Beijing woos foreign firms as China seeks bigger role in global shipbuilding supply chain

Name: China’s first 076 ‘drone carrier’ amphibious assault ship begins sea trials
Uploaded: 2025-12-03T00:30:09.000Z
Duration: 1 min 29 s
Description: China’s first 076 ‘drone carrier’ amphibious assault ship begins sea trials

From cruise ships to deep-sea ocean drillers, China aims to open its vast shipbuilding industry wider to overseas partners

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An aerial view shows ships under construction at a shipbuilding facility along the Yangtze River in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. Photo: AFP

Daniel Renin Shanghai

Published: 8:30am, 3 Dec 2025

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.

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 world’s largest maritime conference and exhibition. “Foreign companies and research institutions are encouraged to invest and form partnerships in China.”

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China’s first 076 ‘drone carrier’ amphibious assault ship begins sea trials

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.

China’s 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.

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Beijing woos foreign firms as China seeks bigger role in global shipbuilding supply chain

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}From cruise ships to deep-sea ocean drillers, China aims to open its vast shipbuilding industry wider to overseas partners

From cruise ships to deep-sea ocean drillers, China aims to open its vast shipbuilding industry wider to overseas partners