While surfing the 'net, I came across this must read article:
These paragraphs hit me right between the eyes as they, and the rest of the article, articulate the point I was trying to make in my previous post very nicely...
They export to the US but they want to strengthen the other Asian countries in order to have strong neighbors that will depend in the future more and more on the Chinese economy as an engine of growth and less on the US. Chinese imports from South East Asia are growing at a very rapid pace.
In the process of industrialization, energy needs go up. China consumes 1.7m barrels of oil a day; India 0.7m barrels. The whole of Asia has 3.6bn people including Japan and it consumes 20m barrels of oil a day. The US has 295m people and consumes 22m barrels of oil a day. For sure oil demand in Asia will double to 40m barrels of oil per day. Whether it takes six years or 15 years, I don't know, but it will double. In your lifetime you won't see oil at US$12 a barrel again - ever. The Chinese used to take 6% of the world's copper market in 1990, 12% in the year 2000; now they're the largest copper user, 21%. For Iron ore they consume up 27% of total production in the world.
The incremental demands from industrialization do not come from China only, but also from India, from rising standards through this wealth transfer from the Western World to Asia, and this will lift commodity prices.
