China’s crude oil imports fell 41.3% in June from a year earlier to 29.27 million tonnes, the lowest monthly total since October 2016, according to customs data released on 14 July. Five months into the Strait of Hormuz crisis, Beijing is buying less oil than at any point in a decade.
Some of the slack is being absorbed at charging stations. About half of China’s 1.3 million-strong taxi fleet now runs on batteries, according to the Ministry of Transport, and in the largest cities the share is closer to 100%, the visible edge of an EV penetration curve a decade in the making.
Didi, the dominant ride-hailing platform, says it registered another 2 million hybrid or electric cars last year, taking its non-fossil fleet to 8 million vehicles. Electric cars now cover 75% of the mileage booked through the app.
The effect shows up in the fuel numbers. China burned 10% less petrol and 14% less diesel in May than a year earlier, even though road freight rose 2% and May Day holiday road travel hit an all-time high.
None of this is a policy response. No ministry announced a taxi electrification drive when the war began in late February, and the fleets were turning over years before the first missile landed, on the back of commercialisation more than subsidies. The crisis just made the switch pay.
Fares are falling while petrol prices rise. A flood of new drivers into ride-hailing work, combined with cheap electric cars, has pushed fares down 10% to 15% in six months, said a part-time Beijing driver who gave his surname as Li. Passengers with petrol cars are doing the arithmetic and leaving them parked.
In May, people took 3.05 billion taxi and ride-hailing trips, up 6% on the same March-to-May window a year earlier.
“Overall travel demand is still increasing, so more trips are shifting to public transport, such as taxis and the subway,” said Daizong Liu, East Asia director at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
Then the arithmetic. Between 45% and 50% of Chinese crude imports normally transit Hormuz, by Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy estimate, against imports averaging roughly 11.6 million barrels a day in 2025. Call the exposure 5 million barrels a day.
J.P. Morgan expects Chinese petrol demand to fall by 150,000 barrels a day this year, and by a further 50,000 barrels a day in 2027. Set against 5 million barrels a day of transit risk, the electric fleet is worth about 3% of the problem.
Which is the figure worth sitting with. Electrification is a structural drift, not a shock absorber, and June’s heavy lifting was done elsewhere. Refiners cut crude distillation utilisation to 57.72%, close to a 10-year low, and the IEA counted a 41 million barrel draw on Chinese crude stocks in the month alone.
The agency put global supply 9.4 million barrels a day below pre-war levels in June, even after a 4.1 million barrel a day rebound as tankers escaped the Gulf. North Sea Dated had erased its wartime premium by early July at about $68.
Then the ceasefire broke, and Brent was back above $79 on Monday. By buying less, China has freed up cargoes and helped keep a lid on that number.
“The conflict may have accelerated behavioral changes that were already underway, leaving China structurally less dependent on oil than the market has historically assumed,” J.P. Morgan analyst Natasha Kaneva wrote in a note on 2 July.
Dai Jiaquan, chief economist at the CNPC Economics and Technology Research Institute, told an event in Hong Kong that Chinese crude demand will peak within five years, and that the pressing problem at home is now refining overcapacity of 900 million to 1 billion tonnes against demand of 750 million to 800 million.
Greenpeace forecasts that 90% of taxi and ride-hailing mileage will be electric by 2035. Whether the passenger habits hold is about to be tested, because Chinese pump prices have already slid back towards pre-war levels.
