By John Richardson CHINA’S polyethylene (PE) market is enjoying a mini-rebound on improved confidence in the ability of politicians to turn the economy around, the blog has been told. There seems to be a feeling out there that more help is on the way for the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The SMEs, which make […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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 Shadow Banking Concerns Grow
By John Richardson Is the Chinese financial system on the brink of its equivalent of the US sub-prime crisis? This is a concern we raised last week in this first post, and a second post, on China’s shadow-banking system. This article from the Wall Street Journal provides more evidence of the risks ahead. The chart below shows the […]
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. […]
Social Change And Growth
South Korea and its consumer-driven economy Source of picture: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features By John Richardson MEASURING demand growth cannot involve merely assuming that the future will be the same as the past, as this increasingly complex world continues to tell us. There are a myriad of social, political and environmental factors that will determine the […]
US Manufacturing Exam Question
A lot more than just the standard Model T.,,, Source of picture: cCSU Archv/Everett/Rex Features By John Richardson THE question on my exam paper this Monday morning is what this outstanding article by the author, Charles Fishman, in The Atlantic magazine, means for the petrochemical industry. We have all become used to the idea of the […]
China’s Can-Kicking Temptation
By John Richardson THE China bulls will no doubt claim that the shadow-banking system isn’t a systemic risk to the country’s financial system and thus, of course, the world economy and the investment strategy of many chemical companies. They might be right. Or they might be wrong. Assuming they are right is dangerous. “The economic slowdown […]
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 easily afford all of the things made from, or containing, chemicals and polymers – such […]
China: 2013 Growth To Slow Again
By John Richardson A detailed study of some of China’s positive economic data for November adds a lot more weight to the point we made yesterday: The “recovery” is unlikely to last into 2013. November marked the first time in over a year that both the official China manufacturing PMI and the final HSBC/Markit Economics […]
China “Recovers”
By John Richardson ONE interpretation of the rise in the HSBC China Purchasing Managers Index to a 13-month high in November is that next year promises a strong recovery in the world’s most-important chemicals market. “People have taken considerable cheer from not only the HSBC report, but also other data points that might be interpreted […]
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