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3 Guangdong currently imports products that we manufacture in China and abroad, Lim says. When the complex is built, it will sell its output in Guangdong, other parts of China, and Southeast Asia. One of the first regions of China to open to foreign investment, Guangdong has excellent infrastructure, Lim notes. The city of Zhanjiang is already home to a large steel mill and has a Sinopec petrochemical complex under construction. In a few years, Zhanjiang will be served by bullet train, putting it within three hours of BASF s regional headquarters in Hong Kong. The most unusual feature of the Guangdong project is not its location but that it will be wholly owned by BASF. China has not traditionally allowed foreign firms to own majority stakes in ethylene crackers. But in July, China s National Development and Reform Commission announced it was lifting restrictions on investment by foreigners in several sectors, including heavy industry. Both BASF and ExxonMobil subsequently announced plans to build wholly owned projects in China. Also in Guangdong, in the city of Huizhou, the Exxon- Mobil project will feature a 1.2-million-tper-year ethylene cracker. The government wants to look like it s open to foreign investment, explains David S. Jiang, president of Sinodata Consulting, a Beijing-based advisory firm focused on the chemical industry. For the past year or so, he adds, a slowdown in the Chinese economy has prompted the government to make fewer demands on foreign investors. The position of government now is to attract foreign investment as much as it can because it will grow the economy, Jiang says. In addition, at a time when China is trying to improve industrial safety, companies with good track records, like BASF, are particularly welcome, he says. It s clearly easier to run a business alone, as opposed to with a partner that needs to be consulted over any major decisions. With full control in Zhanjiang, BASF will be freer to implement the technologies it wants, be it to maximize safety, health, and environmental performance or to diversify the site s product lineup, Lim says. But having a partner like Sinopec in Nanjing does offer some advantages, Lim notes diplomatically. The Chinese firm has supplied a competent labor force over the years. And in the new expansion, Sinopec is contributing most of the capital to build the ethylene cracker. BASF is less interested in the cracker than in what it can make with its output. Embarking on a big expansion in Nanjing while building a new site in Guangdong will be a huge endeavor for BASF, but compared with its 1996 venture, it will be easier in several ways. BASF now has far more people on the ground in China than it did 20 years ago. And the capabilities of Chinese engineering firms that build chemical plants have improved a lot in the past two decades. Still, for a few years at least, BASF will need to station many more foreign scientists, engineers, and technicians in China than it currently employs. Even though the firm employs 9,000 people in China, it doesn t have a sufficient talent pool currently, Lim says. For the engineers working on the two projects, it will be gratifying to build basically from scratch, Lim predicts. Most of the new capacity the firm adds in Europe and the US is at sites it set up decades earlier or even more than a century ago, in the case of the firm s biggest complex in Ludwigshafen, Germany. It s a chance to build something properly, he says, not to upgrade something that is 153 years old. DECEMBER 10/17, 2018 CEN.ACS.ORG C&EN 21

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