Years of building friendship with the countries of Central Asia have paid off for China with the opening of a 1,833-kilometre pipeline last week that will bring natural gas from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Xinjiang , where it will be piped to major cities in the east and south, possibly including Hong Kong.
Currently, China produces almost all the gas that it consumes. However, when it reaches full capacity, the pipeline will be capable of delivering 40 billion cubic metres of gas a year, more than half the amount that the country consumed last year.
At present, gas accounts for only about 3 per cent of mainland China's energy mix, with coal being predominant. But it wants gas to make up a larger component of that, because it is cleaner.
Beijing is scouring the world for oil and gas to fuel its economy and has successfully developed energy sources in far-flung corners of the world, including Africa and Latin America, in addition to the Middle East. The Central Asia pipeline is a major feather in its cap.
The Chinese have gone about their mission quietly, building up relations with countries through sure-footed personal diplomacy. President Hu Jintao or Premier Wen Jiabao travel to Central Asia virtually every year. Central Asian leaders, too, are frequent visitors to Beijing. The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has paid 16 visits to China since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1992.
China has nurtured its relationship with Central Asia since well before the setting up of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation - a grouping that includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, in addition to China and Russia - in 2001.