By John Richardson DO YOU have a dedicated team studying the policy outcomes from this year’s meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) which began last Friday and finish on 11 March? (These annual meetings are commonly referred to as the “two sessions”. For reasons described below, […]
Asian Chemical Connections
No change in China’s policies seem likely under a Biden and Harris White House
By John Richardson WE NEED to talk about politics without being political – a very difficult task, but an essential one if we are to be dispassionate as humanly possible in our analysis, and thus produce worthwhile analysis. If we are not dispassionate, we end up shouting at each other; and when anyone shouts, nobody […]
China Doubles Down On Pollution Clean-up: Consequences For Chemicals
By John Richardson ECONOMIC GROWTH for the sake of economic growth was for so many years the No1 priority in China. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there is a legacy of major environmental problems. These include some 1.6m premature deaths a year from air pollution alone, according to an independent study in 2015. A […]
China’s Polyethylene Market: Three New Scenarios For 2018-2025
By John Richardson THE above slide underlines the growing complexity surrounding China’s economy, politics, society, environmental policies and trading relationship with the US. I’ve placed this complexity in the context of the implications for the polyethylene (PE) industry. The above slide, and the full explanation below, updates my three scenarios from last September. These new […]
China And Xi Jinping: The Five Big Challenges You Must Understand
By John Richardson THE above slide, from my speech at this year’s Gulf Petrochemical Association Forum, is a summary of much of the analysis on this blog over the past 12 months. This is another of my print-out-and-keep guides. Please pin to your chemicals company boardroom wall as you plan your scenarios for China. In […]
China’s Polypropylene Market: The Right Questions You Simply Must Ask
By John Richardson On the surface, the above chart represents very good news for exporters of polypropylene (PP) to China. As you can see, our base case sees import volumes creeping up from around 3.9m tonnes in 2018 to 4.2m tonnes in 2025. But this chart should be merely a starting point for a much […]
China’s Xi: Squaring Circle Of Poverty Alleviation, Environment
By John Richardson THE ONLY China that most foreigners have visited, including myself, is the southern and eastern seaboard provinces where all the talk is about booming poylolefins and other polymers demand on the rise in middle class consumption. So strong is middle class consumption growth via mobile internet sales that the multiples of polyethylene […]
China’s 19th Party Congress: Stronger President Xi Good For Petchems Growth
By John Richardson I SEE three Scenarios for Chinese economic growth, and so of course petrochemicals demand growth, in 2018-2025. See below where I detail how these three Scenarios would affect growth in demand for polypropylene (PP). But first of all, let’s deal with the issue of the 19th National Party Congress meeting, which begins […]
Three Scenarios For 2018-2025 China Polyethylene Demand Growth
By John Richardson CHINA leads the world in many aspects of renewable energy and has an electric vehicle industry that is receiving the kind of state support that is very probably making foreign competitors green with envy. The explosion of commerce via the mobile internet takes your breath away. Average per person spending on mobile […]
Without The Benefit Of Time
Victorian Britain (Source of picture: Wikimedia) By John Richardson LIFE in China can be grim, much as it was in Britain during its industrial development. In China, according to The Economist: A tenth of the country’s […]