More cars than U.S. by 2030

It's estimated that China could have nearly 30 million automobiles

by 2010. By 2030, China is expected to have more cars than the

United States and import as much oil as the U.S. does today.



Already, China has overtaken Japan as the world's second biggest

importer of oil, after the United States. And its appetite is

huge and growing. As Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research

Associates puts it, "China has gone from being a minor player in

world commodity markets, if a player at all, to being the decisive

ynamic factor today. In terms of oil, 40 percent of the entire

growth in oil demand since the year 2000 has been China."



In this quarter alone, China's demand for oil is projected to

increase 21 percent. That follows a 19-percent increase during

the first quarter of this year.



Nor are Chinese consumers, especially those in the growing middle

class produced by a booming technology sector, particularly

interested in fuel-efficient small cars. Gas-guzzling sport

utility vehicles are not simply an American passion. They are

in great demand in China, too.



In a report from China broadcast on National Public Radio in June,

a 35-year-old woman in Beijing, Sia Lan, an executive in China's

expanding advertising industry, said she, like many other of her

friends, prefers to drive SUVs. "I have a sedan car, too, which I

used to drive to work because my Jeep guzzles a lot more gas," she

said. "But I prefer my Jeep because I can see over all the other

cars."



A Chinese environmentalist, Liang Congjie, is distressed by the

implications. "If each Chinese family has two cars like U.S.

families, then the cars needed by China, something like 600

million vehicles, will exceed all the cars in the world

combined."



The prospect is daunting, not only for the effects it would

have on the world's production of greenhouse gases to accelerate

global warming, but also for the incredible pressure it would

put on the world's oil supply.



Just 10 years ago, China was self-sufficient in oil and actually

exported small quantities to other Asian nations. Now, imports

account for more than one- third of Chinese oil consumption.

And rather than relying on foreign oil companies to supply it

with oil, China wants its own oil firms to go directly overseas

to secure supply sources it can exploit itself.