Abstract:

The synthetic rubber industry in China has experienced a development history of 56 years, and has successively developed a number of proprietary integrated production technologies of nickel-based polybutadiene rubber, styrene-butadiene-styrene thermoplastic elastomer, solution polymerized styrene-butadiene rubber and rare earth metal-based polyisoprene rubber, and has consummated a great deal of varieties and grades of the rubbers. China has become one of the three countries which are capable to produce all the 7 general purpose synthetic rubbers in the nowadays world.

Since entering the new century, the rise of Chinese economy, especially the rapid development of the automobile industry, has strongly boosted the growth of synthetic rubber industry in China mainland. Now, China has took the first place in the aspects of production capacity, production output and apparent consumption. The production capacity of the synthetic rubbers in China mainland reached 4.99 million tons in 2014, accounting for 27% of the global total capacity. The situation of Chinese domestic market divided by SINOPEC, PETROCHINA plus 32 provide firms and overseas/Taiwan-funded enterprises as three dominant players has formed since the intensive development of colossal petrochemical enterprises and the investments from private sectors, overseas and Taiwan region. The production capacity of the three players accounts for 34.2%, 23.5% and 42.3% of the China total capacity, respectively. With the advent of large-scale and intensification of the petrochemical industries and formation of automobile tire  industrial clusters, a synthetic rubber industrial cluster in China mainland gradually formed under the motivation of the market competition and the allocation of resource factors.

In recent years, blindness in investments targeted synthetic rubber industries from certain enterprises and regions happened repeatedly and caused an excess capacity in the production of cis-polybutadiene, styrene-butadiene rubber and SBCs due to the temptation of handsome profit and long-term insufficient supplies in the market. Additionally, most of the newly established rubber plants preferably adopted the existing technologies, which led to the low technical- economical level of the overall industry as compared with the advanced technologies in the world. Many rubber products for special purpose still have to be imported from abroad because the lack of the grades needed urgently in the domestic market. So far, the effective innovation chain connected the basic study, research and development and application investigation has not formed yet in the system of scientific and technological innovation. Numerous scientific research subjects on the dependence of macroscopic properties of the tire on the molecular structure, aggregation structure and multi-scale structures of rubber nanocomposite materials remain to be carried out in the aspect of basic scientific study. The reaction engineering, mass and heat transfer, separation, process optimization and dedicated devices still suffer the insufficiency in the systematic research effort in the aspect of process science and engineering development. The phenomenon of deficiency in specialized institution and/or research team and the untight combination with the demands from the downstream customer still exist in the aspect of application studies. For the reasons mentioned above, the technical support for up-grading the downstream customers’ product cannot be offered effectively. At the present stage, all the listed disadvantages are intensively reflected in the slowness in the development and generalization of new products of the synthetic rubber enterprises, the unsatisfactory technical economical indices of the rubber plants and the decline of the comprehensive profitability of the enterprises.

China synthetic rubber industry should stick to the policy of creation and innovation and the strategy of constructing a synergistic innovation system which involving enterprises, universities, research institutions and customers for the sake of strengthening the core competiveness of the entire synthetic rubber industry. The sustainable development of the China synthetic rubber industry should be facilitated via continuous technical progress in basic studies and original innovation achievements. The process science and engineering technology development for synthetic rubber should be enhanced in order to raise the technical-economical level of entire rubber industry. The progress in conventional technologies should be ceaselessly carried forward via effort made for improving product quality, energy-saving and environmental protection. The synthetic technology using “green” raw materials and additives should be specially developed in order to realize the goal of low carbon and green production. All the enterprises in the synthetic rubber industry should transfer its role from a simple supplier of product to a role as provider of products-technologies-services. At the same time, the investments into the synthetic rubber projects should come back to the rational track under the macroscopic guidance from the relative authorities of the government and industrial associations of synthetic rubber industry. For establishing a strong China synthetic rubber industry, the healthy and sustainable development of the industry should be insisted on the basis of joint effort of all the enterprises via performing the strategy of merging and reorganization, control of blind production, firmly closing down backward production facilities with high energy-consuming and high pollution. 

Key Words: China, synthetic rubber industry, progress, competitiveness, strategy

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Biography:

Cao Xianghong, male, was born in June 1945, in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province. Mr. Cao is a professor-level senior engineer and an expert in petrochemical engineering field. He is now a senior advisor at Sinopec Science and Technology Committee, serves as director of Division of Chemical, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering in Chinese Academy of Engineering, vice president of Chinese Petroleum Society, vice president of China Energy Research Society, chairman of National Petroleum Products and Lubricants Standardization Technical Committee, and committee member of the Expert Committee of National Energy Administration.
Mr. Cao graduated in polymer (major) from Nanjing College of Chemical Technology in July 1967. He had worked in Sinopec Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Company for 30 years, and engaged in technology development, production and technical management. After 2000, he served successively as general manager, director and senior vice president, and chief engineer in Sinopec Corp., in charge of technology development and informatization. Since the year of 2008 he left the leadership position but remained as a senior advisor of Sinopec.
Mr. Cao has been engaged in petrochemical production and management for many years. He participated and organized more than 30 major refinery and petrochemical modification and expansion projects. He organized the upgrading of cis-polybutadiene rubber technology, the development of the whole set of SSBR technology, and the development of polymer grade iso-butene technology and butyl rubber technology. Mr. Cao was a key decision-maker and organizer in SINOPEC Yanshan Petrochemical in the revamping project of ethylene expansion, downstream technology development and localization of major equipment with China own technology. He proposed and organized the development of new oil refining technology about residuum catalytic cracking to produce ethylene feedstock. Under his leadership, the number of patent application and authorization of Sinopec, and the number of national awards for scientific invention and technological progress are on the top position among Chinese companies, and the core competence of Sinopec was significantly improved. He has made important contributions to the refining and petrochemical technology innovation. Mr. Cao won one grand prize, one first-grade prize, one second-grade prize, and two third-grade prizes of national scientific and technological progress award, and had nine scientific and technological progress awards at provincial and ministerial levels.
Mr. Cao was elected as member of Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1999 and elected as foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering, USA, in February 2009. He is a member of the 11th and 12th CPPCC National Committee.