Entries from Asian Chemical Connections tagged with 'China economic rebalancing'

Taiwan Growth Underlines Long Term Shift

By John RichardsonEVIDENCE that China is no longer acting as the growth engine of the world, because it is too busy dealing with internal adjustments, is mounting. For example, on Tuesday of this week Taiwan announced that its year-on-year Q1...

One In Three Chance Of 5% China GDP Growth

By John Richardson THERE is a one in three chance of China's real GDP growth averaging 5% or less over four consecutive quarters before the end of 2014, warns Nomura, said Bloomberg in this article. And the bank added that...

Sinopec And The Blog's Favourite Triangle

By John Richardson ONE of Sinopec's subsidiaries, Shanghai Petrochemical, has weighed-in to the debate over US shale gas by warning that cheap petrochemicals imports from the States could erode the whole of China's competitiveness. "We can't tell how severe the...

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...

China Economic Policies To Get Tougher

By John Richardson THERE will, of course, be bright spots in petrochemicals markets as a result of factors independent of China's new economic direction. For example, as an aromatics trader points out, there are huge paraxylene (PX) capacity additions in...

China, Patronage And Innovation

By John Richardson CHINA has to improve innovation if it is to avoid the middle-income trap. Some people assume that success is a given because of China's great achievement of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty...

China Labour Supply Threatens Productivity Growth

Chart compiled by the China Real Time Report blog.    By John Richardson NOBODY should be surprised about what is happening in China's petrochemicals markets, as the signs have been there for many months that economic rebalancing would have...

It Is Now Down To Seven Guys In A Room

 Source of picture: China Daily   By John Richardson The famous investor, Jim Chanos, warned three years years ago that the West places an inordinate amount of trust in "nine guys in a room" (i.e. China's Politburo Standing Committee) getting...

China NPC Meeting: Quality Over Quantity

China's National People's Congress Source of picture: Rex Features   By John Richardson The focus of next week's National People's Congress (NPC) meeting in China - the country's annual "parliamentary" meeting - is likely to be on the quality...

Damage Limitation

By John Richardson POLYETHYLENE (PE) prices crept up by $10-50/tonne for the week ending 22 February, according to ICIS pricing. But, as the above chart shows, integrated high-density PE variable cost margins in Southeast and Northeast Asia remained very weak,...

China's Numbers Game

By John Richardson YET more problems with Chinese economic statistics have emerged, casting doubt over the idea that an economic hard landing was avoided in 2012 - and that there was a strong rebound in the fourth quarter. "Official data...

HSBC: China 2013 Polyethylene Market Has Peaked

By John Richardson A NEW report from HSBC backs up our concerns that the post-Chinese New Year polyethylene (PE) will be weaker than in December-January. The bank is with us in thinking that the stronger markets over the last two...

Consensus Confidence For 2013

By John Richardson THE consensus view is that Chinese growth will be fine at the very least for the first half of this year, and possibly for the whole of 2013, thanks to all the money still sloshing around the...

China's PE Cycle Repeats Itself

By John Richardson THE above chart shows that China's polyethylene (PE) demand growth has been well below that of overall GDP for most of the years between 2006 and 2012. This supports the argument that economic growth has been too...

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...

China: The Politics Behind The "Recovery"

By John Richardson THE overall HSBC flash purchasing managers' index for January, which was released yesterday, was at a two-year high (see the above chart), with the sub-index of production at a 22-month high. This is great news for equity values...

China's Shadow Banking Problem

By John Richardson IN the best of all possible worlds, more than a billion people in the emerging markets will become a great deal richer over the next few decades. As a result, they will be able to much more...

"Good News" Over China Bank Lending

By John Richardson CHINA'S new local currency lending rose to 703.9 billion Yuan ($111 billion) last month, way ahead of July's 540.1 billion Yuan. If a you are trader in the Dalian Commodity Exchange's futures contract in linear-low density (LLDPE)...

Saudi Worries About China Netbacks

    By John RichardsonHere is the first of a three blog posts on what is happening in China's polyolefins markets. Today, we look at the Middle East and tomorrow and Thursday we present the perspective of traders and Western-headquartered...

China To Grow at 3 Percent

By John Richardson THE possibility that China's economy may not expand as rapidly in the future as in the past is never discussed in public by resources-company CEOs, said an Australian-based stockbroker. His comments ring true for petrochemicals, also. The...