Dependency on foreign oil is obviously one reason, but let's don't miss the big picture here
China is trying its hardest in all sectors, everything. With over 1 billion people that are just dead poor, there is no choice but to compete the hardest with everyone on everything. Semiconductor, ev, 5G, bio tech, AI, ship building, high speed rail, internet, solar panel etc, the list goes on and on.
Is there anything China is not trying its best to compete?
But in the grand scheme of things, the Chinese just want to secure their future and finances, just like anyone else.
There is no way for China to be energy independent. The choice is really just choosing importing what kind of energy from which countries.
Imported energy is not a bad thing. It is actually a great way to balance trade. You can't expect the Chinese economy to run a trade surplus like hundreds of billions $ each year with the US and EU. Buying US natural gas is pretty good as long as you have a solid reliable alternative plan, e.g. Russian energy.
ICE car sales requirements are going up drastically this year, meaning most new sales could be EV within 5 years, and they could sell EVs at such scale after that that a ban on gas cars in cities would convert the rest of the fleet in another 5-10 years.
Once you have cheap, abundant energy all the industrial segments are highly motivated to switch.
No, China will not want that.
Being the largest oil importer from the highly unstable middle east provides an unique opportunity to get involved in the regional affairs. Stop buying middle east oil is like giving up the support from a huge chunk of developing countries. Let's call it suicidal.
US oil/lng imports from MENA down to ~1/3 of peak. IIRC below PRC current imports which exceed record US highs. Meanwhile US is now net fossil exporter and direct competitor. Same with PRC EV/green exports will be antagonistic to medium/long MENA fossil/lng exporters interests. Being current/historic best customer, how much energy does PRC have to import to get MENA to swap US military bases with PRC ones? And for how long? My guess is too much and for too long. PRC enduring interests in MENA is for energy security anyway, once that's gone, their essential interests will dissapate, much like it has with US trying to move from CENTCOM to Indopac post shale/lng independance.
But realistically, PRC will be dependant on imported fossil for industrial inputs for a while, the important goal is to wean off strategic sectors like transportation 7/14millionbarrels and use domestic oil of 4mb for mainly industry, with 3-4mb gap filled by imports - i.e. energy security/independance goals is changing energy mix to 7mb per day, 4mb domestic, 3-4mb imports vs current 10mb imports out of 14mb consumption. That gap of 4m is still large enough to influence select exporters strategically if targetted instead of current 10m distributed imports. But medium/long term that's a bribe for RU cooperation.
Like if PRC really wanted to gain influence with MENA, they'd start a TW war and escalate to hitting US oil and lng plants and disrupt US exports to put MENA fossil export back on top. Many would also call that suicidal. Long term PRC best to learn from US and avoid MENA drama and sell EVs / electric / renewable infra to rest of world.
So if Europe decides to prevent Chinese EVs from coming into the market, China would do the same for European cars. This is why Chinese EVs are prioritizing Europe over US as a market. Plus the aforementioned fact that Europe wants to move off oil faster than US wants to.
China is lifting all foreign investment restrictions in all its manufacturing sector this year[0][1].
[0] https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/china-to-remove-all-restri... [1] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3254259/c...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-set...
Huawei's net gear is alread being replaced with brands like Nokia and Ericsson. And car tech is becoming much more advanced so that it can also be used to spy on people.
So the tech is there. And then it comes to trust. Will they not send data when they sell cars outside China?
Cooperating with this evil is like driving into a brick wall to demonstrate how much freedom you have.
Every American has been fed so much propaganda that they see this as good vs evil fight.
Meanwhile, when I visited China, people there only saw this as a political fight. A theater for economical gains. That's it.
But in order to sell the American public on their actions, politicians have to demonize their foreign opponents in every way possible - often portraying them as "evil".
Mainland China is still cut off from knowing a big chunk of human thought. Realism - the school of thought you're describing - is the Marxist mode in a place you can't vocally disagree without serious consequences. No wonder it's what you heard.
We have an almost negligible amount of oil, very far from covering our own consumption. We are very reliant on imports. It should have been our utmost interest, not now but already a decade or so ago, to tell our car industry to wake up once and for all and electrify. Instead, they doubled down on ICEs. Every day we have news in major newspapers, I suppose subsidized by Stellantis and Volkswagen, dwelling on how much EVs suck (full of fallacies like they will always be expensive, they actually emit more CO2 than ICEs if you consider manufacturing, sales are going down in X country - when actually it's invariably the first or even second derivative which goes down -, etc.) - it's pathetic.
We have rampant inflation (to a large extent, precisely due to reliance in fossil fuel imports and the stop of inflows from Russia). People complain that even the lowest-end ICE cars have gone to €20K while anything more or less considered midrange is €30K, when only a decade ago sub-€10K cars and midrange €15K cars were a thing. European ICE cars are ridiculously uncompetitive so most people who want an EV and have the money buy a Tesla.
And the response when someone wants to bring cars at the prices people want is to slap large tariffs... hell, I'm far from a free-market believer and I generally support tariffs as a way to support local industry and avoid external dependence, but this must be the paradigmatic example where they are a bad idea, with our industry only wanting to cling to ICE and being patted in the back for it. What do they want the EU to become, a country stuck in the past where you can see a fleet of cars from decades ago, like Cuba? Do they think it can even work? It's not only China, when Tesla releases the Model 2 it will be game over for the EU car industry anyway.
They are already very late, any measure that doesn't focus on "Electrify. Yesterday" will only deepen an already dire situation.
China meanwhile, is trying its hardest to remove its dependency on foreign oil.
Europe’s incentives are more aligned with China’s.