By Pratima Desai

LONDON (Reuters) - China may well be the world's biggest consumer of copper but many new investors in the market do not pay it enough attention and are still wrongly focused on the U.S. economy for clues about future price direction.

Analysts say the problem is that commodities, and especially industrial metals, are a new area for many fund managers, who have traditionally traded equities and bonds on the basis of economic growth prospects in the United States.

But strong growth in China over the last few years has propelled the country into the top league of economic superpowers and caused its consumption of the metal, used widely in the power and transport industries, to surge.

"Investors in the past have been conditioned to assume copper prices would fall whenever there is a U.S. recession," said Evy Hambro, managing director at fund manager BlackRock Merrill Lynch.

"That was absolutely right when the U.S. was the largest consumer, now they are focusing on the wrong thing. It will take a while for people's mindset to change."

Analysts estimate China consumed more than 4.5 million tonnes of copper last year compared with about 2.0 million tonnes in the United States. Total demand for copper last year is estimated at around 18 million tonnes.

The difference between the two is set to widen to more than 4 million tonnes by 2012 because Chinese consumption is forecast to rise to more than 6.5 million tonnes by then.

"It's far more important whether China is growing at 10 percent or 15 percent then whether the U.S. is flat or falling by 15 percent," said consultant John Tomlinson at CRU Analysis.