West cannot coerce China to follow its lead

A long-announced European Union ban on oil imports from Iran came into force on Sunday as previously planned. Despite the fact that taken together the EU countries are the world's largest economy and the fact that the euro still remains a leading international currency, the enforcement of the EU ban on Iranian oil is not expected to have any substantive influences on the world oil market.

A generally declining price tendency is now the basic character of the current world oil market. On Feb 7, the Brent crude oil price stood at $117.8 per barrel, but it had declined to $93.5 by June 27. The gloomy global economic outlook and a new round of macroeconomic policies adopted by world's major economies have been the fundamental reasons for the continuous decline of oil prices in recent months.

With the escalation of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, the eurozone is now on the brink of an economic recession. The EU economy contracted 0.1 percent year-on-year. Worse, the unemployment rate in the eurozone soared to a record high of 11 percent. The total unemployed population now stands at 17.4 million. It was the 12th month in a row that the eurozone's unemployment rate reached or surpassed 10 percent. The situation in some countries is even worse, Spain has a 24.3 percent unemployment rate and Greece 21.7 percent.