A sharp decrease in China's oil imports has been pivotal to keeping oil prices down since the start of the war in Iran. That, in turn, has helped curb inflation and support the global economy.

How China slashed imports by nearly 50% and survived has been a mystery, even with Beijing's long-term strategy of energy self-reliance.

Some clues are now emerging. Fuel-export curbs spurred refineries to cut back on consumption; travelers flew less, deterred by increased surcharges. Authorities tapped oil reserves that had been socked away before the war; a shift toward coal paid off.

China's oil purchases remain at their lowest level in nearly a decade. These charts help explain how China did it.

Imports slashed

China, the world's largest oil importer, purchased around 11 million barrels a day in 2025, with half that amount coming from Middle East suppliers including Iran, according to energy analytics company Vortexa.

Soon after the war began in late February, China's crude-oil imports fell sharply. From February to June, China slashed imports by 5.8 million barrels a day, a 48.9% drop. Levels remained low even with a July rebound.

Refineries pull back

China's widespread adoption of electric vehicles has reduced domestic demand for fuel oil. Many of the country's refiners adapted to this change with an established economic model: What China can't consume, it exports.

The country sells gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and is a top exporter of petrochemical feedstocks, such as ethylene, that are used for manufacturing plastics, packaging materials and other everyday goods.

But after the war began, Beijing restricted fuel exports.

The export restrictions pushed Chinese refiners to cut back on crude-processing activities.

By May, the average run rate across 49 state-owned refineries-the share of capacity actively processing crude oil-had dropped to 71.6%, the lowest level since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to S&P Global Energy Platts. The production of refined oil fell by 5.6% and of plastics products by 4.9% in the first half of 2026.

Air travel dips

Since the war in Iran began, fewer people traveling within China have been taking the plane.

The war drove up airfares around the world as fuel costs surged. While Beijing curbed jet-fuel exports and kept more at home, domestic flights within China got more expensive, too, including higher fuel surcharges.

China's domestic flight passenger numbers fell 8% in May and 7% in June from a year earlier. Meanwhile, passenger rail remained resilient, sheltered from the oil market on an electric grid powered mainly by coal and renewables.

Using more coal

Even before the war, China was increasingly tapping into its vast coal reserves to make oil, gasoline and other products. The amount of refined products made from coal in 2024 was equivalent to refining nearly 300 million barrels of crude-or around a month of crude-oil imports that year.

Coal-rich provinces in northwestern China, encouraged by the government, are seeing a boom in new coal-to-chemical projects. In the Xinjiang region, where coal prices are among the lowest in the country, production of naphtha and diesel from coal nearly doubled in 2025 from the previous year.

The investment left China well prepared for wartime disruptions. After the war began, China's coal-to-chemical industry had a valuable buffer from rising oil prices, and the benefit of higher prices for their products.

Drawing from robust reserves

Chinese oil demand for the second quarter of 2026 declined by just 1.6 million barrels a day from the same period last year, according to S&P Global Energy. That is a modest drop next to the plunge in imports.

Many economists say the explanation must lie with China's vast crude-oil reserves.

No one knows the exact size of the reserves-China won't say, and it stores some crude underground. Analysts put the total, including strategic petroleum reserves, oil held in refineries and the commercial reserves that represent the largest share of China's stockpile, at between 1 billion and 1.4 billion barrels.

Beijing began stockpiling cheap Russian and Iranian oil in 2025, well before the Iran war. China injected an average of 1.1 million barrels a day into its oil reserves last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated. The stockpiling continued in March and April with oil that had left the Persian Gulf before the war started.

China has since started to draw from its reserves, data from Vortexa show.

Since the start of May, China has withdrawn around 56 million barrels from its commercial reserves and 15 million barrels from refineries.

Meanwhile, according to Vortexa, China's on-the-ground strategic reserve remains largely untouched.