China faced the smallest exposure and captured the greatest gain from the Strait of Hormuz crisis that erupted in February, according to a comprehensive analysis by Asia Group, a geopolitical consulting firm.
U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Feb. 28 killed Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and prompted Tehran to effectively seal one of the world's most critical shipping lanes. Before the closure, roughly 80 percent of oil and nearly 90 percent of liquefied natural gas transiting the waterway flowed toward Asian markets.
The shock sent global energy prices sharply higher. For most of Asia's largest economies—India, Japan and South Korea—the disruption created genuine hardship. For China, years of deliberate preparation proved decisive.
China has maintained strategic petroleum reserves for decades, but accelerated its stockpiling program as global prices fell before the February crisis. The country increased crude imports from 11.1 million barrels daily to 11.6 million in 2025. According to analysis by Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at the Centre on Global Energy Policy, over 80 percent of that increase went directly into reserves. By January, China had stockpiled enough crude to cover 104 days of imports at 2025 consumption levels.
Beijing's insurance policy extended beyond petroleum. The country has spent years building renewable capacity at an unprecedented scale. Last year alone, China installed 315 gigawatts of new solar capacity—representing more than half of all new solar installations globally.
Beijing has set a target for half of China's energy to come from non-fossil sources by 2030, with wind and solar reaching 30 percent of the mix, up from 22 percent in 2025. Coal still dominates China's energy portfolio at over 50 percent, but the structural shift is underway and measurable.
The Asia Group assessment noted: "With 1.4 terawatts of operating renewable capacity already online and a reported 90-110 days of crude import cover in reserve, China weathered the initial shock better than any regional peer."
The advantage extends beyond resilience. The crisis accelerated a global trend favoring Beijing's position in clean energy manufacturing. As other nations scrambled to reduce energy vulnerability, they turned to renewable infrastructure—an industry where China dominates the global supply chain in solar panels, battery components and electric vehicle manufacturing.
China's electric vehicle exports surged more than 110 percent in May compared to the previous year. Solar shipments jumped 60 percent in April.
Beijing's diplomatic positioning has been equally strategic. The government called for a ceasefire while privately noting how the crisis exposed American destabilization in the Middle East. When Trump visited Beijing in May to meet President Xi Jinping, both nations claimed alignment on seeking a settlement.
But some analysts have raised concerns. Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, cautioned against oversimplifying the geopolitical calculus. "It's tempting to see any loss of credibility in the U.S. as a benefit for China, but that's not necessarily the case for Beijing, which does not want to supplant Washington as a Middle East hegemon or provider of security for the region," he said.
Wen-Ti Sung, a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub based in Taiwan, identified another consideration. The crisis demonstrated the extreme difficulty of maintaining supply chains and military capability through contested waters—a lesson potentially relevant to any future Chinese military operations in the Taiwan Strait.
Yet the Asia Group's final assessment captures Beijing's apparent worldview: "Ultimately Beijing views the pain points not as existential threats, but as challenges to be managed and even opportunities to be exploited."
The real question is whether the structural advantages Beijing has built—energy reserves, renewable capacity and manufacturing dominance—represent a durable shift in global economic power, or whether competitors can eventually rebalance the scales.
