it has invested heavily in Sudan’s oil infrastructure via the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

“We cannot exaggerate the importance of Sudan oil to the whole of China’s oil input,” said Dr. He Wenping of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Sudan isn't China's leading supplier in Africa; that honor more recently has gone to Angola. But Sudan does supply roughly seven per cent of the mainland's oil needs.

In return, Beijing has provided military support — most visibly in the form of weaponry — to Khartoum.

The oil-for-arms relationship provoked a huge international outcry in relation to the Darfur conflict. Western governments and human rights groups called on China to stop supplying small arms to Sudan (although Russia was just as, if not more, culpable) and to use its leverage with Sudan to end the wholesale mass killings.

But what's more interesting than simply China's oil interests in Sudan is the way in which those interests are affecting Beijing's foreign policy.

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