"Next year, as the Chinese economy continues to grow, domestic steel demand is expected to be stable, but at the same time, the international trade environment is likely to remain complicated, and raw fuel and material prices will remain high," she said.

The first batch of steel rails made in China for use on Indonesia's Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway was shipped on Saturday from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Before being loaded onto a ship in Fangchenggang, a key port in Guangxi, the rails had been moved by train from their manufacturer, Panzhihua Iron and Steel, in Sichuan province.