An industrial lightweight just three decades ago, market liberalization policies initiated by the late Chinese Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978 have turned China into an economic juggernaut. As China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong puts it: “Business is business. We try to separate politics from business.” An old China hand, Alberta Oil writer Sebastian Gault, whose China-Alberta.com website promotes Sino-Canadian business relations, provides a glimpse into China’s coming of age in the petroleum sector.

When the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) begrudgingly abandoned its $18.4 billion bid for Unocal Corp. in August of last year, not only did it end a politically-charged takeover battle that highlighted U.S. apprehensions about the economic rise of the world’s most populous nation, it effectively ended an era.

“The unprecedented political opposition,” opined the company with no little disdain, “was regrettable and unjustified.” But at the same time, observers couldn’t be blamed for sensing that something deeper also had just happened – that perhaps CNOOC was not just erasing from the cultural blackboard ancient wisdoms built around patience and perseverance but that it was also cleaning the brush. One could almost hear the popular Confucian proverb – ‘Over time, even water penetrates through stone’ – being updated in the aftermath of Unocal: but certainly western drilling technology would make it a lot easier, faster and more productive.

Deng was a pragmatist when, by proclaiming “Energy is the priority issue in the economy,” he launched a new era of double-digit annual growth. The Chinese communist party seems to have shelved communist revolutionary and former Chairman Mao Zedong’s little red book in favour of Adam Smith, and 1.3 billion people have since set to turning China into the world’s workshop. And to keep the machines running, they need oil – lots of it.

Indeed, Chinese historians are quick to point out that the “Middle Kingdom” commanded 35 per cent of global GDP in the early 19th century. With spirits buoyed by year upon year of recent steady progress – a pace of growth more than double that of its western rivals – current macroeconomic policies aim at restoring the country to its former glory and then some. If yesterday’s catchword was ‘catch-up,’ tomorrow’s will be: ‘overtake’.

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