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Asian Chemical Connections

What global petchems demand would have been like without the China property bubble warns us about the future

By John Richardson PLAYING “What if?” games by changing the course of history is popular amongst students of the subject, including myself. Imagine, therefore, in our world of petrochemicals, if China hadn’t decided in late 2008 to launch the world’s biggest-ever economic stimulus package to compensate for the Global Financial Crisis. Beijing felt it had […]

China’s Real Estate Crisis Was Entirely Predictable

By John Richardson AN investment bubble can only remain stable if you pump ever-more air into the bubble. If you don’t continue to do this, then the bubble is in severe danger of bursting. The warning signs started flashing red for China after the crucial November 2013 Third Plenum meeting. At that point, it had […]

More Than Just Absence Of “Animal Spirits”

By John Richardson THE blog held a full day of discussions with our ICIS China price reporting team in Shanghai (we will provide a lot more details next week) and the story was consistent: *Government policy to rein-in liquidity, most notably new restrictions on the housing market, has driven demand down. *Traders expected a post-Chinese […]

China’s Debt Problems

   By John Richardson  Fellow blogger Paul Hodges made  a convincing case in a post on Tuesday that China’s economic model faces some major challengs.  “It seems increasingly clear that China‘s economic policy took a wrong turn 10 years ago, when it joined the World Trade Organisation,” wrote Hodges.  From 2001 onwards, China transformed itself into the […]

Expect Some China Chemicals Price Recovery….

….but let’s wait for the details to makea firm judgement, following Wen Jiabao’s comments about more help for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with the government also indicating an interest-rate cut by Q2 next year. How will any financial easing be balanced against the battle against inflation?

China Property Prices Down 30-50 Per Cent

By John Richardson A BIG reduction in real estate prices is now underway in China, creating the potential for more property/chemicals traders to go bust. The China Daily reports that home prices in suburban areas of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou fell by 30-50 per cent in July-September of this year compared with the same […]

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