How They Hid The Economic Collapse of China (40% Collapse in Months)

China just cut oil consumption by a staggering amount — and almost no one is talking about it.

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone break down the data showing China was responsible for ~74% of the entire global decline in crude oil imports during the recent Iran conflict. Seaborne imports down ~40%. Refining runs crushed. Oil prices that should have spiked instead collapsed back toward pre-war levels the moment a temporary peace deal was signed.

Official explanations (strategic reserves, EV adoption, buyer strikes, commercial margins, Taiwan blockade drills) don’t hold up under scrutiny. The numbers point to something far more serious: China has likely been artificially propping up oil demand for years to hide a deeper economic collapse — real estate crash, capital flight, post-COVID manufacturing flight, and extreme power consolidation under Xi.

We also get into the Li Keqiang Index, the secret CCP coup you weren’t told about, capital flight into Western housing markets, dystopian Chinese creator culture (cute car-living girls and bridge livestream farms), and why the patterns look a lot more like systemic weakness than clever strategy.

Timestamps below. As always, we go where the data actually points.

Thematic Timestamps:00:00 – Intro: “Civilization-changing” data no one is talking about