Integration According to a report by the South China Morning Post, China is aiming to open its vast shipbuilding industry wider to overseas partners, from cruise ships to deep-sea ocean drillers. Beijing is extending an olive branch to overseas companies as it seeks to build a more integrated global supply chain for the shipbuilding industry, in its latest push to project goodwill and support free trade.
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Gao Dongsheng, chief economist at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said on Tuesday that China was committed to further opening up its shipbuilding sector. Mainland shipyards, which currently have a capacity to build about 65 million deadweight tonnes of large vessels a year, were expected to command around 65 per cent of the global shipbuilding market this year, according to industry officials.
The MIIT would “support a globalised layout of the [shipbuilding] industry and a reasonable distribution of the industrial chain,” Gao told a forum at Marintec China, the worlds largest maritime conference and exhibition. “Foreign companies and research institutions are encouraged to invest and form partnerships in China.” He added that Chinese firms would seek deeper collaboration with foreign partners to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence and new-energy technologies in next-generation vessels.
Chinas overwhelming lead in shipbuilding has put the sector squarely on the radar of US President Donald Trump, who has vowed to spend tens of billions of US dollars rebuilding US maritime capacity.
