财新受邀请参加澳大利亚国立大学（ANU）的“China Update”活动，有幸代表财新出席上午的小组讨论。就资源和能源约束为何没有阻碍中国经济增长谈点看法，以下为个人观点提要：

China became net oil importer in early 1990’s. If we stand at that time and looked forward, probably we will have the same questions:  who will feed China with the resource and energy?

If  we look at US, Japan, East Asia countries’ history, they all had a period of fast growth, and they did not slowed growth because of the constraints of energy or resource. The shock of oil crisis in 1970’s actually drove some of them to find a better way to use energy, to be more effective.

If we look back to China’s history after 1990’s, it can be seen that global energy and resource sector has the capacity to adjust to China’s growth and could support the growth as well.

How to explain that:

1)    The declining of growth rate of energy consumption in OECD’s countries  enables oil and energy producing countries to have some of their capacity to supply China.  (Examples: middle Asia countries turn to China for gas market)

2)     New discovery of oil fields, new development of alternative energy, like renewable energies,wind power, sun power, and shale gas in the US also increase the capacity on supply side.  (Examples, gas price in the US and North America drooped dramatically because of the development of shale gas)

3)     China’s overseas investment, especially in places underdeveloped, increase the supply capacity as well. This is a debatable issue. But I guess the overseas production of Chinese company has not been directly transported to China, rather they have been put into the global market. ( Examples: Andrew Michelmore, CEO of MMG in Melbourne, told me less than 20% of the companies production has been sold directly to China, the left has been sold on global market)

4)     Potential for China to improve energy use effency is big.  (The energy price and resource in China has been distorted by the governmental policy to under the market price. And this is not a good incentive for users in China to improve the energy intensity. If the government can work out better policy on this, the use of energy and resources in China could be greatly improved. )

5)       In general, global energy market is efficient to adjust the supply and demand. When the demand from China increase, price are going up, and the oil companies invest and produce more to meet the demand. If the price is higher than China can afford, China will adjust its economy model to adapt to it as well.