What country is the world’s largest global ship builder?

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If you said China, come get your prize, as China adds the title “ship yard to the world” to the “factory to the world” sobriquet it has enjoyed for many years.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, almmost 50% of commercial ship building was done in China in 2023, far outpacing number 2 South Korea and number 3 Japan. (See graphic below.)

In this contest, Western countries are hardly in the fight, with all of Europe producing just 5% of ships and the US barely enough to register.

Commenting to the Journal on the matter, Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security that “The scale [of China’s shipbuilding] is just almost hard to fathom,” adding that “The degree to which it dwarfs American ship building is just unbelievable.”

As you might imagine, this state of affairs is has geo-political and military implications, beyond the economic and logistics ones.

According to the Journal, China’s ship building prowess is a “strategic asset for Beijing as Chinese leader Xi Jinping tries to reshape the world order in peacetime and prepares to prevail over his nation’s rivals during war.”

In fact, huge Chinese ship makers produce both commercial container and bulk cargo ships while also producing ships for China’s Navy.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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And they are very busy, enjoying billion-dollar contracts pouring in for both types of ships.

Compare that with the sorry state of the once-powerful US ship building. It no longer produces any significant number of commercial ships, with even the Navy business that keeps US ship yards running often battle backlogs, worker shortages, a paucity of suppliers and cost overruns, according to the Journal.

This also has important ramifications. China’s huge commercial ship building volumes help carry some of its ship yards’ overhead, an economic advantage US ship builders and the Navy don’t enjoy.

It also means China has huge ship building capacity – which could easily move to mostly Naval ships as needed by its military.

“That is a capability US ship yards brought to the fight during World War II, building Allied vessels faster than German U-boats could sink them,” the Journal article notes.

Now its China’s that boast the huge capacity.

The Journal cites satellite images taken in May obtained from Maxar Technologies show the vast Chinese Jiangnan’s ship yard. It shows about two dozen ships being worked on at the same time. Some are news builds, while others are likely in for refurbishment or repairs. There are what appear to be containerships, destroyers and China’s third aircraft carrier, known as the Type 003.

The US has nothing to compare to this.

And nothing seems likely to change any time soon.

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