Recent signs that China’s growth is stalling have added to fears that the global journey back from financial meltdown could be losing momentum. Suggestions that the “engine room” of worldwide recovery is slowing are especially worrying when the continued success of Asia’s economies is crucial to a sustainable upturn.

Yet these are fears China does not necessarily share. Chinese growth had been expected to dip below double-digit levels amid government moves to cool the property market and curb bank lending, and Beijing will not be especially concerned by occasional fluctuations in manufacturing data. Nor will it be unduly worried by the current debate over the renminbi. Instead, China’s focus remains firmly on another period of growth – the one still to come. That much is plain from its growing appetite for one element vital to any engine room: oil.

A prodigious hunger for resources has long moulded Chinese foreign policy. Record oil imports this year have only added urgency to the government’s moves to reshape its geopolitical strategy. China’s crude oil imports reached a new peak of more than 5m barrels a day this April, and imports for the first five months of this year were up 30 per cent. Securing a stable and long-term oil supply is the essential component of China’s national economic security, and to succeed it must diversify both its oil sources and the ways in which oil crosses its borders.