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Asian Chemical Connections

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 […]

India Risks Squandering Demographic Dividend

By John Richardson INDIA is at risk of squandering its demographic dividend, warned investment bank Espirito Santo when it wrote in a September 2013 note: If India continues its current path it will face a catastrophic shortage of jobs, creating a young and angry population, and with it conditions for social unrest and economic disaster. […]

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 […]

India Gas Price Breakthrough

By John Richardson DEMOGRAPHICS can drive chemicals demand in the right direction, provided the correct government policies are in place. India’s demographics are much better than China’s, as this data from the CIA Factbook indicate. For instance, as of 2013 India’s median age was 26.7 years compared with 36.3 years in China. India’s birth rate […]

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 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 Silver Lining: Blue Collar Wage Increases

By John Richardson HOW useful a tool is GDP in measuring petrochemicals demand growth in China? This is a question that every research department in every petrochemicals company needs to ask itself. During the Supercycle era, Chinese demand growth was pretty much a proxy for strong consumption growth in the West.  Because of ample availability […]

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