The Asia Times has issued a series of reports documenting that China is moving quickly to take control of Central Asian energy sources and to squeeze other nations out of that region. If China is successful in gaining rights to most of the Central Asian/Caspian Sea oil and gas resources, it will give China a major advantage in fueling its economy and depriving other nations (especially Western nations) of key energy resources. A previous blog discussed the various competing oil pipeline plans that seek to direct Central Asian energy supplies to the Western world or other nations.
China will be building a new pipeline which will take gas directly from Turkmenistan to western China via other Central Asian nations which were once part of the USSR, bypassing Afghanistan altogether in the transit route. The USA and NATO are fighting in Afghanistan, but they have offered no good reason to their citizens why this war is continuing. In my view, the USA and NATO are fighting to secure oil and gas pipeline routes through that nation which would also pass through Pakistani Baluchistan (also a subject of a previous blog) and then on to the Western nations (see map at the first link). It appears that China intends to direct as much Central Asian energy supplies to China and leave the western nations “out in the cold.” If China secures rights to the oil and gas in Central Asia, there may not be much point in the USA/NATO continuing the Afghan War. China’s appretite is so voracious it is even coming into competition with Russia for Central Asian energy resources as the first link and third link below mention.
The first link also reports that China gained rights to Iraqi oil in a legal bidding auction. China is flush with money so it makes sense that China has the means to routinely win such auctions. This means the USA expended all that money and blood in the Iraqi War so China could gain a significant share of Iraqi oil. This is a major failure of U.S. policy. In the old days of the British Empire, you can be sure that any nation conquered by Great Britain would have had its oil (and other natural resources) allocated to British companies. The USA failed to insure that it got the oil supplies of the nation it conquered. This failure to act in its own interests is one reason the U.S. “empire” will not last anywhere near as long as the British Empire did.
China’s need for oil is so voracious that it also needs a lot of Middle East oil, and it just made sure it got access to more by winning the Iraqi oil auction. China also is building a large port facility at Gwadar, Pakistan which will not only give China a naval base near the Straits of Hormuz, but it could serve as a location from which Middle East oil could be shipped via Pakistan to China. China is even working with Saudi Arabia to build oil refineries in China to refine Saudi oil, so that makes it certian more Saudi oil will go to China, not the USA or the West.
In another foreboding development for the USA, Venezuela is showing interest in selling more oil to China and less to the USA. China is steadily squeezing the USA away from as many of its traditional energy suppliers as it can. China is also locking in access to African oil fields. China has a huge advantage in making this happen. It has real hard-currency assets to pay for oil while the USA is so indebted that its dollar is increasingly less-trusted in international financial deals.
All the above affirm that China is in ascendany and the USA and the West are declining powers. The sad thing is the USA and the West are declining from self-inflicted wounds (reckless debt-creation by the Federal Reserve Board, reckless spending by the U.S. government, reckless greed on Wall Street that almost collapsed the global financial markets in September, 2008, and a foolish decision to relocate the West’s manufacturing plants to China and other foreign nations). Deuteronomy 28:44 warned that the “covenant” nations throughout history which turn to sin and rebellion vs. God’s Divine laws and order will be punished by God who will make them lower and lower (the “tail”) as other nations become higher and higher (the “head”). That is happening on many fronts. For evidence that the USA is a “covenant” nation and is subject to the judgments of Deuteronomy 28, please read the article, The USA in Bible Prophecy, available at the home page of my website. After reading that article, you will understand why God has his eye fixed on what the USA does. If the USA continues to kick God and his laws out of our society, America will continue its decline.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KL24Ag07.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KL24Ag04.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/KL16Cb01.html
