In the Shadow of Warships: How foreign companies help modernize China’s navy.
I would like tentatively to share the insights of Mr. Matthew Funaiole, the director of the iDeas Lab and senior fellow with the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C, Mr. Brian Hart, an associate fellow with the CSIS China Power Project, Mr. Joseph Bermudez Jr., a senior fellow for imagery analysis (non-resident) with the CSIS iDeas Lab and Korea Chair.
The global shipping industry is enjoying record profits, and merchant fleets are growing quickly to meet rising demand.
Many of the newest hulls under construction will be laid down in China, but Chinese shipbuilders produce more than just container ships and tankers to ferry trade. They also build warships.
New research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows that the shipyards at the heart of modernizing the Chinese navy also attract billions of dollars of revenue and technology transfers from companies around the world.
China’s opaque business ecosystem offers limited transparency into the flow of capital within its shipbuilding industry, but available evidence indicates that profits from foreign orders likely lower the costs of upgrading China’s navy.
China is one of only a handful of countries capable of building the large ocean-faring vessels that transport around 80 percent of global trade in goods.
The industry leader is China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), which alone holds a 21.5 percent share of the global shipbuilding market.
The sprawling state-owned enterprise was formed in 2019 by the merger of China’s two largest shipbuilders, and today it directly controls over 100 subsidiaries.
