By John Richardson NEARLY three years on from when the Chinese central government first promised to reform local government financing, little progress appears to have been made: Local governments are still addicted to land sales to meet their funding requirements. At the heart of the problem is this: Although China might still need 800m square metres […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Dip In China Credit Growth A Global Warning Sign
By John Richardson CHINA might choose to once again kick the can down the road by further delaying essential economic reforms, but this is not my base case for the rest of this year and into 2017. Xi Jinping and his supporters are now in the position to accelerate reforms, and so they may well choose this […]
Xi’s Overture Finishes As China’s Real Reforms Begin
By John Richardson We’re going to see pretty soon whether this man [China’s President, Xi Jinping] is for real. THE above quote, from Chinese Studies professor Kerry Brown in this FT article, is something else that you should print out and pin on your chemicals company boardroom wall. You then need to write below this print-out, “Yes, […]
China Complexity: The Wrong And Right Kind Of Spending
China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative – the right kind of spending By John Richardson SOME people might too quickly assume that last week saw yet more evidence of the reformers and anti-reformers within the Chinese government pulling in different directions. This was seen to follow on from the Q1 2016 growth of […]
China’s Courage And Vision In Ending One-Child Policy
By John Richardson CHINA’S decision to scrap its one-child policy will obviously not make any significant difference to labour shortages for at least the next 20 years or so as that is how long it will take all the new children to grow up and join the workforce. This is assuming there is a sudden […]
Why China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Has To Continue
By John Richardson CHINA’s anti-corruption campaign is now more than two years old and continues to generate a great deal of criticism. These criticisms include claims that it sometimes targets the wrong individuals – and that the campaign might end up being all about China’s senior leadership cementing their positions, rather than tackling the underlying […]
Xi Jinping Further Underlines China’s “New Normal”
CHINA’S president Xi Jinping, in a landmark speech at the weekend, talked about the “New Normal” of lower economic growth and a different type of growth altogether. He qualified this different type of growth as follows: “Through innovation and technological development, the country should push for the transformation from ‘Made in China’ to ‘Created in […]
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: Building The Bear (Or Realistic?) Case For 2014
By John Richardson The above slide, compiled from Global Trade Information Services data by fellow blogger Paul Hodges, is further evidence of the tremendous year that polyethylene (PE) has enjoyed in China so far this year. We think that PE is a pretty good proxy for other polymers and chemicals and so parallels could well […]
China’s November Plenum: The Verdict So Far
By John Richardson THE November Plenum is over and now the analysis has begun. Some commentators view the formal communiqué about the plenum – which was released by the government on Tuesday – with tremendous enthusiasm. Others, however, are disappointed, while a third group of commentators are sitting on the fence. This might not seem […]
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