In many ways Dubai’s construction market is a microcosm of the global economy with contractors from all of the world competing to work on projects.

Local firms have had to compete with construction companies from the region, Europe, the Americas, South Asia and the Far East, and the fortunes has ebbed as flowed with the global economic trends.

The dominant economic trend of the past 30 years has been the rise of the Chinese economy. Since 1990 its GDP has grown by more than 30 times from just under $400bn to more than $12 trillion in last year.

Over the past decade China’s construction companies have started to make their presence felt on the global stage, and that has included working on projects in Dubai. For general contracting the most active have been Beijiing-based China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

It entered the market at the start of the Dubai real estate boom in the early 2000s building villas on the Palm Jumeirah and the broadened its horizons with work for other real estate developers as well as the Roads and Transport Authority – for which it is now one if its most regular contractors.

Despite delivering projects, throughout this period Chinese construction has continued to be perceived a lacking in quality and technical expertise. This assumption neglects much of the experience that Chinese construction companies have gained on landmark projects in their home market during the past decade.

Dubai is now about to give a Chinese contractor the opportunity to deliver one of the most high profile and technically challenging projects in the world.

Dubai-based developer Emaar is close to awarding the estimated AED5.5bn ($1.5bn) contract to build the Tower at Dubai Creek Harbour to China State Construction Engineering Corporation. The tower is expected to be the world’s tallest man made structure when it is completed, surpassing the 828m Burj Khalifa, and the under construction Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia.

Designed by Santiago Calatrava, the tower has a superstructure made up of three key elements. They are a concrete core, a steel frame structure on top of the concrete core, and cables descending down from the tower to the ground. These three elements combined with the height of the structure gives a Chinese contractor the opportunity to demonstrate that is can deliver the most complex of construction projects.