As China Goes, So Go Commodities - WSJ.com

• DECEMBER 14, 2011

As China Goes, So Go Commodities

The outlook for global prices depends heavily on whether the country maintains its voracious appetite for oil, copper and other products

By LIAM PLEVEN

You want to know where the global commodities markets are heading in the coming years? Then it's probably best that you remember a single word: China.

As the biggest and one of the fastest-growing of the world's developing economies, China has become a voracious consumer of industrial and agricultural commodities. Its shifting needs are now the most important driver in the prices of many of those goods. Producers often base massive capital investments largely on their expectations for Chinese demand for their products. Investors often make similar calculations before buying or selling commodities contracts or related securities.

That's why no single factor is likely to have a more far-reaching impact on commodities markets over the next few years than how Chinese demand changes as the country's economy evolves. "That's the big question," says Richard Adkerson, chief executive of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.

So what's the answer? Here are three possible economic scenarios, and what each would mean for global commodities markets.

Full Speed Ahead

If China's consumption of commodities continues to grow at the rate it has over the past 10 years, this is what the world would have to do to meet that demand in 2020, assuming that the rest of the world's collective appetite doesn't change at all:

Craig Frazier

• Pump almost as much additional crude oil as Saudi Arabia now provides per year.

• Grow more than three times as many soybeans as currently come out of Iowa, which alone provides 5% of global output.

• Extract nearly three times as much new copper as the current annual production from Chile, which mines about four times as much as any other nation.

And that's just for starters. Vast increases in supply would be needed for all sorts of other commodities as well.

Prices that rocketed to record heights in recent years on Chinese buying could fly even higher. That would be good news for companies that produce those commodities and investors who have placed bets on them—unless high prices abruptly choke off demand or spur the Chinese and other buyers of commodities to seek alternative goods.

Materials in tight supply or at risk of significant constraint, like crude oil, copper and palladium, could be vulnerable to sharp price increases. Their prices shot up 50%, 106% and 207%, respectively, in the five years through 2010. By contrast, aluminum is plentiful, cotton production is rising sharply and nickel output is climbing—at least for the moment—which can make them less vulnerable. It's also easier to produce some commodities in greater quantity when needed, which can limit price shocks. It takes less time, for example, to grow more corn than it does to find new oil beneath the ocean floor.

Many analysts consider the fast-growth scenario improbable. The consensus is that China is headed for slower economic growth than it experienced from 2001 to 2010, when its annual rate of expansion ranged from 8.3% to 14.2% and reached double digits six times, according to the World Bank. If the consensus is right, the question becomes how much China's growth will slow.

The Hard Landing

A growth rate of 4% to 6% would be a big leap forward for the U.S. economy and plenty of others. But not for China.

That's the range of growth expected for the Chinese economy by around 2013 or 2014 by Roubini Global Economics LLC, a New York-based research and consulting firm. Shelley Goldberg, the firm's director of global resources and commodity strategy, calls that a "hard landing" after the far more rapid expansion of the past decade. "Obviously, it doesn't bode well for commodities," Ms. Goldberg says.

Demand for steel, copper and other industrial metals could drop significantly if China does stall, because those materials are heavily used in construction—which would be at risk from weakness in the Chinese real-estate market—and because China often accounts for some 40% of global demand for those materials. Coal demand could also tumble, she says, because the fuel is heavily used in China to generate power.

Some commodities could take a hit not because China uses more of them than anyone else but because it has been providing much of the growth in their markets. For instance, while China accounts for just 11% of global oil demand, according to Barclays Capital, it provides 60% of the growth in that demand.

Similarly, a hard landing might hurt the soybean market more than the corn market, because China is a huge importer of soybeans but produces almost all the corn it needs at home, says Kevin Norrish, managing director for commodities research at Barclays Capital.

Slower but Steady

For many China watchers, including Barclays, the most probable scenario is an economy that keeps expanding strongly but at a less blistering pace, with annual GDP growth rates in the high single digits. That would mean continued upward pressure on most commodities prices, with some possibly rising substantially, but in most cases not the soaring prices that a red-hot economy would produce.

"We still see loads of reasons why growth is going to continue, but the rate of growth is going to slow over time," says Jim Lennon, who specializes in Chinese commodity markets as an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd., one of the leading financiers for commodities producers. The first half of the current decade will see more rapid growth than the second half, in Mr. Lennon's view, as the main engine of the Chinese economy over time switches from massive infrastructure projects to consumer demand for durable goods.

The result will be a tamer increase in consumption of base metals and other commodities, he says. Between 2000 and 2010, Chinese consumption of copper, aluminum, zinc, nickel and lead grew at compound annual rates ranging from 13.9% to 24.4%, according to a presentation Mr. Lennon delivered in October. For 2010 to 2020, the projected growth range is 5.3% to 9.3%, the presentation said.

Even in a slower-but-steady world, demand—and prices—could shoot up for some commodities. For instance, China uses less natural gas per capita than many other countries, notes Neil Beveridge, a Hong Kong-based senior oil analyst for investment bank Sanford C. Bernstein. That will change, he says, as more people use the fuel to heat or cool their homes and greater volumes are consumed by industry. In 2010, China imported about 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Mr. Beveridge expects China's imports to grow to 10 billion cubic feet per day by 2015 and 20 billion by 2020, more than any other nation's at that point.

Meanwhile, demand is likely to continue growing for some food commodities but shrink for others, says Scott Rozelle, a professor at Stanford University who studies Chinese agriculture. As China's growing middle class consumes more meat, animal feed such as soybeans and corn will continue to be in increasing demand, he says. But "the demand for wheat and rice will fall" as diets continue to evolve, Mr. Rozelle says, and China may occasionally even export some of those less-coveted staples, as it has over the past 10 years.

One thing to keep in mind is that China is such a big market now that any increase in consumption—even in a slower but steady economic expansion—can create a big chunk of fresh demand, and push prices up accordingly. As Ms. Goldberg notes, "They still are 1.3 billion people."

Mr. Pleven is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's New York bureau. He can be reached at liam.pleven@wsj.com.

Meanwhile, Other Emerging Nations Bear Watching

China is the key to the outlook for commodities markets, but it isn't the only factor. Commodities prices could face upward pressure over the next 10 years if other countries start to consume anything like China did over the past decade.

Take India. Compared with China, India consumes a small fraction of the world's commodities—for instance, 3% of the copper, compared with China's 37%, according to Barclays Capital—despite having nearly as many citizens. But that could change, because India is less developed than China, meaning it still has a vast amount of work to do on improving its infrastructure, particularly upgrading its power grid.

It also wants to boost manufacturing, says Deepak Lalwani, director for India at Lalcap Ltd., a London-based consulting firm. He expects India's gross domestic product to increase fourfold by 2020.

The list is long of other, smaller countries that consume fewer raw materials per capita than the developed world, leaving lots of room for global demand to grow. While some have been ratcheting up consumption, they haven't been doing so as fast as China, suggesting their appetites could get even bigger.

For instance, between 2000 and 2010, copper consumption in Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and Turkey increased between 36% in Brazil and 172% in Indonesia, according to data from the International Copper Study Group, an intergovernmental organization. Over the same period, China's consumption nearly quadrupled.

"The one trend that's clear to me is that people in undeveloped countries around the world want to live a better life," says Richard Adkerson, chief executive of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. "The longer-term growth story goes beyond China, and hasn't really been scratched yet."

Liam Pleven

As China Goes, So Go Commodities - WSJ.com