China, Oil, and Asia: Conflict Ahead
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Author(s): S. S. Harrison
Date: 1977
Topics: Conflict Causes, Extractive Resources
Countries: China
This book presents the first comprehensive report on Peking's carefully non-publicized offshore oil and gas program. Harrison shows why a growing Chinese offshore capability could foreshadow significant clashes of interest with neighboring countries, affecting, in particular, the future of Taiwan and South Korea; the Sino-Japanese-Soviet triangle; Sino-Vietnamese and Sino-Filipino relations; and the operations of American and other foreign oil companies with concessions in disputed areas. Powerful economic factors reinforce the political and strategic considerations that lie behind China's offshore ambitions. Increasingly, Harrison reports, Chinese leaders are turning to offshore development as one of the keys to the fulfillment of their energy production targets and thus to the achievement of rapid economic growth within their chosen framework of ''self-reliance''.