Yeah Chinese oil reserves were much larger than was publicly known. They immediately cut imports by a massive amount as soon as the war started and have been able to keep it up for months. Without that the economic fallout would have been far greater.

Not that they are doing it for this reason, but they have done a lot to shield trump from the consequences of his stupid war. But those supplies can only hold for so long; things can get much worse for the world economy in the near future.

China took 5.5 million barrels per day of demand off of the table overnight. A quarter of what went through the strait. They single-handedly stopped catastrophe by months.

Even with that, global strategic petroleum reserves are quickly draining. Last I looked, the US was down to ~290M. There is a legal limit of 250M (though laws don’t matter anymore). The structural floor is also estimated to be somewhere north of 200M.

The world is about to not be able to meet all oil demand for any price.

China is also reducing gasoline and diesel use by adoption of EVs.