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Chinese exports to south-east Asia are growing at almost twice the rate of the past four years, as Donald Trump’s trade war pushes Beijing to tighten trade links with its neighbours.

Chinese exports to the six largest economies in south-east Asia — Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia — rose 23.5 per cent from $330bn to $407bn in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period last year, according to official import data from those countries collated for the Financial Times by ISI Markets.

Chinese exports to those countries have doubled over the past five years, while China’s trade surplus with the region hit an all-time high this year. The 2025 increase is nearly twice as high as the 13 per cent compound annual growth rate in the previous four years.

China has long been criticised for “dumping” cheap goods in markets such as south-east Asia, threatening local producers with unfairly low prices but “the general China shock that has been going on for a few years has been amplified through US tariff deflection this year”, said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute think-tank. 

Economists say the latest wave of exports could be tied to attempts to circumvent US tariffs on Chinese-made products, which have been hit by levies of around 47 per cent. This compares with levies of about 19 per cent across many countries in south-east Asia.

The US has warned against companies trying to mask the origin of Chinese-made products by rerouting them through other countries to avoid higher tariffs, saying such goods could be hit by “transshipment” levies of as much as 40 per cent. It is unclear how this has worked in practice.

In an upcoming paper, Rajah calculates Chinese exports to south-east Asia rose by as much as 30 per cent in September compared with a year earlier, noting that the most recent wave is different from earlier surges.

“While they are crowding out other exporters to the region, much of what they are exporting is actually pro-growth,” he said, adding that his research suggests as much as 60 per cent of Chinese exports this year were components for products manufactured in the region that were exported to other markets.

For consumer goods, China has increasingly become the dominant supplier to south-east Asia, taking market share from other countries.

“China’s supply glut, especially in cheap consumer goods, demands new outlets, and south-east Asia is the most natural spillover market given its proximity, logistics and scale,” said Doris Liew, an economist who formerly worked at Malaysia’s Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs.

One area this has been most evident is in autos, with south-east Asian drivers switching in droves from Japanese models including the likes of Toyota, Honda and Nissan, to affordable electric cars made by China’s BYD.

The market share of Japan’s producers fell to 62 per cent of car sales in south-east Asia’s six biggest markets in the first half of 2025, down from an average of 77 per cent in the 2010s, according to PwC. China has increased its share from negligible volumes to more than 5 per cent of 3.3mn annual car sales in those markets.

In attempts to protect domestic manufacturers from being undercut by cheaper Chinese imports, some south-east Asian countries have tightened import rules and considered tariffs on certain goods. 

But Liew said such actions were “piecemeal” and “stop-gap measures”. “The fundamental lesson is unavoidable: south-east Asian manufacturers must upgrade or be squeezed out,” she said. “China’s industrial ecosystem is far more innovative.”

Data visualisation by Haohsiang Ko in Hong Kong