Picture: HAP/Quirky China News/Rex Features By John Richardson THE toxic smog that enveloped Beijing over the weekend is another example of why China’s new leaders simply have to change the economic growth model. At its worst point on Saturday night, the level of harmful particulates in the air reached as much as 36 times […]
Asian Chemical Connections
1.5m tonnes Of New Asian PE Supply In 2013
By John Richardson SOME 1.5m tonnes of new polyethylene (PE) supply will arrive in the Asian market during 2013 at a time of very uncertain and fragile demand, a source with a global producer has told the blog. A large amount of new polypropylene (PP) supply is also expected to enter the market. “Even if there […]
European Petchems Face Tough Choices
By John Richardson AT LEAST one global polyolefins producer is rumoured to be shipping increased volumes of resin from the US to Europe in response to the shale gas-derived shift in competitiveness. “Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris is making a call on the global economy – one of multi-year slow growth – and adjusting […]
China’s Divided Authority
Source: The Economist By John Richardson ONE of the blog’s Indian friends said last week, as he worries about his country’s political failings: “I sometimes wish were more like China, where, when the Politburo says ‘do this’ it is done. “Here we, perhaps, have an excess of democracy. If we want to get a […]
China PE Growth At Only 4%
By John Richardson CHINA’s polyethylene (PE) demand growth was up just 4% in January-October of this year compared with the same period in 2010, as the chart above from Global Trade Information Services (GTIS) indicates. And yet in January, many of the people the blog spoke to were confidently predicting double-digit demand growth for 2012. […]
US Oil: Nothing Is Uncertain As Certainty
By John Richardson ALL of yesterday’s excitement about the US overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia by 2017 to become the world’s biggest oil producer – and exceeding Russia to become the world’s biggest gas producer by 2015 – needs to be taken with a very large pinch of salt. The release of the International Energy […]
China’s Intellectual Property Challenge
Wen Jiabao – stepping down Source of picture: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features In the last of our series of posts on China’s leadership handover, which begins today as the 18th Party Congress meets, we look at intellectua property rights protection. By John Richardson WHY bother innovating in China when a state-owned, or state-backed, company is able to steal […]
The US Shale Gas Boom Will End
Don’t follow the herd… By John Richardson ISN’T it amazing how we keep getting caught out by the unexpected, from the global financial crisis to China is entering a period of much-lower growth? No, not really. As long as we keep being driven by the short attention-span of financial markets and the demands of quarterly […]
The BRICS Fallacy
By John Richardson THE above chart, from a new Research Note released by fellow blogger Paul Hodges, exposes the fallacy that BRICS and emerging-market growth can by themselves rescue the global economy. And, as we have highlighted before on this blog, there are no long-term guarantees that China, the big driver of BRICS growth, will continue […]
China-Japan Dispute Worsens
By John Richardson THE collapse in Japanese auto sales in China, a result of the East China Island dispute, is just the first phase in what could be a very damaging economic war, the blog understands. Phase two could be the imposition of trade barriers against Japan by an increasingly hard line Chinese leadership eager […]
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