The Great Leap Offshore: Sino-Norwegian Relations and Petro-Knowledge Transfers, 1976–1997

Abstract

China’s reemergence among the world’s leading economic and political powers has been one of the most defining changes in the international order since the end of the Cold War. Underpinning China’s ascent were the economic reforms instituted across the late 1970s and early 1980s that opened its economy to foreign direct investments. Preceding these reforms were the ambitions entertained for China’s continental shelf, optimistically forecasting it as nothing less than “the world’s richest petroleum reservoir.” This article will attempt to link these phenomena by examining the economic readjustment in conjunction with the capital- and technology-intensive requirements of the offshore oil industry. It will explore how petroleum knowledge was diffused between Norway and China: notably, how Chinese reformers abandoned the Daqinigst doctrine of self-reliance in favor of a hybrid Norwegian model of petroleum governance. Even though exploration efforts proved disappointing, the episode had both long-term political and commercial ramifications. It was during this often-overlooked episode of Chinese, international, and indeed Norwegian petroleum history that Norway’s national oil company, Statoil, took its first steps outside the Norwegian continental shelf and inspired the formation of China’s own national offshore oil company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation.