The Dragon is blowing commodity bubbles

From Times Online
January 7, 2009

The Dragon is blowing commodity bubbles: Leo Lewis on Asia

Bullish little oddities have been surfacing across Asia, and in the background are the hunger pangs of the Dragon Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

Yesterday, after three consecutive sessions of hot-blooded, limit-hitting exuberance, trading in Shanghai rubber futures was suspended and given the chance to simmer down. Dealers simply shrugged and made a feverish lunge for Tokyo rubber futures instead.

It was not supposed to be like this. Everyone has seen the doom-laden pictures by now - the trade fleets at anchor, the silent pit-heads and the stone-cold blast furnaces – but risk capital seems to have spotted something more enticing: six vast holes in the ground and the contents of a Chinese fridge.

Accordingly, dozens of other bullish little oddities have begun surfacing in what were supposed to be dread-infested markets. In Seoul, shares in the country’s two largest fisheries lurched around 8 per cent higher yesterday, because a woman died of bird flu in Beijing and a panicky cull of poultry may be in the offing.

In Kuala Lumpur, plantation owners are celebrating a flying start to the New Year after the prospect of widespread frying drove an extended rally in palm oil. South American soy bean farmers are expecting weekly orders to double from normal levels. Energy traders in Singapore are beginning to mutter quietly about a solid floor on crude oil prices.

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Playing in the background to all of this is a seductive, hypnotising ode: The hunger pangs of the Dragon.

As tunes go, this is a siren-call with monstrously good form. Few bubble-inflating puffs of broker-patter have moved so many markets by so much and in such a short space of time as the great “China eats the world” theory. Three years ago, when this argument was in its most impressive stage of ascendancy, it could be attached to nearly every call. Given all the capital which, at the time, needed somewhere to go, the line was guaranteed an attentive audience. The following sentence could be adapted for purpose: “Quake with fear, because the Chinese are drinking/eating/building/burning/stir-frying/smelting ever more copper/concrete/indium/phosphorus/condominiums/steel/pork/milk/corn – and will continue to do so for five years/a decade/fifty years/until the world runs out completely.”

Endless charts could be produced showing Chinese hard and soft commodity consumption doubling over the previous decade and China’s relative proportion of total global consumption soaring with it. Beijing itself was talking with bullet-proof confidence about the millions of people it had lifted from poverty, and it was hard not to be convinced that the charts would simply continue northwards.

That view took a bit of a breather as the global economy drooped, but now, far, far sooner than expected, the “China eats the world” theory has returned to markets and begun playing its old mind tricks once again.

There is a subtle difference this time, though: in a year where nothing can be reasonably expected to boom the appetite argument rests on the sense that Beijing is exploiting both its relatively low debt position and the immense recent plunges in commodity prices to cheaply stockpile resources for the future – a move that analysts agree makes eminent good sense both for China, and for any big companies out there with enough cash to take similar advantage from the situation. For a nation that has pinned its hopes for economic stimulus on multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects, the state has a clear interest in securing the raw materials at their current knock-down prices. The Chinese leadership has also made little secret of its concerns about preserving social stability as the mighty manufacturing growth engine sputters. If the opportunity is there, state purchases of grains, metals, energy and anything else with inherent price volatility are a natural buffer for a state to establish against future public unrest.

To help things along, China’s actual intentions remain tantalisingly vague. Energy analysts in London believe that China is currently looking to fill six newly-built strategic petroleum reserves dotted around the country with a view to securing a stockpile of some 250 million barrels of crude. Agricultural commodity traders believe that the state is looking to replenish its grain and soybean reserves – depleted after years of draw-down, while metal traders have heard that China is planning secure stocks of a variety of minerals from aluminium and copper to nickel and zinc.

Unfortunately, all the recent price spikes based on this have the clammy feel of a sucker’s rally. Compared with its former gluttony, the Dragon is scarcely more than peckish: look behind the China voracity theory this time, and it is riddled with flaws. Those crude oil storage facilities may indeed be deep and empty, but even if you assume that the job of filling them adds 100,000 barrels to overall daily Chinese imports of 8 million barrels, the practical impact on global demand is negligible. It is certainly no counterweight to a global plunge in demand measured in the tens of millions of barrels.

Similarly with metals, no amount of state buying – even in the form of offering liquidity to local smelters – is going to compensate for the sort of drop-off in industrial production and manufacturing experienced over the last couple of months. Even the promise of massive infrastructure projects implied by Beijing’s $580 billion stimulus package will affect only about 16 per cent of the economy, and a state think tank said yesterday that the country’s fixed-asset investment would decelerate in 2009 despite all those new spending plans.

Even the more literal image of China eating the world may fade for at least another year or two until the factories start whirring again. The prices of edible oils and other foods are now performing strongly ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, but it takes a considerable leap of faith to imagine that Chinese demand for meat, dairy products and cooking oils will be back at global larder-sapping levels come mid-February.


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article5467895.ece