The Chinese Communist Party is stockpiling massive amounts of certain crucial commodities in another sign that the nation is preparing for war.

China’s stockpile of crude oil is increasing by 900,000 barrels per day, according to a July 23 Economist article, bringing the current total to 1.3 billion barrels. This is enough to cover the nation’s import needs for 115 days, and the government has ordered companies to accelerate the buildup. China also has 25 billion cubic meters of natural gas in storage, and it is on pace to have the capacity to store 85 billion cubic meters by 2030.

The nation is also stockpiling stunning amounts of food. Home to around 17 percent of the world’s population, China currently has about 51 percent of the world’s total wheat stocks, as well as 70 percent of maize and 70 percent of rice. This is estimated to be enough to cover a least one year of the nation’s needs. The Chinese also have some 44 million tons of soybeans stockpiled, which is double the number from 2018.

These are arresting amounts of energy and food that China is amassing, and it points to an alarming reality. “Vast new holdings of grain, natural gas and oil suggest trouble ahead,” the Economist wrote. “The supplies China is after are exactly those it would need to survive a protracted conflict.”

This is a logical deduction because China is deeply dependent on energy and food imports.

China has plenty of coal, but its natural deposits of other hydrocarbons are woefully insufficient. To keep the lights on, the cars moving, and the factories humming, the nation has import around 70 percent of its crude oil and 40 percent of natural gas.

With food, the situation is even more acute.

“The rice bowls of the Chinese people must always be held firmly in our own hand and filled mainly with Chinese grain,” Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping said in 2013. Yet that grain is increasingly from other nations, which weakens the Chinese grip on those bowls.

At the start of the century, China had to buy only 5 percent of its food from abroad. Since then, the Chinese population has grown by tens of millions and the amount of arable land has rapidly shrunk, due to factors such as excess fertilizer use, environmental degradation and overextension of the real estate sector. Today China has less than 10 percent of the world’s total arable land, and more than a third of everything its 1.4 billion people eat must be grown elsewhere and brought in. This amounts to tens of millions of tons of food each year purchased from abroad, making China the world’s largest food importer. And the imported amount is steadily rising, as the country’s arable land continues to shrink.

Xi and the other Chinese Communist Party leaders are well aware of their nation’s dependence on energy and food imports. They understand that if they were to find themselves at war—perhaps after they invade Taiwan—their enemies could potentially blockade the supply lines that bring in these commodities they depend on so heavily. The Chinese know that even a robust sanctions regime could imperil these critical imports.

So they are stockpiling these commodities in advance to insulate themselves from the fallout that would likely result from war. When this stockpiling is placed alongside China’s military buildup—with explosive increases in the number of nuclear weapons, advanced missiles, warships and other weapons—the picture becomes disturbingly clear.

Trumpet editor in Chief Gerald Flurry has called considerable attention over the years to China’s military buildup and the different ways the nation is pushing the world toward and preparing for war. He has especially emphasized China’s dogged determination to use its growing military power to assert control over the South China Sea. He has shown how cataclysmic such a takeover would be for global trade and global peace.

In a landmark July 2016 article, he wrote:

Each year, $5.3 trillion of trade passes through the South China Sea. That is roughly one third of the world’s maritime commerce! … This is going to dramatically affect trade around the world, and U.S. trade especially. … Everything is headed in the direction of war.

His understanding of China’s dangerous rise is founded on biblical prophecy, recorded mainly in the books of Deuteronomy, Isaiah and Ezekiel. To understand the big picture of China’s militarization and stockpiling in preparation for war, and what it means for the rest of the world, read “China Is Steering the World Toward War.”