By John Richardson IF YOU DO a Google search, you will find a lot of articles on China’s economic recovery. Click on the links, spend some time reading them in detail, and you will discover a common narrative: China’s recovery remains on track this year. But you will not find the data that […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China’s economic dominance carries many short and long-term risks for petrochemicals
By John Richardson JUST 5% of US companies with revenues of more than $500m plan to relocate operations out of China, according to the latest survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. This partly reflects highly networked manufacturing clusters, wrote the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in this excellent article. “Automotive and electronics clusters […]
Assessing global PP prospects next year: seeing the simplicity through all the complexity
By John Richardson IT COULD be very complicated and yet, as the chart above indicates, it might instead by extremely simple. Here I use the example of polypropylene (PP), but similar complexities and one simplicity also apply to the paraxylene and styrene markets and all their downstream derivatives, as I shall discuss in later blog […]
China’s planned economy boosts global petchems this year but poses a self-sufficiency threat in 2021
By John Richardson IT IS always useful to develop a good plan and then effectively implement the plan. China appears to have been successful in both these respects in 2020 and this has been of great benefit to the global petrochemicals business. If only this were the case with all other countries. Without the plan, […]
China petrochemicals demand boom remains heavily reliant on finished goods exports
By John Richardson THERE will be a lot of official data released about booming consumer spending during China’s Golden Week and National Day holidays, which run from 1-8 October. The numbers, when they emerge later this month, will be broadly seen as further evidence that China’s recovery is firmly on track. This will add to […]
China polyolefins market H1 review: so far so good, but beware of the risks ahead
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 […]
China’s real GDP could have been negative in Q2: What this may mean for PP
By John Richardson CHINA’S official GDP growth of 3.2% for Q2, which was announced last week, may not reflect real levels of economic activity, according to Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, a non-profit research body. He goes as far as to say that the Chinese economy probably contracted […]
China paraxylene imports head for bigger declines as excess industrial production appears to boost GDP
By John Richardson SOME PEOPLE see the 9.9% year-on-year rise in China’s crude oil imports in January-May as a sign that China’s economy has come roaring back from the coronavirus. They have been even more encouraged by the 33% surge in China’s oil imports in July. It is sadly not as simple as this, as […]
China’s big declines in 2020 PX and PP imports: the impact on its major trading partners
By John Richardson CHINA’S refineries and petrochemicals plants came roaring back to almost full production in April as the country’s coronavirus lockdown came to an end, even though downstream manufacturing was a long way from full recovery. As of last week, I was told by my contacts in China that petrochemicals and polymers buyers were […]
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 […]
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