By John Richardson LAST year was a tremendous year for polyethylene (PE) exporters to China, according to data provided by US-based International Trader Publications, the US-based trade data and analytics service. They conclude that China’s imports of high-density polyethylene (HPDE) and low-density PE (LDPE) posted strong gains. Volumes for 2013 were up 18% and 10%, respectively, versus […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Getting China And The Fed The Wrong Way Round
By John Richardson MOST newspapers and wire services still seem to have got it in the wrong way round. Last week, as Argentina’s Peso crisis began, they continued to identify Fed tapering as the number one threat to emerging markets followed by China. But here’s a reminder: The Fed has spent some $3 trillion on […]
China Is “The Fragile One”
By John Richardson THE “Fragile Five” might, as we discussed on Monday, have become “The Exposed Eight” developing countries threatened by a disorderly Fed tapering. But what if, in all the focus on the Fed cutting back on quantitative easing, we have overlooked a far bigger withdrawal of central bank largesse – that which is […]
China Is Sending In The Bulldozers
By John Richardson YOU can spend as much time as you like crunching petrochemicals supply and demand data, but in the end, what will matter the most in China in determining the strength of markets during 2014 will, surely, be the availability of credit. This was starkly underlined by this New York Times article, which […]
China Labour Markets And Automation
By John Richardson CHINA’s blue collar workers are in a very strong position, as we discussed in our 19 December post. They are benefiting from an ageing population that has already resulted in a decline in the size of China’s working population. Thanks to the laws of supply and demand, wage rates are going up […]
China Slows Down
By John Richardson CHINA’S economy appears to have slowed down. Evidence of the lost momentum was provided by manufacturing purchasing manufacturers’ indexes (PMIs) released last week and the release on Monday of service sector PMIs, which all showed lower growth in December. The HSBC service sector PMI was at its lowest level since August 2011. […]
Researching China Credit And Growth
By John Richardson A lot of the focus in polyethylene (PE) markets at the moment is on supply and on what impact this might have on the key China market during 2014. Crunching this data will always remain a crucial part of assessing all petrochemicals markets, but, in China, do we need other tools as […]
China’s Debts: Close Your Eyes, Hope For The Best
By John Richardson LACK of transparency is fine when any economy is booming. Think of Indonesia pre-1998 before the fall of Soeharto. No foreign or local investor really cared that much about where the suitcases of money were going because the price of corruption was well worth paying. Similarly in the US before 2008, most […]
China In 2014: Some Predictions
By John Richardson IT was a year to remember, for the right reasons, for anybody who bet on a recovery in Chinese polyethylene (PE) demand. Back in May, it was all doom and gloom. But since May, thanks to a surge in the availability of credit, apparent demand (local production plus imports) has bounced […]
China’s Latest Credit Crunch: What It Says About 2014
By John Richardson CHINA continues to cross the river by feeling the stones and anyone in the chemicals industry who says that they have a clear idea of where this is going to end is probably being more than a little disingenuous. There will be a lot of experimentation as China tries to overhaul its […]
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