CEO Column | CEO Yang’s View: The UAE Quits OPEC — This Isn’t Oil News, It’s the Prelude to a New Spring and Autumn–Warring States Era
The UAE quits OPEC: this isn’t oil news; it’s the prelude to a new Spring and Autumn–Warring States era. My first feeling on seeing this news was not whether oil prices would rise or fall, but that the world order is cracking. The UAE announced its withdrawal from OPEC and OPEC+, ending nearly 60 years of membership. On the surface this is an oil producer’s dissatisfaction with the organization’s quota system, but looking deeper, it is not simply an energy policy. It is a long-accumulating great-power contest among the Middle East, the dollar, oil, shipping lanes, the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia finally coming to the surface. The news reports that the UAE announced on April 28, 2026 and withdrew from OPEC and OPEC+ on May 1, against the backdrop of the US–Iran conflict, damage to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and turmoil in the Middle East’s oil-producing system. I would put it in one sentence: this is not OPEC losing one member, but one country beginning to move from an “alliance order” toward “autonomous maneuvering.”
The old world was more like a postwar order: the United States maintained sea power and the financial order, the Middle East supplied oil, the dollar served as the settlement center, OPEC coordinated output, consuming countries bore the prices, and ordinary people paid the bill at the very end. But now it is different. The United States has its own shale oil and needs to suppress inflation. China needs energy security and stable supply. Russia needs high oil prices to support its war and its finances. Saudi Arabia wants to keep OPEC leadership to support its own national transformation. The UAE no longer wants to be bound by quotas; it wants to become a new node for energy, finance, AI, sovereign funds and international capital. Look — isn’t this exactly the Spring and Autumn–Warring States era?
On the surface everyone is still talking about rules, alliances and stability, but in reality every country is doing its own accounting.
Whoever controls energy controls industry. Whoever controls shipping lanes controls trade. Whoever controls the dollar and capital controls leverage. Whoever controls compute controls next-generation productivity. This is not a single event; it is a reordering. We used to think the world had a common set of rules; now you will find that every major power is redefining the rules.
Behind the UAE’s exit from OPEC lies a very practical question: I invest in my own capacity and bear the risks of my own national transformation — why should my output still be limited by others? Put into corporate terms, this is easy to understand: a company invests in equipment, talent, technology and channels, and then an alliance tells you that you cannot sell more, cannot do more, cannot disturb the price order. In the short term it looks like market stability; in the long term it suppresses the most efficient player. So the UAE’s move is actually a very typical national strategic upgrade. It does not want to be merely an oil producer; it wants to be the Singapore of the Middle East. It wants to be an energy exporter, a financial center, a node for AI and technology, and above all a leverage state that the United States, China, India, Europe and the Middle East cannot ignore.
For Saudi Arabia, this is a challenge. For the United States, it is an opportunity. For China, it is a variable. For Russia, it is pressure. For ordinary people around the world, it is a cost. Why do I say ordinary people take the first hit? Because in great-power contests the great powers have never been the first to hurt. Oil price swings show up first in gasoline, electricity and transportation costs; rising transportation costs show up in food, raw materials and daily necessities; when energy is unstable, corporate costs rise; when corporate costs rise, wages are squeezed, investment is delayed and prices go up — and in the end, ordinary people pay. So do not think this is distant Middle East news: when the Middle East is in turmoil, prices in Taiwan move. When oil prices move, logistics moves. When logistics moves, catering, manufacturing, construction and exports all move. When the energy order changes, global capital markets re-price too. This is the cruelest part of the modern Spring and Autumn–Warring States era.
Ancient wars were about taking cities and territory; today’s wars are about energy, currency, shipping lanes, chips, compute, data and supply chains. In earlier wars, ordinary people saw soldiers and horses; now, in wars, ordinary people see bills: electricity bills, oil bills, mortgage bills, food bills, stock-market volatility, currency depreciation, job insecurity. This is the truth of great-power contests. It is not the international situation in a news headline; it is the price on every family’s dinner table, the cost in every company’s financial statements and the life-or-death line in every country’s industrial policy. My own judgment is that over the next decade the world will increasingly resemble the Spring and Autumn–Warring States era. It will not be total loss of control, but long-term instability; not war every day, but maneuvering every day; not only military conflict, but energy wars, financial wars, technology wars, cognitive wars and supply-chain wars interwoven. At such a time entrepreneurs cannot look only at market demand; they must also look at the international order.
In the past, doing business meant looking at product, price and channels. Now, doing business means looking at energy, geopolitics, capital, policy and technology. In the past a company only needed to know how to sell; now a company needs hedging capability. In the past a company only needed to pursue growth,
now a company needs to build resilience. This is also what I have always said: look at structure first, then talk about growth.
The UAE’s exit from OPEC reminds us of one thing: any alliance will sooner or later loosen once the distribution of interests becomes unbalanced. Any order will see its old rules challenged once new players grow strong. Any country that still wants to survive cannot forever obey a position designed by someone else. Taiwan is the same. Taiwan cannot think of itself only as a manufacturing base, cannot think of itself only as a semiconductor supply chain, and certainly cannot think of itself only as a small island protected by great powers.
Taiwan must understand this era: energy is the foundation, chips are the weapon, compute is the new oil, capital is leverage, talent is the root of the nation, and judgment is the last moat. What the UAE is doing today is, in essence, repositioning itself. It no longer says only: “I am an oil producer.” What it really wants to say is: I am a node state in the new order. Taiwan needs to understand that sentence, and entrepreneurs need to understand it too. The future will not be won by whoever is biggest, but whoever can find their own position amid the chaos will have a chance to survive.
In the Spring and Autumn–Warring States era, the most frightening thing was not war itself but not understanding the situation while still believing all was peaceful under heaven: great powers play chess, small states look for gaps, companies fight to survive and ordinary people bear the cost. This is not pessimism; it is reality, and reality is the best training ground for an entrepreneur. We are not doing business; we are building systems. We are not watching the news; we are watching the order. We are not chasing trends; we are judging the shape of the next world.
