There is no exaggerating China's hunger for commodities. The country accounts for about a fifth of the world's population, yet it gobbles
up more than half of the world's pork, half of its cement, a third of its steel and over a quarter of its aluminium. It is spending 35 times as much on imports of soya beans and crude oil as it did in 1999, and 23 times as much importing copper—indeed, China has swallowed over four-fifths of the increase in the world's copper supply since 2000. What is more, China is getting ever hungrier.
