China's Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates: Oil as an Idea

Routledge, 2021.

Kuteleva A.

This book examines the development of bilateral energy relations between China and the two oil-rich countries, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Challenging conventional assumptions about energy politics and China’s global quest for oil, this book examines the interplay of politics and sociocultural contexts. It shows how energy resources become ideas and how these ideas are mobilized in the realm of international relations. China’s relations with Kazakhstan and Russia are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the discursive politics of oil. It is argued that to build collaborative and constructive energy relations with China, its partners in Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere must consider not only the material realities of China’s energy industry and the institutional settings of China’s energy policy but also the multiple symbolic meanings that energy resources and, particularly, oil acquire in China.

China’s Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates offers a nuanced understanding of China’s bilateral energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, raising essential questions about the social logic of international energy politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, energy security, Chinese and post-Soviet studies, along with researchers working in the fields of energy policy and environmental sustainability.

Chapters

China-Russia energy relations

Kuteleva A., , in: China's Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates: Oil as an Idea.: Routledge, 2021. P. 61–95.

This chapter explains how and with what effect China’s and Russia’s energy paradigms are manifested and enacted in their bilateral energy relations. The demand for and of imports of oil on China’s part has been rising steadily since the mid-1990s, yet Russia hesitated to enter long-term agreements with China until the end of the 2000s. ...

Added: August 30, 2021

Discursive Politics of Energy and Energy Paradigms: Theoretical Framework and Methodology

Kuteleva A., , in: China's Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates: Oil as an Idea.: Routledge, 2021. Ch. 2 P. 8–23.

This chapter critically reviews the major theoretical debates that provide the basis for the study of energy politics in the realm of International Relations (IR). It identifies a number of blindspots in the existing mainstream realist and liberal scholarship on energy politics. This scholarship is heavily preoccupied with the dichotomy of conflict and cooperation and ...

Added: August 30, 2021

China–Kazakhstan energy relations

Kuteleva A., , in: China's Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates: Oil as an Idea.: Routledge, 2021. P. 96–138.

Kazakhstan, the second-biggest oil-exporter in the former Soviet space behind Russia, is China’s key energy partner in Central Asia. Even though energy relations between China and Kazakhstan have so far been mutually beneficial and corresponded to the interests of both states, China’s expansion in Kazakhstan’s oil sector promotes a Sinophobic backlash and increasing neocolonial concerns ...

Added: August 30, 2021

China’s energy security and discursive politics of energy

Kuteleva A., , in: China's Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates: Oil as an Idea.: Routledge, 2021. P. 24–60.

How does modern China define and communicate its identity in international energy relations, and how does China make its energy choices? This is the central question that this chapter addresses. It starts with China’s quest for “self-reliance” in the 1950s and the story of the Daqing oilfield. Further, it discusses the legacy of “self-reliance” and ...

Added: August 30, 2021

What do you imagine when you think about oil?

Kuteleva A., , in: China's Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates: Oil as an Idea.: Routledge, 2021. Ch. 1 P. 1–7.

Chapter 1 introduces the book. It begins by outlining the book’s central research question, emphasizing the importance of considering not only material but also discursive structures of energy politics. It then introduces China as the central subject of the study as well as China–Kazakhstan and China–Russia energy relations as the two in-depth case studies that ...

Added: August 30, 2021

Keywords: energy security, energy politics, oil politics, China-Russia relations, China-Kazakhstan relations