The writer says, Countries in which service makes up a larger sector than manufacturing obviously use less oil for critical economic functions than do countries that are heavily manufacturing-oriented.

Now, virtually all transportation is oil-based at this point.  But not much of manufacturing is: if you're making machinery, in fact, you would do just fine if all oil disappeared tomorrow (assuming you could replace some lubricants with something bio-based).  And the Chinese are making a lot of machinery.  Even feedstocks are not a huge portion of oil use, maybe 20% (I compiled some statistics here).

So the chemical industries need oil for input, but virtually no manufacturing industries need oil for energy.

They do need oil to move products, however -- although trains are much more efficient than trucks.  But China's big problem, it seems to me, is not that it's manufacturing is impacted by high oil prices, but it's cars are impacted.  If they think that their legitimacy rests on cars, then maybe it's critical, but only from a political point of view, not an economic one.