cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/52372344
Changxing facility is now the world’s biggest purified terephthalic acid (PTA) producer. China, meanwhile, has gone from being a net importer of the stuff a decade ago to being the dominant supplier, accounting for more than 60% of global production. Faced with stiff competition, companies in Canada, Europe and Japan have all reduced their PTA output, or stopped making it.
The chemicals sector is known as “the industry of industries” because its products feed into all manner of goods. PTA is just one chemical, but China’s dominance spreads across many more. And it is only increasing. Officials from Washington to Brussels are focused on rare earths; they overlook chemicals at their peril. Changxing, meanwhile, is moving ahead: a new government plan calls for the island to upgrade into more specialised chemical products. Catching up with China is hard enough—and it is not a stationary target.
The competence to incentivise a wide range of specific production over the long term simply does not exist. We’ve long outsoourced that to the market and it has decided to stop making a lot of vital stuff domestically. We need a mindset shift if we want to regain any sort of practical independence from the people that make the stuff. Markets won’t do it. At least not without reintroducig significant intervention. We’d also need to develop the economic management competence to do it. Otherwise might keep jumping from one dependency crisis to another in perpetuity.
