This paper investigated the reaction of aggregate commodity market to oil price shocks and also explored the effects of oil price shocks on China's fundamental industries: metals, petrochemicals, grains and oilfats. We separated the volatilities of oil price into expected, unexpected and negatively expected categories to identify how oil prices influence bulk commodity markets. We contrasted the results between different periods and among classified indices, in order to discover the significant changes in recent years and the differences at an industry level. Our results indicate that the aggregate commodity market was affected by both expected and unexpected oil price volatilities in China. The impact of unexpected oil price volatilities became more complex after 2007. The metals and grains indices did not significantly respond to the expected volatility in oil prices, in contrast to the petrochemicals and oilfats indices. These results not only contribute to advancing the existing literature, but also merit particular attention from policy makers and market investors in China. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.