Beijing – China issued its 2018 blueprint for preferred industries such as polyurethanes as the year closed on 29 December.
The Guidelines on Industry Development were last published in 2012 by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Their aim is to promote the orderly transfer of technology to regional industrial clusters and achieve inter-regional balance.
In China, the government sets strategic goals in its five-year plans, and these guidelines are followed by provincial and municipal authorities. The guidelines are used to inform the types of projects that regions will favour and fund. These often have timelines for implementation, and have been used to justify funding for industry parks.
The preferential industries assigned to different areas include:
- PU new materials and related feedstock: Shanghai;
- TPU: Shijiazhuang, Baoding, Hengshui and Handan in Hebei;
- High-performance thermoplastic elastomers, including TPU in: Xining and Haixi in Qinghai; Shenyang, Dalian, Fushui and Panjin in Liaoning;
- Coal-based ethylene glycol: Xining and Haixi in Qinghai.
The guidelines also covered a number of PU downstream sectors, shown in the table below.
They also call for the areas that are named to ‘seize the opportunities amid the new round of technology revolution and industrial transformation … and take on the higher end of the global value chain'.
| Product | City | Province |
| High-capacity refrigerator | Nanjing, Suzhou, Taizhou and Wuxi | Jiangsu |
| Cold chain logistics | Urumqi, Ili, Kashgar, Bayingolin, Changji and Hotan | Xinjiang |
| High-performance flame retardant insulation for buildings | Shenyang and Chaoyang | Liaoning |
| Energy-saving windows/doors and insulation materials | Urumqi, Ili, Kashgar, Bayingolin, and Changji | Xinjiang |
| Bed products | Changsha and Zhangjiajie | Hunan |
| Lightweight and green auto body materials | Tianjin, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Qinghai. | |
