China leading the way in commodities demand: BlackRock

China will continue to have a significant influence over demand for commodities, given the commodity-intensive stimulus package from the Chinese government and their future growth plans, said a fund manager from BlackRock, one of the world's largest publicly traded investment management firms, in Hong Kong on Friday.

"The nature of China's command economy has meant that this stimulus has filtered down into the real economy, unlike in the US so far," said Catherine Raw, fund manager of BlackRock's natural resources team.

Economic data coming out of China this year has suggested that, despite the global recession, the economy has started to recover and high levels of economic growth may continue in the region, a bullish signal for the mining sector, she said.

GDP and industrial production growth rates appear to have bottomed; car sales and retail sales are showing signs of improvement and there has been a strong pick up in fixed asset investment, she noted.

Steel production has recovered significantly and on an annualized basis is now ahead of 2008, she said.

"We are now starting to see some signs of restocking in the US and Europe. Should these trends gather momentum for the rest of the year it looks as though we might start to see normalized demand levels for commodities in 2010," she said.