China's Eurasia policy in the context of energy security after the cold war

Following the Chinese President Deng Shiaoping's Open Door Policy to foreign businesses, energy consumption has started to increase continuously in line with the increasing industrial capacity and urbanization. Thus, China, which started to import oil for the first time in the post-Cold War era in 1993, also imported natural gas and coal in the 2000s. China, which is currently the world's largest energy-consuming country, considers energy supply as a matter of survival and develops multilateral foreign policy to ensure energy security. China, which realizes 70 %of its energy imports through open seas and strategic straits where the American navy is an active and dominant power, places emphasis on energy investments in the Eurasian region, which is regarded much more reliable in energy transfer. Especially with the announcement of the pivot strategy of the USA targeting China in 2011 has caused China to be concerned about containment policy around its "near abroad" such as South China Sea and Taiwan Strait and that's why China, on the one hand, tries to be a deterrent power in the region by increasing its military power capacity and on the other hand, it aims at preventing the increase of the USA's effectiveness in Eurasia by acting in strategic partnership with Russia within the scope of the SCO. In addition, the Chinese administration tries to create the impression that it is acting in harmony with the global liberal system by using economic statecraft tools, thus it implements its energy security policy in a state-centered decision making process through with tools, institutions and projects such as the Belt and Road initiative. In this study, China's post-Cold War Eurasian policy is analyzed in the context of energy security.