Like a motor-racing pit crew, six workers in matching baseball caps crouch over a mechanical digger, busily attaching a web of cables to its frame.

It is one of a line of excavators in different stages of assembly moving down the conveyor belt at the factory of Hyundai Heavy Industries in the South Korean port city of Ulsan, each sporting a sheet of paper indicating its final destination. Six are bound for the Middle East, two for Latin America and one for Africa — reflecting Hyundai’s drive for sales in emerging markets globally.

But as the diggers roll off the line, Rhee Sang-gi, Hyundai’s construction-equipment chief, worries that no amount of geographical expansion can compensate for what is happening in the Chinese market. “There is no other market that can replace China,” says Mr Rhee. “We thought this year would be better than last year, but it’s getting worse: the Chinese market is getting smaller and smaller.”