The China commodities super-cycle is over. Will there be another boom?
China’s massive industrialisation and urbanisation drove a huge commodities boom that has run its course, but some executives are hopeful it will be replaced.
Workers at a construction site in Shanghai. China’s steel production fell to a four-year low in 2024. Bloomberg
Waking from a nap at his desk, Xiao, a steel trader from Wuhan in central China, reflects on how, at the end of one of the greatest booms in recent economic history, he is a lucky survivor.
About half of his competitors in this gritty office park, built near the site of China’s first ironworks, have gone bust during the country’s three-year-long property crisis. The park itself is overshadowed by the enormous concrete skeleton of an unfinished real estate project.
