China's ability to weather the storm has left many scratching their heads. How did a country of 1.4 billion people manage to cut crude imports by some 5 million barrels per day between February and May and largely avoid products shortages, keep the population mobile and factories humming along? There is no single mystery to uncover. Instead, China's resilience looks to be a product of Beijing's laser-like — and multilayered — focus on energy security, conscious of the major economy's vulnerability to imported supplies. It's not been entirely pain free — small refiners and petrochemical players are feeling the pinch. But thanks to energy policies that emerged in the early 2000s and were bolstered by the US-China trade war in 2018, China had plenty of tools at hand to navigate the crisis.