KUALA LUMPUR (March 11): The Edge weekly in its latest edition  looks at the influx of property developments in Malaysia undertaken by China-based companies.

It highighted that when readers drive around the Kuala Lumpur city centre, there is a good chance they will come across a property development being constructed by a China-based company.

In the magazine’s cover story, its writers Tan Siew Mung and Kathy Fong wrote that at the busy intersection of Jalan Ampang and Jalan Yap Kwan Seng, within a stone’s throw of the Petronas Twin Towers, China Metallurgical Group Corp (MCC) subsidiary MCC Overseas (M) Sdn Bhd is building the 55-storey W Hotel and Tropicana Residence for Tropicana Corp Bhd.

Heading towards Bukit Bintang, Beijing Urban Construction Group Co Ltd is building property tycoon Tan Sri Desmond Lim’s Elite Pavilion Serviced Apartments adjacent to Pavilion Mall, said the Edge.

The weekly said not that far from this bustling shopping district, passers-by are unlikely to miss China State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd’s (CSCEC) huge signboards that say, “Committed to deliver excellent quality to Mulia Signature Tower”. The Fortune 500 company’s temporary office, painted in its corporate blue and white colours, is just across the road.

The Edge said CSCEC is working round the clock to complete the 92-storey tower for Indonesia-based Mulia Group. The skyscraper, which is only 30ft short of the capital city’s iconic twin towers, is coming up in Tun Razak Exchange — the prime tract that the controversial 1Malaysia Development Bhd had bought cheap, at roughly RM46 psf, from the federal government.

China-based companies are not new on the construction scene in Malaysia. The few that The Edge had spoken to before have been in this country for more than 20 years but they have been hardly visible. The Second Penang Bridge, the longest built across the sea in Asean, is probably the only landmark in the country in which a Chinese contractor was involved. China Harbour Engineering Ltd built the underwater foundations of the bridge and also worked on its main portion.

The reason China-based construction companies have been sprouting up in town of late is that they need jobs abroad and Malaysian developers need financing.

Already, some of the developers and local contractors contacted by The Edge have expressed their concerns  about the Chinese companies they have appointed.

On how this latest trend bodes for local players and the country’s property deevelopment sector, get a copy of the Edge for the week of March 13 to March 19 available at newsstands now.

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