Premier Li guides China's shipbuilding

Recently many Chinese media reported that Premier Li Keqiang presided over a Go Global strategy meeting for Chinese manufacturers and He stressed the transition of China's foreign trade from "massive imports and massive exports" to "quality imports and quality exports" in order to form a new economic pattern with focus on high value industry.

Mr. Bob Li, Editor-in-Chief of International Ship & Offshore WeBSIte commented that Premier Li Keqiang's remark will further guide the future development of China's shipbuilding industry which is experiencing the industrial transformation and upgrading from massive low end building to high end building amid the situations of rising labor costs,limited resources and fiecer competition .

China's shipbuilding and offshore industries have achieved remarkable success in recent years. Besides holding a highly competitive position in terms of construction of oil tankers, bulkcarriers, and container ships; China is also increasingly penetrating the market for construction of high-end and high-value ships and offshore projectsthus moving up the value chain. China is thereby decreasing reliance on conventional ship building; namely bulk ships, tankers and containerships.

Currently, both China's shipbuilding- andoffshore industries are undergoing a transition from emphasis on a "big" position to a "strong" position, i.e. pursuing not only output volume, but also technologically advanced outputs. China is in other words striving to increase their value-added and hence enter the field dominated by especially Japanese, Korean and European rivals.

Lots of Chinese shipbuilders are prioritizing R&D and technological improvements as well as Industry Best Practice, increasing their level of competitiveness and making them able to compete with the best globally. Some builders have already delivered higher value-added and more complex ships; or to offshore projects by shortening the learning curve concerning the higher value-added projects.

Mr. Bob Li is quite confident that China’s shipbuilding-and offshore industries will become bigger and stronger in the global market.