The Zeihan guy is safely ignored. This was the same guy who said all Russian oil pipelines would freeze and clog from lack of use by no later than early 2023.
Northeastern China has oil. It’s depleting, but it still flows about 4.5 million barrel/day. Their consumption is over 14 million bpd so they certainly must import. Lots of pipelines from Russia and lots of import ports along the east coast. They can be blockaded, but if that happened they will still have their domestic production and whatever comes from Russia. Now about 1 million bpd. Another 0.5 million bpd from the Kazahkstan pipeline into China.
China won’t starve from any blockade.
China growing production of nat gas. Now at 200 billion cubic meters/year. Consumption is 400. 200 billion cubic meters is pretty much nothing with Russia, the big kahuna of nat gas, next door.
Their oil consumption shows some signs of slowing this year for economic (not EV) reasons, but this has happened before and growth generally resumes. Ditto India.
Bottom line, China needs some imports. They don’t have to get them by sea.
IMHO, a major weakness of China is their dependence on the Three Gorges Dam for power, cargo navigation, and protection from floods.
China depends on exports from their cheap labor economy to stay afloat.
In the event of war they won’t be exporting anything.