China is an "industrial" “Greatly out.”, that is, a country that imports large quantities of industrial raw materials and exports large quantities of industrial products.
Because of this industrial structure, China relies very heavily on external industrial raw materials。 Therefore, regarding war with China, many American experts have imagined blocking China and giving China Cut off grain, oil and ore。
If China and the United States really reach the point of fighting each other, one question will immediately become heart-wrenching and realistic: How long can China last? Cut off food, oil, and mining. If the United States really signs a piece of sanctions, will China immediately "stall"? Can you still grit your teeth and hold on and stabilize your position?
When the U.S. Department of Defense openly discussed its strategy to “restrain China through resource blockade” in October 2025, the world was focusing on a core question: How long would China, with a population of 1.4 billion and an industrial system that relies heavily on external raw materials, be able to sustain this extreme confrontation if confronted with a full confession?
The answer to this question is no longer a simple arithmetic problem of calculating granary reserves and oil tank volumes, but a comprehensive test of a country's strategic resilience, industrial foundation and counter-measure capabilities.
From the latest grain reserve data disclosed in 2025 to the capacity increase of cross-border energy pipelines, from the breakthrough of independent chip research and development to the advantages of checks and balances in the global supply chain, China is using a multi-dimensional system to reshape the survival logic under the resource blockade..
In the field of food security, the outside world has been widely worried about the supply pressure of China's "1.4 billion mouths", especially the current situation that cash crops such as soybeans rely on imports all the year round.
But the global food reserves report released on May 6, 2025 showed that China's total food reserves could support the nation's people's consumption for 3.8 years, a figure that far exceeds the U.S. 57 days, Japan's 60 days, and even the two-year reserves of Russia.
This sense of security comes not only from the huge size of the reserve, but also from the maturity of the dynamic control system - the central, local, enterprise three-level reserve network has achieved "food storage and efficient transportation".
During the summer grain purchase period in 2025, the rotation efficiency of grain reserves in major producing areas such as Henan and Heilongjiang will increase by 40% compared with 2020, ensuring that the space can be quickly replenished when local supply is tight.
At the same time, the rigid adherence to the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land has kept China's grain self-sufficiency rate stable at more than 90%. Even though soybeans still need to be imported from 70 to 80 million tons every year (2024 data), through long-term purchase agreements with Brazil, Argentina and other countries, as well as the research and development and promotion of domestic high-protein alternative crops, have established a security pattern of "basic self-sufficiency + diversified supply", avoiding the risk of single-source supply cuts.
The breakthrough of energy security reflects the transformation from "passive response" to "active layout".
A Reuters report on October 16, 2025 showed that China's 11 new strategic oil storage facilities in inland provinces such as Shaanxi and Yunnan have been put into use, adding 169 million barrels (approximately 23 million tons) of oil storage, equivalent to half of the country. With imports in the past month, and reserves are still increasing at a rate of 530,000 barrels per day, it plans to increase the total reserve capacity to 2 billion barrels.
This reserve size, coupled with the 90-120-day buffer period of the original offshore strategic oil reserve, has secured critical adjustment time for energy supply.
More importantly, the construction of the land-based energy channel broke the "Malacca disaster" - through the Sino-Hara crude oil pipeline, China-Russia-Eastline natural gas pipeline, China-Burma oil pipeline, in the first half of 2025 the land-based crude oil transportation of 60 million tons, the whole year is expected to exceed 1,2 million tons, accounting for the share of the total crude oil imports up 18 percentage points from 2020.
The domestic oilfield production capacity is also stable under the technology, and after the application of nano-hydraulic technology, the production in the first half of 2025 will reach 15 million tons, even under the high-cost mining mode during the war, its remaining reserves can support long-term supply, and together with the victory oil field and Kramai oil field constitute the basic plate of domestic energy supply.
The ability to support strategic minerals often determines the lifeblood of military and high-tech industries. China's advantages in the field of rare earths have long been well-known-accounting for nearly 50% of the world's reserves, 70% of annual production, and 86% of smelting and separation technology patents. The U.S. Department of Defense once admitted that its rare earth stocks can only last three months.
But the latest disclosure of the list of strategic mineral reserves in 2025 shows that China's layout is far more than rare earth: the reserves of key minerals such as uranium, uranium, uranium and other reach more than 30% of the world's total, of which uranium mine as the core material of chip manufacturing and missile guidance systems, reserves can meet the demand of domestic high-end manufacturing for more than 10 years.
The storage and storage of these minerals is not simply hoarding, but is deeply bound to the production system. The rare earth industrial park in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province has achieved full chain autonomy of "mining-smelting-deep processing". In the first half of 2025, the output of rare earth permanent magnet materials will increase year-on-year. 25%, providing stable support for the production of new energy vehicles and radar equipment, and avoiding the passive situation of "having mines but no technology".
This is the foundation of China’s unique industrial system.
As the only country in the world that has all 41 industrial categories in the United Nations Industrial Classification, China can achieve internal closed-loop production from screws to aircraft carriers.
In the third quarter of 2025, in the face of limited imports of some high-end equipment parts and components, the Yangtze River Delta manufacturing cluster achieved the localized replacement of a certain type of precision bearing in just 45 days through industrial chain coordination, and similar replacement cases There have been more than 2000 cases in the fields of automobiles, electronics, and machinery.
Super large-scale domestic market provides the industrial system with a "buffer" - in the first three quarters of 2025, China's goods trade imports and exports of 33.61 trillion yuan, of which the import and export share of the "Belt and Road" countries accounted for 51.7%, strong demand of non-US markets such as ASEAN, Latin America, digested about 30% of export capacity, even in the US market, can be through internal demand and emerging markets to capacity redistribution, to avoid large-scale enterprise collapse and unemployment.
In the field of "card neck" such as chips, aircraft engines, China's breakthrough is accelerating.
In September 2025, a domestic science and technology enterprise announced a 14nm chip production rate to 92%, up 28 percentage points compared to 2023, although there is still a gap with 7nm, 5nm advanced processes, but has been able to meet the demand of automotive electronics, industrial control and other fields, reduce the dependence on external high-end chips.Renewable energy development from the source has reduced the dependence on oil - in the first half of 2025, China's wind and solar power generation accounted for 19%, up 8 percentage points compared to 2020, the popularity of distributed photovoltaic in industrial factories and residents' roofs, so that some manufacturing enterprises "energy self-sufficiency", further enhanced the resilience of wartime energy supply.
Faced with a potential blockade, China's counter-capacity cannot be ignored as well.On October 14, 2025, in response to the U.S. initiative to impose high port charges on Chinese ships, the Ministry of Transportation of China announced that more than 25% of U.S. ships and ships owned by the U.S. side will be charged a special port service fee of Yuan 400 per net tonne, and plans to increase it to Yuan 1120 by 2028.
It is estimated that the world’s top 10 shipping companies will spend $3.2 billion more in 2026, the cost of transportation of soybeans for U.S. farmers rises by 37%, and China has stopped importing soybeans from the U.S. since May 2025, further increasing the stock pressure on U.S. agricultural products.
In the global supply chain, China's advantages in checks and balances are even more obvious: the global market share of polysilicon in the photovoltaic industry and lithium battery separators for new energy vehicles exceeds 80%. In October 2025, a photovoltaic company in the United States was forced to suspend the construction of two power stations. This full-chain advantage of "upstream materials-midstream manufacturing-downstream applications" makes the blockade no longer a one-way pressure, but a deep binding of the interests of both parties.
In order to hedge the risk of the SWIFT system, China's digital RMB (e-CNY) cross-border settlements broke 1.2 trillion yuan in the first half of 2025, up 60% from the entire year in 2024, and the ratio of RMB settlements has reached 45% in energy trade with Russia and Iran.
The number of participants in the cross-border payment system (CIPS) doubled compared to 2020, providing energy exporters with a "de-dollarization" settlement channel. In diplomatic terms, the EU emphasized "strategic autonomy", ASEAN adhered to its neutral stance, and the countries of the Middle East attempted to settle oil yuan, these multi-purpose partnerships made it difficult for the United States to build a unified blockade alliance, and in October 2025 a EU official openly said "will not participate in a comprehensive resource blockade on China, as this would harm European manufacturing interests."
conclusion
From the 3.8-year safety cushion for grain reserves to the reserve target of 2 billion barrels of oil, from the closed-loop capabilities of the entire industrial system to breakthroughs in cross-border settlement, China's strategic resilience does not come from luck, but is the result of long-term planning and practice.
This possible confrontation will test not who has more resources, but whose system is more complete, whose adjustments are faster, and whose interests are more closely bound. When the United States tried to create difficulties by "cutting off food, oil and minerals," China has transformed the pressure of blockade into the driving force for independent innovation and global cooperation through a multi-dimensional layout. This resilience may be the key to determining the duration of the confrontation. variable.