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How Taiwan Is Balancing Between US and Chinese Visions of Energy Dominance

The strategic goal for most countries is energy systems that are affordable and cannot be blocked or held hostage. For Taiwan, the stakes are particularly high.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency on his first day back in office framed fossil fuel production as a geopolitical weapon. According to Trump, “energy dominance” – flooding global markets with American oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) – would reassert American power, undercut China’s clean technology leverage and discipline allies into dependence. Eighteen months on, the doctrine is revealing some of its contradictions, and nowhere more acutely than in Taiwan.

The numbers behind assertions of U.S. dominance are real. Boosted by the shale revolution initiated in 2005, oil and gas production has reached record highs, with over 13.6 million barrels of oil per day in 2025. U.S. LNG exports already commanded roughly one-third of the global market before the Hormuz crisis and the EU could depend on the United States for 80 percent of its LNG imports by 2028.

Yet, producing large amounts of oil and gas is not the same as having strategic control. Prices are also determined by OPEC decisions, shipping chokepoints, and the accelerating uptake of renewables. These are factors Washington has found difficult to control despite U.S. efforts at obstructing global climate action, pressuring European countries to eschew Russian gas and sanctioning, toppling, or killing the leadership of petrostates deemed too close to China.

Coercive measures have won battles: Venezuela’s government has gravitated closer to the U.S. since the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The European Union has pledged $250 billion in annual U.S. energy purchases, and similar commitments have been extracted from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

These are in part compliance purchases, not simply market ones. East Asian and European countries are largely buying U.S. fossil fuels for lack of better alternatives and to protect their fraying U.S. security umbrella. They are also seeking to avoid higher tariffs and address shortfalls resulting from Russian and U.S. military aggression, not because the economics have been compelling.

Meanwhile, China has been developing a different energy strategy. It has become the largest clean-technology exporter, now manufacturing roughly 80 percent of the world’s solar panels and 77 percent of wind turbines, dominating electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chains and ultra-high voltage transmission technologies, and controlling most critical minerals.

Although the metaphor of energy wars is simplistic, China embodies a fast-rising electro-state positioned to win the energy war in the long term. In contrast, the U.S. increasingly passes for an insecure incumbent petrostate reliant on its military might, fossil fuel endowment, and a disregard for international law and climate change, to reassert an outdated form of energy dominance.

When Israel-U.S. attacks on Iran triggered the Strait of Hormuz crisis, that divergence became visible. American consumers absorbed fuel-price shocks, while China’s domestic renewable infrastructure, early shift to electric vehicles and massive strategic oil reserves partially cushioned its economy.

While the U.S. government boasted about more than 100 “empty vessels heading to American ports to load U.S. crude,” China was seeing record growth in EV exports. There is no doubt U.S. oil and gas companies are enjoying a windfall, but these EVs will long be on the road.

China has spent the past three decades constructing the infrastructure of the next energy order. In contrast, the U.S. remains a fossil-fuel superpower that must deploy sanctions and........

© The Diplomat