By John Richardson ALL looks fine in the polyolefins world. The Old Normal appears to have reasserted itself as Chinese demand has come roaring back. (Note that all the following numbers are on a year-on-year basis unless otherwise stated.) H1 2020 data shows that polyethylene (PE) apparent demand (net imports plus local production) grew by […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China Growth Slows On Collapse In Shadow Bank Financing
By John Richardson YOU should print-off the above chart and stick it on your chemicals company boardroom wall. From fellow blogger Paul Hodges, it shows the collapse in credit issued via China’s shadow banking system. It is the shadow banking system that has driven China’s debt-t0-GDP ratio to as high as 650% – and could […]
Analyse The Data And Listen To Li Keqiang
By John Richardson IT IS important to look at long-term trends in China rather than be misled by a few positive sets of data. This is not pessimism, just realism. Yesterday saw the release of very good August export data. Exports were up by 7.2% from year earlier, and were 5.1% higher than in July […]
China’s Leaders Stay The Course (So Far…..)
By John Richardson Everything is still going to plan. As the chart above shows, China’s official bank lending is down by 16% in the year to date as the government rations credit to the big state-owned enterprises. The last thing that China needs right now is even more unneeded industrial capacity and infrastructure. But, of […]
Beijing: China Deceleration On Track
Source of chart: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/ By John Richardson THERE has been a hugely important shift in the attitude of China’s central government. In the old days, when they set a target of say 12% national industrial production growth for a particular year, such targets were usually wildly exceeded. This was the result of local governments, […]
China Govt Confirms Post-CNY Labour Shortages
The great news behind rising labour costs: Shan Dalin, pictured with his family, is a crane operator from Southwest China’s Guizhou province who has worked in eastern Zhejiang province for 10 years. In 2012, Shan’s monthly income rose to 2,800 yuan ($449) from lower than 2,000 yuan in 2008. [Photo/Xinhua] By John Richardson The […]
China Jan PMIs Tell Different Stories
Source of picture: Imaginechina/Rex Feature By John Richardson ONE can interpret last week’s release of January purchasing manager’s indices for January just about any way you like. Thus, Reuters wrote on 2 February: “China’s official PMI released by the government’s statistics bureau showed factories grew slower-than-expected in January, with a reading of 50.4, easing […]
China Stimulus Confusion
By John Richardson THERE was much talk last week about $158bn worth of new infrastructure projects in China that have received fast-track approval from the central government. But is this just a lot of noise to boost financial and commodity markets? Can anybody be 100 per cent certain that these projects are genuinely new, and that […]
Asian Polyolefin Prices Tumble
By John Richardson Asian polyethylene (PE) prices slumped by $90-130/tonne last week on the eurozone crisis, the fall in oil prices and the imminent arrival in China of large volumes of Iranian material, according to ICIS pricing. A further factor dragging down the market was the start-up, expected by end-May, of Qapco’s low-density polyethylene (LDPE) […]