An NYT news article, an editorial and a Paul Krugman column on China's quest for energy resources and how it's competing with the U.S..

First the news story:

From the dusty plains of East Africa to the shores of the Caspian Sea, China is seeking to loosen the grip of the United States on world energy resources and secure the fuel it needs to keep its economy in overdrive.

Its energy deal-making has cost tens of billions of dollars and has dominated China's foreign policymaking for the past two years. At times it has put China in direct competition with American policy goals, especially in Iran and Sudan, whose leaderships are among the least favored by the United States government.

Now Washington has the chance to shape China's frenetic quest. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation, known as CNOOC, has offered $18.5 billion for the American oil company Unocal. If its bid is successful, Beijing will have a greater stake in the global oil markets, in the same way that Japanese and European oil companies work closely with major American companies around the world.

If the bid were rejected by the United States on national security grounds, as some members of Congress have publicly advocated, China could be motivated to build more ties to rogue states and step up its courtship of major oil producers in Africa and Latin America that in the past have looked mainly to the United States market.

"Like other big countries, China naturally wants to share proven oil reserves," said He Jun, an energy consultant in Beijing who advises Chinese oil companies. "But if the West treats China as a threat, it will inevitably have to find its own path to meet its energy needs."

The energy issue touches all of the hot buttons in China's realm, from its need to modernize its economy to its tensions with Japan, Taiwan and the West.

Already, Beijing is leaving few holes untapped. Since becoming China's top leader in late 2002, President Hu Jintao has traveled to Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa on missions focused largely on securing energy supplies that will not pass through American or European companies before reaching China.

Later this month, he will make his third trip to Russia as president to continue a lobbying campaign for a pipeline to ferry Siberian crude to Daqing, China's northeastern oil hub. China hopes the pipeline will reduce its reliance on American-dominated markets for Middle East oil.

And now an excerpt from Krugman's The Chinese Challenge:

The more important difference from Japan's investment is that China, unlike Japan, really does seem to be emerging as America's strategic rival and a competitor for scarce resources - which makes last week's other big Chinese offer more than just a business proposition.

The China National Offshore Oil Corporation, a company that is 70 percent owned by the Chinese government, is seeking to acquire control of Unocal, an energy company with global reach. In particular, Unocal has a history - oddly ignored in much reporting on the Chinese offer - of doing business with problematic regimes in difficult places, including the Burmese junta and the Taliban. One indication of Unocal's reach: Zalmay Khalilzad, who was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan for 18 months and was just confirmed as ambassador to Iraq, was a Unocal consultant.

Unocal sounds, in other words, like exactly the kind of company the Chinese government might want to control if it envisions a sort of "great game" in which major economic powers scramble for access to far-flung oil and natural gas reserves. (Buying a company is a lot cheaper, in lives and money, than invading an oil-producing country.) So the Unocal story gains extra resonance from the latest surge in oil prices.

If it were up to me, I'd block the Chinese bid for Unocal. But it would be a lot easier to take that position if the United States weren't so dependent on China right now, not just to buy our I.O.U.'s, but to help us deal with North Korea now that our military is bogged down in Iraq.

And finally, an excerpt from the editorial Chinese Strength, U.S. Weakness:

The national security of the United States is already at risk because the nation depends on imported oil for nearly 60 percent of its daily needs. That will only grow as demand increases and domestic supplies dwindle. Much of that oil comes from volatile countries in the Persian Gulf region, and the American money flowing there does nothing to encourage either more-balanced economic development or democracy. The rest comes from other parts of the world - often the most unstable parts. In any case, it all contributes to America's monstrous trade deficit and worries about what would happen to the economy if some international crisis disrupted the supply.

The antidotes are simple. Americans need to use far less oil than they do now, which means requiring more fuel-efficient vehicles and finding an alternative to refined oil to power cars and trucks.

Beijing's desire for Unocal is fueled in part by the company's natural gas reserves, most of which are in Asia. The United States cannot claim much of a national security threat from that. North American gas supplies are still fairly robust if you count Canada, and the United States can always fall back on coal to keep the lights on. Coal now provides more than half of the country's electricity anyway.

But none of that should lead to complacency. The United States needs open, accessible markets. And no fuel source is free from the effects of rising demand around the world. Natural gas prices are rising rapidly, and Americans need more-efficient power plants and more-efficient appliances to reduce demand, just as we need to develop more-efficient transportation to reduce dependency on oil.