China is still king of commodity consumption

China’s appetite for commodities is not waning, according to analysis by the Wall Street Journal. In fact, China alone consumes “roughly an eighth of the world’s oil, a quarter of its gold, almost a third of its cotton and up to half of all the major base metals”. Those kinds of trends are likely to continue, as the United States Energy Information Administration predicts China will account for over a quarter of the world’s increased demand in oil this year, despite recent turbulence in the markets.

Many market analysts are not being discouraged by the recent events. Tom Pugh, a commodities economist at Capital Economics, told the WSJ: “If you look at Chinese commodity imports over the last few months, they’ve actually been quite strong. A lot of it is just that people thought China would continue to grow at 10% a year, ad infinitum, and now people are just realizing that’s not going to happen.”

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Author: Donald Armbrecht is a freelance writer and social media producer.

Image: A labourer walks at a steel market in Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning province. REUTERS/Stringer (CHINA)