Chinese “Gas Policy” towards Russia and Turkmenistan, 2001–2012

Abstract

The ambition of the paper is to analyze the major characteristics of theChinese energy policy towards the most important producers of natural gasin China’s neighborhood. The analytical perspectives of a strategic approachto energy security and state-centric realism are used to work with casestudies of Sino-Russian and Sino-Turkmen relations from the energysecurity perspective. The paper concludes that China’s energy policytowards the given producers in Russia and Turkmenistan comessignificantly close to the selected analytical perspectives and that naturalgas has become an important part of the strategic considerations of theChinese political leadership. This conclusion, however, applies more toTurkmenistan and less to Russia, as in the case of the Sino-Russianrelations, both parties fail to achieve a mutual complementarity, andeconomic thinking prevails over Beijing’s strategic interests.