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China shipbuilding
EconomyChina Economy

China’s high-end yacht owners say industry growth stifled by structural gaps

Shipowners say billionaire Richard Liu’s new venture to make yacht ownership more affordable will need to surmount significant challenges

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Richard Liu’s brand, Sea Expandary, has signed a strategic framework agreement with the coastal cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai in Guangdong, for a high-end yacht industrial base with planned investment of about 5 billion yuan. Photo: handout
Mia Nurmamat
As the country with the world’s largest cohort of billionaires, China is no stranger to wealthy elites engaging in luxurious leisure activities, but one common pastime in the West does not seem to have attracted a commensurate level of interest across the Pacific – yachting.
While Chinese e-commerce billionaire Richard Liu recently announced a multibillion-dollar investment in a new yacht company, regulatory hurdles and infrastructure gaps have kept China’s wealthiest individuals from fully embracing the high seas, according to yacht owners and industry players in southern China.
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The JD.com founder’s launch of yacht brand Sea Expandary last month, with a planned investment of 5 billion yuan (US$723 million), signalled a potential transformation of yachting into a more accessible, mass-market activity in China, as its appeal fades among the affluent, they said.

Wang, a Guangzhou resident who bought a two-deck yacht for more than 10 million yuan several years ago, said the experience has fallen “far short” of his expectations.

According to Wang, the biggest challenge lies in the water-use restrictions of the Greater Bay Area – the economic and business hub that links the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau with several cities in mainland China’s Guangdong province.

“Whenever I sail south past the waters of Hong Kong or Macau, I receive a call from the local police station shortly after returning to Guangdong,” he said.

As Hong Kong and Macau operate separate customs and border control systems, every return voyage requires him to explain to authorities that he has not brought back any smuggled goods.

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Wang added that yachts registered on the mainland are equipped with GPS trackers, making it difficult to avoid leaving the mainland’s waters when heading south.

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