However, a sharp decline is also a process in which opportunities gather. First, the rhetoric of shoring up the economy remains clear. The return of manufacturing to developed countries means China's export growth will remain unoptimistic. That being so, shoring up the economy in the future will still have to rely on the drive of large-scale infrastructure construction. Therefore, the scale of fixed asset investment will not shrink in the future, which in turn means cement demand remains optimistic.

　　Second, the supply side of cement may tend to shrink, not only because of policy-level elimination of production capacity, but also because of the policy need to control pollution. In recent years, smoggy weather has occurred frequently in China. To ease pressure on air quality, local governments require major polluters such as cement plants to suspend production for maintenance during seasons when smoggy weather occurs frequently. For example, before New Year's Day, in order to meet annual energy-saving and emission-reduction targets, Zhejiang Province required all cement enterprises in the province to shut down their kilns and mills for 7 days. Meanwhile, shutdown plans for the first quarter of 2014 in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have also been issued: from January 10 to March 5, clinker production lines of regional enterprises will be shut down for maintenance for 35 days. Shandong Province's maintenance plan is 30-40 days; every clinker line in the province must be shut down for a full 30 days, and if weather conditions are poor, another 10 days will be added.

　　Although in the short term the cement industry's off-season has caused product prices to decline somewhat, as spring arrives and large-scale infrastructure projects start one after another, market demand will be boosted again. And because the supply side is shrinking, cement prices are very likely to resume their upward trend by then. Therefore, the recent decline in cement stocks is actually an opportunity to buy on dips.