Nation's shipbuilders ride crest of global success

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By Yu Yilei, Wang Ying (China Daily) 11:21, April 03, 2025

The United States' plan to boost its shipbuilding capacity and impose fees on Chinese vessels is unlikely to have a major impact on the booming industry in China, experts and analysts said.

In his national address last month, US President Donald Trump vowed to set up a new office of shipbuilding in the White House to "resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding".

Trump said the US is going to make ships "very fast, very soon", which will have "a huge impact" to further enhance national security.

In a separate move, the US Trade Representative on Feb 21 proposed charging substantial fees on Chinese-built vessels entering US ports under a union-supported plan to spur US shipbuilding.

Under the proposal, vessels owned by Chinese maritime transport operators would pay a port entrance fee of up to $1 million each time, and other operators using Chinese-built ships could be charged as much as $1.5 million.

However, industry experts and insiders said the US government's latest attempts to restore its shipbuilding prowess are unlikely to shake China's current position as the world's largest commercial shipbuilder.

"The trend of China's shipbuilding industry holding the title as the world's largest shipbuilder is irreversible, and I see little challenge to China retaining the position," said Hu Keyi, chief of corporate technology with Jiangnan Shipyard, a unit of China State Shipbuilding Corp, the world's largest shipbuilder.

Yi Guowei, deputy manager of large cruise ship project of CSSC's Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co, said, "the US used to be the world's greatest shipbuilding power, but the shipbuilding industry requires a complete industrial chain, which took China decades to develop to reach its current scale".

In a March 23 Washington Post report, maritime experts were quoted as saying it is unrealistic to expect the US shipbuilding industry to revive overnight, and it will require decades of ongoing support from the US government. There are currently not enough US-made ships to replace China-built ones in the market, so to impose hefty port entrance fees on Chinese ships will only increase freight costs and disrupt global supply chains, the report added.

Numbers say it all

China last year led the world in contracting, order book and delivery of vessels, three major indicators in global shipbuilding, according to data published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Chinese shipbuilders completed construction of 55.7 percent of global orders in 2024, received 74.1 percent of the new orders, and accounted for 63.1 percent of the world's hand-held vessel orders, representing year-on-year growth of 13.8 percent, 58.8 percent and 49.7 percent respectively.

China now produces more than half of the world's cargo ships by tonnage, up from just 5 percent in 1999, followed by Japan and South Korea, USTR figures showed. Last year, US shipyards built just 0.01 percent of the total.

In 2023, China for the first time accounted for half of the world's total shipbuilding production by delivering 17.4 million compensated gross tonnage, and significantly consolidating its importance to the global shipbuilding industry, said Stephen Gordon, managing director of Clarksons Research. Despite major disruptions in recent years, shipping remains vital to the global economy by moving 85 percent of all trade globally, Gordon said.

"The outstanding achievements in capturing new orders and expanding production have indicated the strong foundation of the Chinese shipbuilding industry, and they are the results of collaboration with global prime suppliers," Li Yanqing, secretary-general of the Beijing-based China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry told China Central Television.

The orders Chinese shipbuilders hold in hand are equivalent to the combined workload of four years, laying a solid foundation for the sector to achieve stable development, Li said.

Starting from scratch

Although the Chinese shipbuilding industry tops the number of new orders received across 14 vessel categories, it was not until the late 1970s when local shipbuilders began pursuing international orders.

When China began opening-up, its undeveloped shipbuilding sector was striving to complete for orders in the highly-competitive global market then dominated by the European Union, US, Japan, and South Korea.

The successful delivery of the 27,000-ton bulk carrier Regent Tampopo in January 1982 to Hong Kong entrepreneur Chi-Li Pao was widely regarded as a breakthrough. Constructed by CSSC's Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co in 18 months, it was the first large-scale ship built by China and exported in accordance with international standards, according to the Marine Design &Research Institute of China.

The domestic shipbuilding industry entered a new era in the early 80s, and China received 77 vessel orders from international customers, according to MARIC.

"The high quality and large quantity of Chinese talent made the Chinese shipbuilding industry's transformation possible," said Zhang Fumin, a MARIC researcher.