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Asian Chemical Connections

China’s Petchem Markets Contradict Latest PMI

By John Richardson IF you study China’s petrochemicals markets on a regular basis they tell you something very important: That despite persistent efforts to tighten-up supply across several sectors in order to entice end-users into stock building, “hand-to-mouth” purchasing remains their policy. For example, polypropylene (PP)  import prices firmed on a heavy turnaround season in […]

China Property: It Is All About Local Govt Funding

By John Richardson THE more that things change in China’s property markets the more they stay the same, according to Deutsche Bank and Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service. First of all, here are the Deutsche Bank arguments why all remains well  in the sector, courtesy of this FT Alphaville blog post: The current decline in […]

Demographics Threaten China Property Collapse

By John Richardson THE persistent weakness in China’s petrochemicals markets had mainly been caused by problems in the country’s property sector, according to many delegates on the sidelines of last week’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Pattaya, Thailand. Here are some worrying numbers that help to explain this view: China’s real-estate sales declined by […]

China Housing No Longer A One-Way Bet

By John Richardson CHINA’s real estate sector was responsible for 16% of the country’s GDP growth, 33% of fixed asset investment, 20% of outstanding loans, 26% of new loans, and contributed 39% to government revenues in 2013, according to Nomura. And so the potential downside to chemicals demand from a correction in the property sector […]

China PE Market Strength Questioned

Dear blog reader – a  technical error, beyond our control, means that we are unable to upload the tables and graphs for today’s post. Watch out next week, as, when the problem has been solved, we will add the missing tables and graphs. Apologies….   By John Richardson THE sustainability of the strength in China’s […]

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 To Take A Big Stick To Financial Crisis

By John Richardson CHINA is facing a financial crisis that could put US sub-prime into the shade. “Between 2007 and 2012, the ratio of credit to GDP climbed to more than 190%, an increase of 60 percentage points,” said US funds manager, GMO, in a report. “China’s recent expansion of credit relative to GDP is […]

China NPC Underlines Inflation Focus

The course of true love never runs smooth…..Happy China couples get divorced and then plan to remarry in order to avoid new property tax Source of picture: Quirky China News/Rex Features   By John Richardson China will see “large inflation pressure in the second half of the year,” said a People’s Bank of China official on the […]

Much Less Of This…..

……..  Source: FT Beyondbrics   By John Richardson A fascinating article by the academic Anil K Gupta and consultant Haiyan Wang offers further support to our long-running argument that the future will not necessarily be the same as the future, when it comes to China. The blog continues to be alarmed by the degree of […]

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