China: growing like gangbusters or bubble ready to burst? – Jan 14

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Oil Demand Seems to be Moving Up – Are Higher Prices around the Corner?
The Oil Drum, Heading Out
The recent run-up in oil prices to $84 barrel is being blamed on an increase in Chinese oil imports. In December, Chinese imports of crude oil rose to 20 million tonnes, or the equivalent of 4.7 million barrels a day. Recent purchases of African crude have been especially high, with purchases by Asian markets reaching 1.9 million barrels a day in early January, up from 1.58 million barrels a day in December.

Increases in Chinese oil demand shouldn’t be too surprising, given how rapidly personal auto sales have been increasing. The Chinese purchased 13.6 million cars and light trucks last year, compared to 10.4 million for the USA–they are now the world’s #1 auto market. We should not be surprised if this demand continues to grow and exert upward pressure on prices.

The increase in Chinese purchases has been clear for some time, as has their agreement with Saudi Arabia to increase purchase levels. As a result the world is rapidly returning to the production levels that were achieved before the financial recession…
(13 Jan 2010)

To Slow Growth, China Raises an Interest Rate
Keith Bradsher
China’s central bank raised a key interest rate slightly Thursday for the first time in nearly five months, in what economists interpreted as the beginning of a broader move to tighten monetary policy and forestall inflation.

After breaking stride a year ago during the global economic slowdown, the Chinese economy resumed galloping growth over the summer. Government investments, real estate construction and consumer spending are all rising briskly, thanks to a surge in lending by government-controlled banks.

Even exports have begun to recover despite continued economic weakness in the European Union and the United States, China’s two biggest overseas markets.

Raising interest rates may help discourage speculative investments by Chinese companies and individuals in real estate projects and other areas of economic activity. China’s dilemma is that higher rates may also prompt overseas investors seeking higher returns to redouble their efforts to push money into China, despite the country’s stringent capital controls…
(8 Jan 2010)

Chinese Transportation Growth
Stuart Staniford, The Oil Drum
The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics has a lot of interesting data. The web site is hard to use, at least in my browser, but after poking around in the html source of the pages, I’ve managed to figure out how to get to all the annual data, which let me make some graphs. I don’t know how accurate these numbers are, but here, at any rate, is the official story.

As usual, when reviewing Chinese economic statistics, I strongly recommend that you first arrange for ample clearance below your lower jaw to avoid any risk of accidental injury…

First up, we have the data on total passenger-kilometers by major mode. (One caveat to bear in mind. These are annual data from 1990 to 2007. Prior to 1990, there are data points for 1978, 1980, and 1985. I have made annual plots from 1978-2007, and just used linear interpolation for the data gaps before 1990.)

…Admittedly it’s hard to see such astronomical growth rates continuing for long. Maybe they won’t. But then, it’s hard to imagine them having continued for the last 25 years, and apparently they did. If you’d said in 2000 that growth was slowing down and certain to slow down more, you’d have been wrong. And they’d still be a long way from US per capita car ownership at that level, since the population is four times larger.

The world has never seen anything like this Chinese industrial machine…
(13 Jan 2010)

US raises concern over China oil policy
upstreamonline.com
“We are pursuing intensive dialogue with the Chinese on the subject of energy security, in which we have raised our concerns about Chinese efforts to lock up oil reserves with long-term contracts,” David Shear, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday.

“We will continue to engage them on this subject at very senior levels,” he told the panel, which was holding a hearing on recent security developments in China.

Shear was responding to questions by Republican Roscoe Bartlett, who said he was worried that the Chinese were “aggressively buying up oil all over the world” and might not share it with other countries in the future…
(14 Jan 2010)