The war in the Gulf was supposed to give the West leverage over China. It has mostly accelerated China's escape from the oil market altogether.

Electric vehicles displaced about 1.4mn barrels a day of Chinese oil demand in the first half of 2026, up 42% year on year, according to a Jefferies analysis published on August 1. The 33.7mn tonnes of oil equivalent involved is roughly 6% of China's 2025 crude imports, and nearly triple the 0.5mn b/d displaced in the first half of 2023. New energy vehicles took a record 63% of Chinese passenger car sales in June.

For scale: 1.4mn b/d is more crude than most OPEC members produce. China has removed from the world's demand a volume comparable to what the war removed from its supply, and it has done so permanently.

The International Energy Agency's own read is that the combustion uses of petroleum fuel in China have already reached a plateau, driven by structural changes in the economy and the speed of alternative transport deployment rather than by a weak year - unusual for a middle-income country still posting solid growth. This is not demand destruction that reverses when prices fall.

Control of the sea lanes carrying Gulf crude was meant to be the lever on Beijing - the reason the chokepoints matter beyond shipping economics. Six months of a closed Hormuz has instead handed Chinese manufacturers the strongest possible marketing argument for the product they already dominate. The war drove up demand for Asian EVs from March onwards.

The fall in oil demand thanks to the rise of the EVs fits neatly into China’s larger strategy: it has been building itself into the world's first electrostate - an economy running on electrons it generates itself rather than molecules it has to import through waters somebody else patrols. The war has simply made the timetable shorter and the argument easier.

So, what happens when Hormuz reopens and China no longer needs what comes through it? A country that has removed 1.4mn b/d from its own demand and is exporting the means for everyone else to do the same is not a country that can be squeezed by closing a strait. It is a country that benefits from the demonstration.