This is the overriding dynamic in China's aluminum sector.

It reacts first and foremost to internal price signals rather than external drivers.

When those signals deteriorated over the fourth quarter of last year, production was curtailed.

Now that prices are improving, production is once again ramping up.

Any mismatch between domestic supply and demand will still manifest itself in exports of semi-manufactured products.

Exports fell 10 percent year-on-year in the first four months of 2016 but the preliminary trade figures suggest a rising trend in May.

The outlook is for further rises over the coming months as smelters steadily lift their operating rates and, in the case of some of the big new operators in the northwestern province of Shanghai, bring on new capacity.

It's not a happy prognosis for smelters elsewhere in the world.

But with China and the United States still apparently so far apart on the issue of aluminum overcapacity that they couldn't come up with even the most anodyne of political statements, there's not much the rest of the world can do about aluminum alloy.

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