Chinese companies have invested billions of dollars in planned steel and coal projects as they chase new markets by shifting production to south-east Asia.
In the past four years, Chinese steel companies have funded 32m tonnes of annual capacity in new steel projects in Indonesia and Malaysia, according to a Financial Times calculation, equivalent to more than 40 per cent of steel consumption in 2016 by the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states.
Steel has been a contentious commodity as trade tensions flare between Washington and Beijing, with the US imposing global steel tariffs targeted towards what it perceives as cheap Chinese steel flooding global markets.