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BEIJING -- China has released a plan for the development of its new strategic industries from now to the end of 2015, according to a latest statement released by the State Council.  The seven new strategic industries include energy conservation and environment protection, new information technology, biology, high-end equipment manufacturing, new materials, new energy and new-energy cars, according to the plan.  The seven industries will maintain an average growth rate of more than 20 percent during the 2011-15 period, the plan said.  The total value-added output of the industries will account for around 8 percent in China's GDP by 2015, it said. 

Chinese leaders met in Beijing at the weekend to put the finishing touches to the country’s 12th five-year plan, an economic blueprint that will include targets for growth, income levels, energy efficiency and carbon emissions.

China, the world’s largest energy consumer, intends to generate 11.4 per cent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2015, up from 8 per cent today, under the terms of the next five-year plan. That shift is equivalent to moving the whole of Italy off fossil fuels.

China has promulgated the Development Plan for the Energy-saving and New Energy Automobile Industry (2012-2020) and the 12th Five-year Development Plan for the New Materials Industry, giving explicit encouragement to the development and application of automobile weight reduction technology; the Investment Guide for Industry Reform and Upgrading published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also places automobile weight reduction on a prominent position of the auto industry

This is, in fact, the crux of the argument: It isn't enough to simply establish clear rules in a trading center. Governments can only successfully combat speculators if they coordinate their efforts worldwide and remove the cloak of secrecy from their commodities transactions. As long as this fails to happen, the price of copper will remain unpredictable and industry will be at the mercy of speculators. Companies will no longer be able to assume that copper will be expensive when it's scarce and cheap when it's available in abundance. Speculation destroys the basic signaling function that prices have in a market economy, says Heiner Flassbeck, chief economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Although a lot of money moves around as a result of price distortions, speculation doesn't create any real value, says Flassbeck. "The only thing that's created is an illusion of value." Making Life Difficult for Everyone In the end, the popular assessment that speculators are the purest of capitalists is by no means correct. In truth, they are the biggest enemies of the market, because they undermine its central mechanism, the efficient balancing of supply and demand. In doing so, they make life difficult for everyone: for industry, which can no longer predict how expensive its raw materials will be; for consumers, who are forced to bear the costs; and, finally, for copper producers, who face more risk when planning ahead. When the executives at CODELCO in Santiago make investment decisions today, it will be another three to five years before the results become visible. That's how long it takes to develop a new mine or expand an existing mine. The company plans to invest about $15 billion by 2015, but its executives have never been so uncertain about whether their predictions are correct. One thing is clear: Production costs will continue to rise. Now that deposits near the surface, which are easier to mine, are becoming depleted, mining companies are forced to dig deeper and deeper pits.

In its updated 5-year strategy announced today, ABB also said tight execution on cost and productivity—aiming for annual productivity improvements equivalent to 3-5 percent of cost of sales—will further contribute to increasing profitability over the period, along with targeted expansion of its service and software businesses.

ABB’s strategy is built around five components: increasing competitiveness by matching production to local market needs while driving productivity and quality improvements; capitalizing on macro trends such as emerging market growth, resource efficiency and climate change where markets are growing faster than global GDP; leveraging its leading market positions and technologies in core businesses like power grids and industrial automation to take market share; continuing its successful acquisition policy to accelerate growth in priority gap areas; and exploiting disruptive opportunities, such as direct current (DC) technologies, to enable a wide range of energy efficient automation and power solutions.

State-owned Hindustan Copper Ltd, which has expressed interest in bidding for the development of mines in Afghanistan, is also embarking on an expansion plan to increase its mine capacity from 3.2 million tonnes to 12 million tonnes per annum in this financial year, which started in April. The monopoly producer of the metal ore is set to invest around $985 million over the next five years in its expansion drive.