By John Richardson MONITORING demand has never been harder because of the pandemic. One of my colleagues on the ICIS Pricing team was, for example, last week told by one of his reliable contacts that polyethylene (PE) demand was good, bad or indifferent. It used to be that if you talked to the people you […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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 Copper, Chemicals And The Interconnections
By John Richardson IT is the interconnections that matter and the trouble is that few people seem to have adequately thought about the interconnections between the various dysfunctional parts of the Chinese economy. For example; A lot of the main players in copper financing are also involved in the property market, according to this FT […]
Dow And Commodities-Specialities Integration
By John Richardson IS diversification itself a problem in commodity chemicals and speciality companies with operations under one roof, or is it more how this diversification is handled? This is a question raised by this excellent Insight article, from the blog’s ICIS colleague Joe Chang, which revisits the issue of hedge fund Third Point’s […]
The WTO “Bali” Deal Versus ASEAN Priorities
By John Richardson WHY sacrifice national or regional growth for the sake of freer global trade? This is a question the blog has been asking itself since the breakthrough last week at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Bali. This follows our earlier thoughts on how regional trading blocs may become much more significant. […]
South Korea’s Demographic Challenges
By John Richardson THE blog has been long on South Korea ever since its first visit in 1997. Its economic achievements since the horrors of the Korean War are nothing short of amazing. Bereft of natural resources, all it has had to rely has been its intellectual capital and, wow, look at how it has […]
Malaysia: Taking The Long View
Source: Malaysia Petrochemicals Association By John Richardson THE problems in Malaysia have been evident for a long time. But thanks to the irresponsible and failed actions of the US Fed, the flow of funds into the Southeast country had led to a papering-over of the cracks in its economic growth model. The same, as […]
Without The Benefit Of Time
Victorian Britain (Source of picture: Wikimedia) By John Richardson LIFE in China can be grim, much as it was in Britain during its industrial development. In China, according to The Economist: A tenth of the country’s […]
3D Printing: The New Industrial Revolution
By John Richardson MANUFACTURING via 3D printing could result in an industrial revolution as big as that which occurred in 1766 with the invention of the spinning jenny (see above). “The pedal-powered machine allowed a single person to spin eight cotton threads at a time rather than just one,” wrote James Grubber in this edition […]
China, Patronage And Innovation
By John Richardson CHINA has to improve innovation if it is to avoid the middle-income trap. Some people assume that success is a given because of China’s great achievement of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty over the last two decades. But rapid industrialisation and infrastructure spending, which were the methods of […]
Jump to page: