Reporter Zhang Xianghui

The “New Three Kingdoms”in World Shipbuilding

Reporter Zhang Xianghui

As the representatives of the world’s three shipbuilding bases, China, Japan and South Korea are seeing their shipbuilding enterprises actively adopting all kinds of measures to get away from the heavy blow of fi nancial crisis as soon as possible. The competition among the three countries is getting more and more intense, and a new edition of “three kingdoms” in the shipbuilding industry is unfolding quietly.

To enhance competitiveness and grab market share, the Japanese shipbuilding enterprises pay more attention to research and development of high-tech vessels,using technology to realize differentiated competition.Facing increasing pressure of competition, Japanese shipbuilding industry regards developing low carbon,energy saving and environment-friendly ship as a“trump card”, increasing continuously investment and research on the development of new ship type. Based on export of advanced shipbuilding technology and equipment, Japan strives to be in the leading position in technology competition so as to pull up the overall prof i ts of its shipbuilding enterprises. In June 2013, the Japanese Shipbuilding Association announced that its six member yards have developed new ships meeting the EEDI requirements. The published data shows that some ship types are close to meeting EEDI phase Ⅲ requirements.

In South Korea, the shipping industry is regarded as a pillar industry. Due to the strong dependence of South Korean shipbuilding industry on the international market, the financial crisis has sent strong shock waves and caused great losses throughout its shipbuilding enterprises. Even in adversity, through adopting the development mode of combining government aid and self-survival, making use of scientific research advantage and focusing on high-end products, South Korean shipbuilding enterprises strive to take the first place in the high technology, high value-added ship and offshore engineering equipment manufacturing field, and effectively implement the diversified strategy to continue to defend its dominance in the world shipbuilding industry.

In recent years, the comprehensive strength of China’s shipbuilding industry has steadily grown and have achieved independent ability of developing ship types for the three mainstream ships including oil tanker,bulk carrier and container ship. The three major shipbuilding indicators show that compared with Japan and South Korea, China’s advantages in the three mainstream ship types have been further strengthened.In the first half of this year, China has got the order of nine VLCCs from the 13 new VLCC orders in the world; orders for military and official ship have also gradually increased. With China strengthening marine law enforcement, public service ships have entered into batch construction period. There is also breakthrough in high technology, high value-added ships and ocean engineering equipment fi eld.However, together with the rapid development of China’s shipbuilding industry, there also appear a variety of problems and difficulties, with problems such as weakness in independent innovation ability in the shipbuilding industry, extensive growth mode, low level and repeated investment, serious overcapacity,underdeveloped marine equipment, and the slow development of offshore engineering equipment,becoming more and more evident.

Bao Zhangjing, the vice director of economic research center of China shipbuilding corporation reminds the industry that because of the sharp decrease of handheld orders, more and more shipyards in China will shut down; at the same time,due to the rising labor cost and high price of raw materials,domestic shipyards are losing their advantages in cost and price. Technical strength and cost control ability have become the key to win the competition.