As a result of world economic growth and population trends, the centre of gravity of the world elastomer industry has been shifting from the west to the east.  The Asia/Pacific region has been the largest consuming region since 1986 and until the Asian economic crisis in 1997 was also recording the fastest growth in consumption.  As a result of the Asian crisis, its share of world consumption fell slightly from 43.4% in 1996 to 41.0% in 1998 before recovering rapidly since then.  The effect of recovering from the crisis together with the effect of rapid growth in China has brought the share to over 50% in recent year to reach 55.6% in 2007.   The subject of the impact of the China factor and rubber consumption as well as changes in the regional pattern of demand for rubber and the shift of gravity from West to East is important to the world rubber industry.

Regional rubber consumption, 1960-2007