How big is the gap between China and the world's chemical industry?

We have always believed that with the continuous production of China's integrated enterprises in recent years, the scale of China's chemical industry is growing rapidly, but everyone knows that there is still a huge gap in scale and sales between China's top chemical enterprises and the world's top chemical enterprises. While the scale of China's chemical enterprises is growing slowly, the world's top chemical enterprises are growing rapidly.

Pingtou learned that China has now become the world's main production base of chemicals, the production capacity of most bulk chemicals is the world's first, such as MDI, propylene, acrylic acid, maleic anhydride, butanone, PTA, PX, vinyl acetate, glass fiber, etc., and the production capacity of some chemicals is in the process of rapid growth, such as PDH, PBAT, PLA, polyethylene, polypropylene, etc. In spite of this, only six Chinese chemical companies have been selected in the global ranking.

Some people say that at present, China's chemical industry, like the Japanese chemical industry, is moving from agglomeration to scale. Moreover, the level of China's chemical industry has only reached the level of the chemical industry in Europe and the United States and other developed countries in the 1950s and 1960s, and there is still a huge gap between Europe and the United States in some core chemical production processes, as well as fine chemicals and new materials.

Therefore, in what areas does China's chemical industry have a big gap with developed countries? What are the advantages of China's chemical industry? How long will it take to catch up?

01, there are major drawbacks in the field of refining and chemical integration

Pingtou Brother saw that in the field of large chemical industry, such as refining and chemical integration projects, there are many places in China to use foreign technology, such as large ethylene, aromatics combined, atmospheric and vacuum pressure and catalytic cracking processes, many companies use Honeywell technology or catalyst provided in the integration project, and patented technology also needs to be purchased from international giants. As a result, China's own technology cannot be applied on a large scale, and there is no actual production and operation data as a reference for improvement and correction.

In addition, Chinese enterprises want to develop this technology, pay money and land, and foreign parties only provide technology and support for shares, but the construction situation is generally not smooth, and the products are not qualified for a long time, resulting in losses every day of the joint venture project, which is forced to return the Chinese capital. However, as soon as the Chinese side withdrew, the products were instantly qualified and the construction went smoothly. This also shows that the control of foreign parties in the core production process is far more than the level of Chinese production process, so as to use this "inferior" routine.

Pingtou brother believes that although China's current level of production technology is growing rapidly, in recent years, few projects have been heard of landing and industrialization, and most advanced technologies remain in the "paper talk" stage. The technologies that dare to try are mostly state-owned enterprises such as Sinopec, petrochina and China Coal.

02, China still has a long way to go in the field of fine chemicals

In the field of fine chemical industry, China's chemical production enterprises lag behind the developed countries in Europe and the United States, mainly the developed countries in Europe and the United States strictly control the production technology of this fine chemical industry, and do not cooperate with domestic enterprises, relying on national policy loopholes, and implement wholly-owned construction production in China. Some domestic enterprises will choose the "gray" way to obtain production technology, such as the method of "digging people" or buying drawings.

However, many domestic enterprises can not fully understand the drawings, and in order to improve efficiency and reduce costs, so as to abandon the automation equipment, which has brought a lot of "cottage" fine chemical production equipment can not be used. Jiangsu Xiangshui incident is an example, the process of interlocking problems, was found out and did not rectify, and finally led to a tragedy.

03. China's chemical industry lacks the motivation for catalyst research

For the catalyst field of China's chemical industry, it is upgraded to the field of national security, the current gap between China's catalyst and European and American countries is large, some in the core catalyst field, is monopolized by a few companies in the world, resulting in a significant gap between domestic catalysts and the international market. Therefore, for China's chemical catalyst field, as long as foreign countries continue to supply, China basically has no motivation to carry out research and development and improvement.

Although Pingtou brother has seen some of the shortcomings of China's chemical industry, the confidence of China's chemical industry remains, and China is achieving corner overtaking in the fields of new materials and new energy. What are China's development advantages?

01, Chinese chemical people are good at seizing industry opportunities to achieve rapid scale rise

The use of cheap shale gas resources in the United States has not only imported a large amount of natural gas, but also a large number of propane imports, and China's imports of propane from the United States have accounted for the main source of China's propane imports. Taking advantage of this opportunity, China has achieved the scale rise of PDH in recent years, from 600,000 tons to nearly 8 million tons, and there are still more than 35 million tons of new volume in the future. The rapid rise of this scale has not only allowed China to improve its propylene self-sufficiency rate, but also made China the world's propane consumption center and won the global PDH focus in one stroke.

In addition, China is also using cheap ethane resources, a large number of new ethane projects, ethane cracking to fine chemicals, is the most critical direction to achieve the light cracking of raw materials, but also the key to China's chemical industry to achieve raw material diversification. From coal to crude oil, from propane to ethane, from natural gas to methanol, the diversification of raw materials in China's chemical industry is accelerating the diversification of China's chemical industry and making China's chemical industry more competitive in the global market.

02. China has a terminal consumer market of 1.4 billion people

In the global chemical industry, China has now become the production and processing center of the global chemical industry, and under the trend of scale and integration, it has gradually become the consumption center of global chemicals. The strength behind this lies in the size of China's 1.4 billion population.

China's current population has far exceeded that of Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea and Russia, and the demographic dividend has been fully developed and expanded since the scale began in 2018. Not only that, China's demographic dividend is expanding at a rapid rate of 10%, if China can not consume so many chemicals at present, then there is no need to worry, in the future, relying on a huge population base, China will still be the main consumer market, and will also be an important supply and consumption concentration in Asia.

03. China's infrastructure construction is expanding at an astonishing rate

Brother Pingtou saw that since 2009, China has invested a huge amount of money in infrastructure construction, in terms of highways, basic roads and railways, Bridges, China's construction speed is the first in the world, the total high-speed rail mileage has exceeded 22,000 kilometers, is more than the sum of other countries in the world. These remarkable achievements are inseparable from China's long-term development of infrastructure.

Brother Pingtou believes that these infrastructure construction will quickly serve all aspects of China's chemical industry chain, and the main force is the rapid development of China's chemical industry.

04, China's talent training in the chemical industry first in the world

According to relevant data, in 2014, the number of Chinese R & D personnel was 3.71 million, which has far exceeded Europe and the United States and other countries, and is the first in the world. From the point of view of the number of investment in research and development, in 2015, China's investment in research and development in the industry exceeded 1.4 trillion, second only to the United States, and the future shows a rapid growth trend of 10%.

Brother Pingtou believes that with the development of the chemical industry in the future, there will be a vigorous development in the field of technology research and development, including the attraction of overseas talents.

Brother Pingtou wants to say that after decades of development, China's chemical industry has achieved corner overtaking in some areas, especially the research on new materials, lithium batteries and related materials driven by new energy vehicles, which has reached the world's leading level. Moreover, at present, China's chemical enterprises are moving from integration to large-scale stage, and with the substantial improvement of profits brought by large-scale, it will inevitably drive the investment and progress of chemical technology. Therefore, China mentioned in the 14th Five-Year Plan and 2035 vision goals that China will inevitably transition from the growth of quantity to the growth of quality in the future, and China's chemical industry is also the same.

On the contrary, the European and American chemical industry is currently being seriously affected by the financial crisis, and the growth rate of the industry has slowed down significantly. In addition, the aging of the chemical industry in Europe and the United States, the slow development of new products and the reduction of expenditure will seriously affect the development of the chemical industry. Therefore, Pingtou brother believes that although China's chemical industry has not yet reached the level of developed countries, with the country's accurate prediction of the trend of the chemical industry, China's chemical industry is facing the critical point of catching up with European and American countries, and will inevitably become the world's chemical power in the future.