Does Britain face the onset of the Second Great Depression?
Based on the data of National Bureau of Statistics of China, the country’s economy began to grow rapidly from the 1980s and even faster after 2000. Oil demand is proportional to economy growth, giving a correlation coefficient between GDP and oil demand at 99.5%. Based on data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2007, it is evident that China’s oil demand growth is one of the fastest in the world, having increased by 7.4% per year over the past ten years. It reached 350 million tons in 2006, being second only to that of the USA, and is set to grow further with the expanding conomy, but production is growing only slowly. The gap between demand and production now reaches 166 million tons, and is set to become progressively larger in the future, as illustrated in Figure 4. Oil demand is taken from the IEA forecast while production is based on the Weng Model. The gap is widening. Recommendations The rampant industrialisation and commercialisation of China in recent years may not
