By John Richardson CHINA’S government, via a very important statement on the state-run newswire Xinhua, have identified the smart people. They are those who have already realised that China is not going to “blink”. There will be no big new economic stimulus package and the measures to stabilise growth, that were announced last week, were […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China’s SMEs, Good And Bad, Under Threat
By John Richardson THE cosy relationship between the state-run banks and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has long held back economic rebalancing, but wasn’t a critical problem for small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) when official lending tripled in 2009 (have a look at the chart on polypropylene in this post, which illustrates the impact). There was, of course, plenty of […]
China’s Official View On New Stimulus
By John Richardson THE mood has improved in China’s chemicals markets over the last few days thanks to strong indications from Beijing that a new economic stimulus package is about to be launched. But, as we predicted yesterday, any such package will not be anything like the giant 2008-2009 stimulus package, or even that of […]
China’s Urbanisation Myth Bites The Dust
By John Richardson THE blog would again be in the position of being able to afford a yacht in Monte Carlo if it had a dollar, even in an Australian dollar these days, for every time it has heard the phrase “urbanisation will underpin long-term growth in China”. But just as some of the other […]
China And The “Conflation” Problem
By John Richardson WHEN all you care about is making money on the next chemicals cargo, or on a recovery in financial markets, then the current “will they, won’t they?” question over whether China will launch a new round of economic stimulus makes every bit of sense. The debate grew more intense on Monday after […]
Take Away The China “Froth” And What’s Left?
By John Richardson THE denial that we discussed last week is still very much in evidence. For example, we heard the argument over the last few days that China’s economic slowdown would involve only “a couple of bad quarters” and then China, and Asia-Pacific markets in general, would be back to normal. The following two […]
China Jobs Versus The Cost Curve
By John Richardson ACHIEVING approval for any new petrochemicals projects in China is going to be a lot harder in the future, is a a growing view across the chemicals industry. A senior executive with a US-based polyolefins producer, for example, told the blog recently: “It looks as if Chinese chemicals companies are finding it […]
Nothing “Disappointing” About China Data
By John Richardson CHINA’S credit growth in 2014 would have to be higher than that of last year if GDP growth is going to hit 7.5%. But in February, as Reuters wrote in this article: “China’s total social financing, a broad measure of credit in the economy, increased by 938.7 billion Yuan ($US152.9bn) in February, […]
ICIS Launches Asia PP Price Forecasting
By John Richardson PERHAPS nobody should have been that surprised that China’s polypropylene (PP) market was weak in February and the first half of March. Here is why: · China saw its highest-ever monthly level of PP homo-polymer imports in January 2014 – 448, 000 tonnes, according to the New York-based trade data service, International […]
China’s Changing Polyethylene Demand
By John Richardson ONCE people in the developing world start buying food wrapped in plastic packaging, they rarely switch back to food wrapped in paper, executives in the polyolefins industry keep telling us. They thus talk about a “base load” of permanent new demand as urbanisation increases across Asia, which is often accompanied by higher […]
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