Analysis Of The Correlations Between The International Copper Price And The Copper Imports To China

As one of the indispensable strategic resources for the national economic development, along with the rapid growth of the economy in China, as well as the exuberant demands and the high external dependency, copper has become the bottleneck to the progress of China’s economy. Moreover, the lack of international pricing power threatens the safety of Chinese economy and trades.By analyzing the data of copper for delivery in three months at the London Metal Exchange from the January, the amount of imports of copper ore concentrates, the amount of imports unwrought copper and waste copper, 2000 to March, 2015,this thesis studies the developing trends for the international copper prices, as well as the correlations between the international copper price and the importsof China based on theGARCHandCopulamodels.The essay’s presentation includes: Describes the distribution of domestic and foreign copper resources, supply and demand conditions and trade situation. By reviewing the historical trend of international prices, analyzes the influencing factors of international copper priceslike the supply and demand status, international economic situations, prices of relative products such as oil and so on. The paper establishes the marginal distribution functions of the international copper price and China’s imports by theGARCHmodel, and from this basis, elaborates the binary Copula functions and analyses the correlations of international copper price and China’s imports of copper ore concentrates, unwrought copper and copper materials, and waste copper.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: Negative correlation exists between the international copper price and the Chinese imports of copper ore concentrates, and the depreciation of international copper price is easier to influence the Chinese imports of copper ore concentrates than the increasing; The international copper price is also negatively correlated with China’s imports of unwrought copper and copper materials, and the probabilities that the depreciation and increasing of international ore concentrates affect China’s imports of unwrought copper and copper materials are almost the same; The international copper price is positively correlated with the amount of China’s waste copper, waste copperimports to Chinaare less likely to be influenced by the depreciation of the international copper price than the increasing.Finally, this paper proposes suggestions to keep the safety of Chinese copper industry byimplementing the early warning mechanism for copper price, enhancing the strategic reserve, based on the correlation of international copper price and China’s copper imports.