纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英巴以冲突或威胁中国石油进口中立姿态不再适用

China has cast itself as a neutral geopolitical player in the Middle East. It brokered a deal in March to help Iran and Saudi Arabia restore relations. And in the days since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, China has tried to keep its distance, with a government spokesman calling the country “a common friend of both Israel and Palestine.”

中国已将自己塑造成中东地区一个中立的地缘政治参与者。今年3月，它促成了一项协议，帮助伊朗和沙特阿拉伯恢复外交关系。自哈马斯从加沙袭击以色列以来，中国一直试图保持距离，政府发言人称中国是“以色列和巴勒斯坦共同的朋友”。

Yet China’s stakes in the Middle East are high, particularly if the war now being fought in Israel and Gaza were to broaden through the region.

然而，中国在中东的利益非常重大，尤其是如果目前在以色列和加沙的战争扩大到整个地区的话。

One big reason: oil.

这就要说到石油了。

No country buys more oil from Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest producer behind the United States. Half of China’s oil imports, and a little more than a third of all the oil burned in China, comes from the Persian Gulf, according to Andon Pavlov, the lead refining and oil products analyst at Kpler, an analysis firm in Vienna.

沙特阿拉伯是仅次于美国的世界第二大石油生产国，而中国是沙特石油最大的购买国。维也纳分析公司Kpler的炼油和石油产品首席分析师安东·帕夫洛夫表示，中国一半的石油进口及略多于三分之一的石油消耗均来自波斯湾。

China has also started buying more oil from Iran, a longtime backer of Hamas, the group behind the attack. China has more than tripled its imports of Iranian oil in the past two years and bought 87 percent of Iran’s oil exports last month, according to Kpler, which specializes in tracking Iran’s oil exports.

中国也开始从伊朗购买更多石油，伊朗是发动此次袭击的哈马斯的长期支持者。据专门追踪伊朗石油出口的Kpler称，在过去两年里，中国从伊朗进口的石油增加了两倍多，上个月购买了伊朗87%的石油出口量。

China “is highly exposed to the current instability in the Middle East, especially if it escalates,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a longtime specialist in China’s oil policies at the National University of Singapore.

新加坡国立大学长期研究中国石油政策的专家菲利普·安德鲁斯-斯比德说，中国“受到中东当前不稳定局势的高度影响，尤其是如果局势升级的话”。

China, the world’s second-largest economy, has become addicted to foreign oil at a stunning pace. As recently as the early 1990s, China was self-sufficient in oil. Now it depends on imports for about 72 percent of its oil needs.

作为世界第二大经济体，中国对外国石油的依赖正以惊人的速度增长。就在上世纪90年代初，中国的石油还能自给自足。现在，该国72%的石油需求依赖进口。

By comparison, the United States’ reliance on imported oil peaked at about 60 percent around 2005, before the fracking boom transformed the United States into a net exporter.

相比之下，美国对进口石油的依赖在2005年左右达到了60%左右的峰值，之后水力压裂开采热潮将美国转变为石油净出口国。

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has kept energy security as one of the country’s top priorities through his decade in office.

在中国最高领导人习近平的十年任期内，他一直将能源安全作为国家的首要任务之一。

“Energy supply and security are crucial for national development and people’s livelihoods, and are a most important matter for the country that cannot be ignored at any moment,” Mr. Xi said in July.

“能源保障和安全事关国计民生，是须臾不可忽视的‘国之大者’，”习近平在7月说。

To that end, China has made giant investments in electric vehicles. It now dominates the world’s production of electric cars, and by August a third of the cars sold in China were electric, said Bill Russo, a Shanghai automotive consultant.

为此，中国在电动车领域进行了巨额投资。上海汽车咨询师比尔·鲁索说，中国现在主导着全球电动车的生产，到今年8月，中国销售的汽车中有三分之一是电动车。

But gasoline consumption has stayed high, as new car sales gradually change the overall fleet of mostly gasoline-fueled vehicles on China’s roads. Driving has also surged this year, including during a weeklong national holiday this month, because China ended nearly three years of “zero Covid” measures that restricted travel.

新车销量逐渐改变了中国道路上以燃油车为主的整体格局，汽油消费量却始终居高不下。由于中国结束了长达近三年限制出行的“清零”措施，今年驾车出行的人数出现激增，包括在本月为期一周的国庆长假期间。

Another reason for China’s oil thirst: It is the world leader in the production of petrochemicals, which are made from oil and natural gas.

中国渴求石油的另一个原因是：中国是世界石化产品的生产大国，这种产品由石油和天然气制成。

China has little chance of shaking its reliance on oil imports, said Lin Boqiang, the dean of energy studies at Xiamen University in Xiamen, China. “Looking forward, I do not believe it can decrease substantially,” he said.

中国厦门大学能源研究学院院长林伯强表示，中国几乎没有机会改变对石油进口的依赖。“展望未来，我不认为它会大幅减少，”他说。

China does not officially acknowledge buying any oil from Iran, which is under broad international sanctions as it attempts to build nuclear weapons. But its purchases have been well documented by industry experts.

中国没有正式承认从伊朗购买任何石油，伊朗因试图制造核武器而受到广泛的国际制裁。但业内专家对其购买行为进行了详细记录。

Iran relies on shipping oil aboard tankers that turn off their automatic location transponders, sometimes for weeks at a time, and often don’t turn them on again until they reach high-traffic waterways like the Strait of Malacca next to Malaysia.

伊朗依靠油轮运输石油，这些油轮会关闭自动定位应答器，有时一关就是几个星期，而且通常要到到达交通繁忙的航道，比如毗邻马来西亚的马六甲海峡，才会重新打开。

China’s official statistics instead show Malaysia as one of China’s largest suppliers of oil, even though Malaysia has limited and shrinking oil production from aging oil fields.

而在中国的官方统计数据里，马来西亚是中国最大的石油供应国之一，尽管马来西亚老化油田的石油产量有限，而且正在萎缩。

Refineries in China that turn crude into gasoline and other products have shifted to buying more oil from Iran because Iranian oil is now cheaper than Russian oil, Mr. Pavlov said. Iranian oil sells at a discount to world prices of about $10 a barrel, despite sanctions, while Russian oil sells at a discount of about $5 a barrel, despite sanctions, he said.

帕夫洛夫说，中国将原油加工成汽油和其他产品的炼油厂已经转向从伊朗购买更多的石油，因为伊朗石油现在比俄罗斯石油便宜。他说，尽管受到制裁，伊朗石油的销售价格仍比世界价格每桶低约10美元，而俄罗斯石油的销售价格则比世界价格每桶低约五美元。

“China always goes with what is cheapest,” he said.

“中国总是选择最便宜的，”他说。

While Russia has a long border with China, infrastructure limits Russia’s ability to ship more oil south.

虽然俄罗斯与中国有很长的边境线，但基础设施不足限制了俄罗斯向南输送更多石油的能力。

Officials from Russia, China and Mongolia have held a long series of discussions over the past year on whether to build a natural gas pipeline, called Power of Siberia 2, that would link Russian gas fields across Mongolia to China. Building such a pipeline could allow oil shipments alongside it.

过去一年里，俄罗斯、中国和蒙古的官员就是否修建一条名为“西伯利亚力量2号”的天然气管道进行了多次讨论。这条管道将穿过蒙古，把俄罗斯的天然气田与中国连接到一起。 旁边还可以建设一条运送石油的管道。

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has said he will attend Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next week, reawakening speculation in the global energy industry on whether a pipeline deal might finally be concluded. But a pipeline would take many years to build and cost tens of billions of dollars.

俄罗斯总统普京表示，他将出席下周在北京举行的“一带一路”国际合作峰会论坛，这再次令全球能源行业猜测该管道协议是否能够达成。但管道建设需要多年时间，耗资数百亿美元。

“I’m highly skeptical of the pipeline’s commercial logic, but energy security and geopolitics might ultimately trump economics,” said Joe Webster, a senior fellow at the Global Energy Center of the Atlantic Council, a Washington research group.

“我对这条管道的商业逻辑持高度怀疑态度，但能源安全和地缘政治最终可能胜过经济，”华盛顿研究机构大西洋理事会全球能源中心高级研究员乔·韦伯斯特说，

Some of the oil that China buys is being put in storage tanks, which it is building at an even faster rate than its oil consumption has risen. China does not release figures for its reserves, but they are believed to be considerable. Most experts guess that China’s oil reserves equal about 90 days of imports, which long has been the minimum that the United States has set for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

中国购买的一些石油正被储存在储油罐中，储油罐的建造速度甚至快于其石油消费的增长速度。中国没有公布其石油储备的具体数字，但据信数额相当可观。大多数专家猜测，中国的石油储备大约相当于90天的进口量，这一直是美国为其战略石油储备设定的最低限度。

Energy security is not the sole factor in China’s decision-making on Mideast issues, said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington policy research group.

华盛顿政策研究机构德国马歇尔基金会印太项目主任葛来仪(Bonnie Glaser)说，能源安全并不是中国在中东问题上做出决策的唯一因素。

Beijing has tried hard to stay on friendly terms with the Islamic world even as China has cracked down on predominantly Muslim minorities in its far western region, Xinjiang. China has also tried to maintain relations with both Israel and Palestinians.

北京一直努力与伊斯兰世界保持友好关系，尽管中国在其最西部的新疆地区镇压以穆斯林为主的少数民族。中国还试图同时维持与以色列和巴勒斯坦的关系。

“The only way China has been able to achieve that goal is to avoid getting deeply involved,” Ms. Glaser said.

“中国能够实现这一目标的唯一途径是避免深度介入，”葛来仪说。

But whether China can maintain its distance from the Mideast’s troubles is less clear.

但中国能否与中东的麻烦保持距离就不那么清楚了。

“Since America doesn’t import much oil from that part of the world, the countries in that part of the world start to think how their geopolitical alliances will be reshaped in the decades to come,” said Kevin Tu, a Beijing energy consultant. “China has become a major stakeholder in this region whether it likes it or not, and China needs to play a role to stabilize the region in the years to come.”

“由于美国从该地区进口的石油不多，中东国家开始考虑，未来几十年，它们的地缘政治联盟将如何重塑，”北京的能源顾问涂建军说。“不管中国愿意与否，它已经成为该地区的一个主要利益相关者，需要在未来几年里为稳定该地区发挥作用。”