Its in China's interests to reduce its level of oil and gas imports from countries that are not "friendly" and through means that are easily stopped by its enemies (i.e. the sea routes from the Middle East to China), given the rapidly escalating conflict between it and the USA.
They can do this in multiple ways:
- Increase the amount of oil and gas imported through pipeline from Russia, Central Asia and Iran. Building such pipelines takes many years, but some will be coming on line in the next year or two. They could also use oil trains as an emergency option, running through the interiors of Russia and China.
- Rapidly accelerate the move to EV's, targeting the highest mileage drivers (i.e. taxi drivers, delivery people, buses) first. I don't have stats but mileage may follow the 80/20 rule, which may be even more true of China where private drivers tend not to drive long distances (there are high speed trains for that).
- Increase taxes and other negative incentives for people to use ICE vehicles, also put a "no more ICE sales" date relatively soon, such as 2025 and force the scrapping of cars that don't meet a given mpg level.
- Target long-haul truck delivery for movement to trains, and heavily fund research and production of electric heavy trucks.
In a truly conflictual situation, such as the US attacking Iran or the US sanctioning oil and gas imports to China, all of the above plus more (e.g. the banning of non-essential car trips) could be done at a more rapid pace. Add in rapidly expanding wind, solar and nuclear capacity.
The end result will be a China self sufficient in energy (great for the trade balance) when Russia is included and many, many years ahead of the US in EV's and the related technologies (e.g. batteries). China is also expanding its coal production enough to become self sufficient (no more coal imports from Australia), imports are relatively small compared to overall consumption.
The other result once the conflictual fallout has been dealt with will be a structural reduction in oil demand, as other countries (India?) can copy China's model of moving away from the dependence on oil imports (an increasing issue for India). That will be devastating for the Tar Sands, Deep Sea Oil, Fracking and many of the MENA governments. Also, a huge headache for Russia as demand for its oil may stay stable but the price will fall substantially. Its Natural Gas exports should not be negatively impacted.
This reality is coming, outright hostilities will just bring it along quicker - with a last hurrah for the oil producers as prices spike during the hostilities and the clean up period. Very much like what happened after the 1970's price spikes, the industrialized countries ramped up energy efficiency and looked for domestic/non OPEC supplies of energy. The 1980's and 1990's were not kind to the oil producers.