In China, the ethylene raw materials are composed of naphtha, light-hydrocarbon and tail oil. Naphtha accounts for a large proportion with the share of 75%, followed by light-hydrocarbon and tail oil with the share of 14% and 3% respectively.

With the rapid development of national economy, China's ethylene output has experienced a steady increase in general during these years. In 2018, the output reached 18.4 million tons, increasing by 1.05% from a year earlier.

Although China's ethylene output has continued to grow in recently years, it still has a big gap to meet the market demand. According to the data from China Customs, China is still dependent on the ethylene imports in the past five years, and the ethylene imports are much greater than exports

During these years, China's ethylene import volume has increased steadily. It has reached about 2.58 billion tons in 2018, increasing by 19.4% from 2017.

From the perspective of ethylene import value, it also showed a rising path in general despite of some slight drops in 2015 and 2016. The import value was 3.3 billion dollars in 2018, increasing by 29.8% from a year earlier.

China's ethylene downstream demand mainly came from polyethylene, which accounted for a large proportion with the share of 61%.