2021-2025 China Benzene Industrial Policy Interpretation
13th Five-Year Plan: An official of the Party Committee of the Petroleum and Chemical Industry Planning Institute pointed out that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s petrochemical industry will achieve an average growth rate of 5%-6%, which is much higher than the average growth rate of other countries and regions. The chemical industry has made a huge contribution. With the global economy basically stagnating, China took the lead in resuming work and production, actively absorbing benzene resources from Asia, and greatly reducing the export pressure of Japan and South Korea.
14th Five-Year Plan: During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the chemical industry needs to shift from quantity development to quality development. Our vision for development is to move the supply-side structural reform into a new stage by focusing on cutting overcapacity and making up for shortcomings, taking structural adjustment and upgrading as the main task. The growth rate of demand in China’s petrochemical industry has slowed down, but structural shortages still exist. Therefore, efforts should be made to promote structural adjustment and upgrading, develop deep processing, excavate new demand, and promote technology from “laboratory” to “production workshop”. We will eliminate backward capacity, strictly control the scale of traditional capacity such as that of refining, methanol and the downstream products, avoid homogenization and repeated construction of capacity in basic industries such as ethylene & its downstream products, aromatics & its downstream products, and develop differentiated and high-value products. The benzene industry will mainly focus on refining-chemical integration projects in the follow-on period. The upstream and downstream industrial chain will be further optimized, which is conducive to further occupying the upstream commanding height of the industry development, improving the capacity gradient, enriching the product structure, optimizing the operation scale and enhancing the sustainable profitability and risk resistance level of the operation to step into a new stage of coordinated, integrated and balanced development of the whole refining-chemical industry. For downstream plants, the cost advantage of the integrated unit is more obvious, and the risk control ability will be greatly improved. But at the same time, the survival of old and small-capacity plants will face great challenges.
