China-US energy wars and Taiwan’s balancing act
‘The strategic goal is energy systems that are affordable and cannot be blocked or held hostage’
US President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency on his first day back in office framed fossil fuel as a geopolitical weapon. “Energy dominance” by flooding markets with American oil and liquefied natural gas, or LNG, would reassert United States power.
It would also undercut China’s clean-technology leverage and discipline allies into dependence. Eighteen months on, the doctrine reveals contradictions, and nowhere more acutely than in Taiwan. The numbers behind assertions of US dominance are real.
Boosted by the shale revolution in 2005, oil and gas production has reached record highs, with over 13.6 million barrels of oil per day last year. LNG exports already commanded roughly one-third of the global market before the Iran crisis.
By 2028, the European Union could depend on the US for 80% of its LNG imports. Yet, producing large amounts of oil and gas is not the same as having strategic control. Prices are also determined by OPEC+ decisions, shipping chokepoints and accelerating renewables.
Climate action
These are factors Washington has found difficult to control – despite American efforts at obstructing global climate action, pressuring European countries to shun Russian gas and sanctioning, toppling or killing the leadership of petrostates deemed too close to China.
Coercive measures have won battles. Venezuela’s government has moved closer to the US since the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro. The European Union has pledged US$250 billion in annual US energy purchases.
Similar commitments have been extracted from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These are in part compliance purchases, not market ones. East Asian and European nations are largely buying US fossil fuels for lack of alternatives and to protect their fraying security umbrella.
They are also seeking to avoid higher tariffs and address shortfalls resulting from Russian and American military aggression, not because the economics have been compelling. Meanwhile, China has been developing a different energy strategy.
It has become the largest clean-technology exporter, now manufacturing roughly 80% of the world’s solar panels and 77% of wind turbines. It dominates electric vehicle battery supply chains and ultra-high voltage transmission technologies, and controls most critical minerals.
Although the metaphor of energy wars is simplistic, China embodies a fast-rising electro-state positioned to win the energy war in the long term. In contrast, the US increasingly passes for an insecure incumbent petrostate.
It appears reliant on its military might, fossil fuel endowment, and a disregard for international law and climate change, to reassert an outdated energy dominance. When US-Israel attacks on Iran triggered the Strait of Hormuz crisis, that divergence became visible.
American consumers absorbed fuel-price shocks, while China’s domestic renewable infrastructure, early shift to electric vehicles, or EVs, and massive strategic oil reserves partially cushioned its economy.
Military coercion
While Washington boasted about more than 100 “empty vessels heading to American ports to load US crude,” China was seeing record growth in EV exports. There is no doubt US oil and gas companies are enjoying a windfall, but these EVs will long be on the road.
China has spent the past three decades constructing the infrastructure of the new energy order. In contrast, the US remains a fossil-fuel superpower that must deploy sanctions and military coercion to convince allies and rivals it once led.
At the same time, it has ceded ground in the clean-technology industries it once led. So, if China symbolizes the electro-state and the US the petrostate, most other nations are being caught in the middle.
These countries are still dependent on imported fossil fuels as they scramble to build renewable capacity while watching the rivalry unfold between two giants with mounting anxiety. That anxiety is particularly acute in Taiwan.
The island imports roughly 94% of its energy, with LNG and coal arriving through the same maritime corridors that could become contested in a conflict scenario. The Hormuz disruption has exposed an Achilles’ heel. Roughly one third of Taiwan’s LNG supplies were affected.
Taiwan’s predicament has three interlocking dimensions. The first is security becuase if China ever blockaded the island, it would trigger an energy and a semiconductor crisis. The second is demand as chip fabs and data centres are electricity-intensive facilities.
Semiconductor company TSMC consumes around 8% of Taiwan’s national electricity, and artificial intelligence-driven demand is projected to grow above the national average.
Global energy
The third is climate as Taipei’s 2050 net-zero target requires tripling renewable capacity while managing a likely short-lived post-nuclear transition. The island shuttered its last reactor in 2025 under conditions of relentless industrial power-demand growth.
What makes Taiwan’s position distinctive is not just this triple bind, but the fact that it sits at the intersection reshaping global energy. Its semiconductors are the physical backbone of the clean transition, essential to AI infrastructure, smart grids, EV controllers and solar inverters.
Almost all of its key supply chains, including for renewable energy equipment, run through China or Chinese-controlled firms in Southeast Asia. And they have already shown a willingness to weaponize export controls.
Taipei’s response has been to diversify toward the US, aiming to raise American LNG’s share of imports from 10 to 25% by 2029. This is partly strategic logic and partly political hedging as Washington tries to persuade Taiwan to invest in increasingly costly LNG projects.
Such a buy-in is also a way of currying favour with the Trump administration, whose backing, in the event of confrontation with China, Taiwan regards as essential. There is, however, a harder lesson in all of this than Taiwan’s particular dilemmas.
Energy dominance, as a doctrine, mistakes the instrument for the goal. Control over fossil fuel flows is not the same as strategic resilience, as the Hormuz disruption demonstrated.
Countries responding to that shock are not concluding they need more oil. They are concluding they need less exposure to it, and that US behaviour is having painful costs.
Strategic partnership
The strategic goal for most countries is energy systems that are affordable and cannot be blocked or held hostage. For Taiwan, that means diversifying oil and LNG supplies, grid hardening, increasing use of renewable energy, as well as selective nuclear re-engagement.
For the US, it means recognizing that fossil fuel supremacy is not a durable form of power. As for states caught between the two superpowers, it resembles a costly and clumsy protection racket, rather than a respectful strategic partnership advancing long-term energy security.
This article was co-authored by Suzanne Duroy, a full-time journalist based in Taiwan.
Philippe Le Billon is Professor of the Geography Department and School of Public Policy & Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.