China is one of the five key polymer consuming countries in the world, relying heavily on imports. From 2007, polymer production has been steadily increasing in China. From January to October 2007, the national output of polymers has reached 22.5 mln tons, up 18.48% year on year. PVC reached 7.2 mln tons, up 20.37% year on year. PE and PP reached 5.1 mln tons and 5.2 mln tons, up 17.29% and 22.82% year on year respectively. Polymer output and production value have both increased by over 15%.
Meanwhile, China has a high level of dependency on polymer import. Despite being the biggest synthetic resin importing country in the world; China cannot control the price of those grades that it does not manufacture. The production units for polyolefin depend mainly on foreign technology- very few smaller players use domestic technology. Indigenous technological development of engineering plastics production is weaker and has not reached the industrial production standard. Domestic polystyrene producing equipment also adopts technologies from Taiwan and other countries.
In the long term, the demand for the high-performance products will increase continuously with the continuous development of China 's technology and economy. It is estimated that supply will fall short of demand for high-performance polymers, while the production of commodity polymers will be surplus.
China 's consumption of polymers is expected to surpass 45 mln tons by 2010, at an average rate of 6.5% pa in the next five years. Growth rate of Polyethylene is estimated at 6.6%, with HDPE growing at a faster rate that LDPE and LLDPE. Polypropylene is estimated to grow at 8.9%, PVC 5.6%, PS 3.4% and ABS 4.8%.