Plastics in China

China s two-decade-plus economic boom has spurred the rapid demand for plastics. The Chinese plastics industry has entered a mature period. Since 1990, the country s plastics consumption has grown 20.1% annually. Chinese industry and agriculture will continue to fuel demand for plastics. The total market demand for plastics increased 10.8% in 2003 to 32.9 million tonnes (metric tons). In order to become less-dependent on plastics imports, China will continue to expand its production capacity in plastic resin quality and variety. Production advanced to 16.9 million tonnes in 2003 and is increasing by 11.3% annually. The foreign trade in plastics will be reinforced in the 21st century. Plastics imports and exports advanced to 16.5 million tonnes and 0.5 million tonnes, respectively, in 2003. 

4 Plastics China Technologies, Markets and Growth Strategies to 2008 

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The massive expansion of the Chinese economy has had a profound impact on the production and use of commodity plastics in China. The first is the considerable growth in demand for polymer products which have outstripped local supply and as a consequence China is a major importer. This has had the effect of promoting large export oriented plants in other Asian countries, with large parts of their product slate destined for the Chinese market. China is now second to Japan in the amount of ethylene produced in the Far East. The Chinese nameplate capacity is almost 7 million tonnes/year. 

Braunegg G, Bona R, Roller M, Martinz J (2002) Production of polyhydroxyalkanoates a contribution of biotechnology to sustainable development. Proceedings of sustainable development and environmentally degradable plastics in China, Beijing, pp 56-71 Braunegg G, Bona R, Roller M (2004) Sustainable polymer production. Polym Plast Technol Eng 43 1779-1974... 

Table 2.11 End-use Market Demand for Plastics in China (thousands of tonnes)...

Shanghai Plastics Industrial United is a major producer of engineered plastics and thermoset plastics in China. It has 13 factories and a research centre, the Engineering Plastic Application Development Center. In addition to engineered plastics and thermoset plastics, the company manufactures speciality high molecular weight materials and other plastic products. 

Thermoformed chassis and body panels are featured on the car. The products were made initially in the USA for assembly in China. The car will weigh less than 2000 lb (900 kg). Automotive Design Composites, Inc of San Antonio, TX, designed the vehicle to have body panels and trunk formed from coextruded sheet of ABS with an ASA cap layer that will hang on a pultruded composite frame. Ceramic tooling is used to thermoform plastic products. 

The US 16 billion plastics additives industry (2000) is expected to increase from a volume of 17 billion lbs (1998) to 21 billion lbs by 2004 [11]. The plastics additives market is particularly dynamic in China (from... 

Plastics and metals are also of high interest. The plastic materials are normally mechanically shredded, manually sorted and then remelted. Then, new products are produced by heated extrusion. However Puckett [7] states that 25-30% of the plastics are burnt in open fires in order to recover valuable metals such as copper. The metals are only extracted and not further processed due to the fact that the informal recycling facilities in China do not have the proper technology to perform the metal recycling via smelting. 

In the cavernous halls of the Shanghai Industrial Exhibition, one can see a cornucopia of consumer goods (clothes of polyester, polyacrylic, and polyvinyl alcohol fiber shoes and sandals of polyvinyl chloride suitcases and television set frames of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene plastic toys and containers of polyethylene, and many other plastic products (China produced approximately 800,000 tons of plastics in 1980) of convenience we take for granted in the West) that the Chinese government will try to deliver, in quantity, to its citizens in the years to come. 

There will be import substitution by increased production in China of polyesters, other synthetic textiles, plastics, synthetic rubbers and many chemicals. Beneficial ripple effects of the increased production of indigenous synthetics will be to ... 

The preliminary cost analysis was conducted with the help of Mr. Peter Chan of Chiaphua Industries Ltd. Table 12.8-2 compares the cost of subcontracting the manufacture of plastic and metal appliance components versus manufacturing in-house for a production volume of 1000 units per month. All calculated costs are below the US 100 limit. A cost saving of twenty percent was forecasted assuming that the facility will be built and operated in China where the land and labor costs are cheaper. 

Kaolinite is the main constituent in china clay used to make porcelain. The layers are largely held together by van der Waals forces. Bentonite is used in cosmetics, as a filler for soaps, and as a plasticizer, and it is used in drilling-muds as a suspension stabilizer. Bentonite and kaolinite clays are used, after treatment with sulfuric acid to create acidic surface sites, as petroleum cracking catalysts. Asbestos also has a layered structure (Section 12.13). 

Chen G-Q (2008) Recent biodegradable plastics development in China. Dept of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Beijing... 

Many examples suggest this plasticity. For example, if a child with a lazy eye covers the healthy eye, eventually the vision in the weaker eye improves because the neurons grow new connections to reinforce the path to the weaker eye. A child born in China learns to speak Chinese, while the same child raised in England would learn to speak English. Although every child growing up in Spain knows how to roll the r, it is difficult for an adult nonnative speaker to learn to do so. 

The recycling of electronic items is another important source of PBDEs released into the environment. PBDEs make up from 5 to 30% of the weight of plastics and 6 to 12 x 108 kg of PBDEs were released into environment via electronic wastes (E-wastes) from 1997 to 2004 (Martin et al., 2004). In China, much E-waste has long been imported for recycling, such as the world s obsolete computers and electronic components. 

The emergence of a middle class in China in recent years has created a new and lucrative market for a huge variety of goods, including plastics. 

Many American and European plastics firms have built or are building production plants in China to capitalize on the comparatively cheap labor available there, and to more directly serve the continuing demand. For example, a 1 billion chemical plant in Shanghai is owned by Huntsman Corp. of The Woodlands, Texas, BASF AG of Germany and three Chinese companies. The plant produces diphenylmethane diisocyanate which is used in foam insulation and plastic chairs. 

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