This month, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with President of the Sovereign Council of Sudan Abdel Fattah al-Burhan at Beijing’s 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. The meeting serves as a vivid reminder that Sudan — 16 years ago a high priority issue for China’s foreign policy — is now a country in turmoil, fading from Chinese diplomatic priorities but with significant energy interests for Beijing.  

Sudan is the one country where China’s national oil companies reaped early results in their initial overseas quests for assets. China was involved in the development of Sudan’s oil industry as early as 1995. By the time South Sudan became independent in 2011, China had invested more than $20 billion in Sudan by early 2012, according to Chinese business news daily 21st Century Business Herald. As of 2023, the Chinese oil industry reported that 65% of Sudan’s oil export went to China and that Chinese companies represent 75% of foreign investment in Sudan's oil industry.

Scars from Darfur

Along with the oil story was also the episode when Sudan featured large and loudly in China’s global image. In 2008, the Beijing Olympics were intended to be China’s coming-out party. But China’s relationship with Khartoum and the genocide in Darfur at the time led to an international campaign to brand it “The Genocide Olympics.” This created a major crisis for Chinese foreign policy and Beijing tried hard to come out clean, but inevitably got scarred by it. China also quite unprecedentedly acted to press the then Omar al-Bashir government to accept a joint United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur. China’s oil interests and diplomatic intervention in Darfur have been a popular case study to understand how China operates in frontier countries and deals with their internal conflicts.