Nation deserves a thumbs-up for boosting energy security

Editor's Note: Energy drives economic development and helps improve people's lives, but extracting fossil fuels and generating electricity also cause environmental pollution. So China has pledged to phase out coal-fired power plants while increasing the use of clean energy. In the fifth of a series of commentaries, a veteran journalist with China Daily focuses on the country's energy security.

Day and night, hundreds of oil tankers carry the precious black liquid from the Middle East to China to fuel the world's second-largest economy. For many years, China has been the world's biggest oil importer, importing on average 10 million barrels of oil a day.

In 2020, China imported 542 million tons of crude oil, up 7.3 percent year-on-year. The fact that China consumes about 700 million tons of oil a year, and imports account for over 70 percent of that, drew the attention of the authorities to energy security, especially because it has the bitter experience of facing sanctions from advanced countries since the middle of the 20th century.