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 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Take a look at how China operates in Africa, its not considered a colonial policy for nothing. China has the muscle to control and secure oil access.

China's set up is far from new. In fact while they maintain much tighter control than any other country today, their control is nothing like that maintained by most countries decades ago. It didn't help anyone during the oil crisis. This is because your ability to strong arm the producing nation disappears when the global price spikes. Strong arming doesn't work when the global price is a few hundred dollars more per barrel than you want to pay.

You were given the pointer, look at how China controls Africa. You evidently have not done so.
Chinas control is indirect, subtle and very strong. Also price is irrelevant if everyone or nearly everyone has to pay the same.

In a nutshell - though it goes far beyond this:
Club dictator has been ushered into a client relationship with China, and Chinese imports have been made available to ever larger proportion of the populace. When the national head of state is in China's pocket and China is selling the average African things they never had before.
The west sold the average African tee-shirts and cola, China sells them affordable mobile phones, refrigerators and advanced pharmaceuticals.

 sebster wrote:

Subsidies of new techs and flat out bans of old techs are very obviously very different things with very obviously different levels of political acceptability.

The conditioning for political acceptibility is already there. We have it for things like tobacco and alcohol, and also oil. Less so in the US but in Europe there are very high tarriffs on all three.

 sebster wrote:

Electricity is subsidised. Do you think all those poles and wires run for hundreds of miles out to towns with two dozen people were done by a private company chasing a profit?

Yes.

You have to set the same price regionally, and provide access. Some threshold cases incur losses but they are factored into the whole. Western society is urban and the same region with small rural communities also sells electricity to large conurbations, he returns more than make up for the investment, and while prices rise above inflation, infrastructure overheads are corner-cut.

 Orlanth wrote:
You were given the pointer, look at how China controls Africa. You evidently have not done so.

I explained to you that China's control, while more overt and aligned directly to the state than their modern counterparts, is not that unusual by historical standards. And in the past when supply shocks have hit the system, the old model proved of little use in safeguarding assets.

And now I've explained it twice. I look forward to you ignoring it a second time.

The conditioning for political acceptibility is already there. We have it for things like tobacco and alcohol, and also oil. Less so in the US but in Europe there are very high tarriffs on all three.

Yes, but the level of political acceptability is vastly different. I mean fething obviously when its a considerable political risk to increase the petrol tax, it's political suicide to ban electric cars.

This is a concern China does not have.