China’s campaign to dominate global shipbuilding began in earnest with the issuance of the Tenth Five Year Plan in 2001, in which the Government of
China declared its ambition to develop its shipbuilding industry into a major world-leading industry.
In 2006, China designated shipping as one of the seven strategic industries over which state-owned enterprises should maintain absolute control. In 2015, China issued Made in China 2025, in which shipbuilding was identified as one of ten priority sectors in which China would seek to dominate global commerce by 2025.
The Government of China has funneled hundreds of billions of dollars and adopted numerous supporting policies to achieve the goals laid out in plans for shipbuilding, and it has consolidated the leadership of these efforts in large state-owned enterprises.
Government interventions to accelerate the development of the Chinese shipbuilding industry include policy loans from state-owned banks, equity infusions and debt-for-equity swaps, the provision of steel plate from state-owned steel producers at below market prices, tax preferences, grants, and
lavish financing from China’s state-owned export credit agencies. China also refuses to uphold the basic human rights of workers in the shipbuilding
industry, providing a further unfair advantage to Chinese producers.
In addition to these acts and policies, China has given its domestic shipbuilding industry unfair advantages by mandating the purchase and use
of Chinese ships by Chinese state-owned shipping enterprises and state-owned oil companies. China has also intervened in its domestic industry by directing mergers between favored state-owned companies, disapproving alliances by foreign competitors, denying berthing rights to foreign-owned ships, controlling freight rates and capacity allocations, supporting the development of key upstream maritime technologies, and tolerating intellectual property theft.
