August 28, 2023: For a decade Greece has been the largest merchant-ship owner in the world, operating about 23 percent of the global fleet of 119,000 sea-going cargo ships. As of 2023, China is now in first place, which is not a surprise. Greece, or rather Greek shipping companies, have long controlled the largest fraction of the global shipping fleet. This was not because the Greek economy needed that many merchant-ships but because the Greeks have long been the most efficient managers of commercial shipping. That is still the case but China now has the second-largest economy in the world, is the largest ship builder and a major user of merchant ships to move its growing tonnage of imports and exports, and prefers to manage most of the ships moving this cargo. China may not be as efficient at managing shipping as the Greeks but China is good enough and is only managing China-owned or operated ships.

The Chinese government aided and encouraged local shipbuilders to become more productive and competitive. A major milestone occurred in 2019 when China’s two major shipbuilders, CSSC and CSIC, merged to create the largest shipbuilder in the world with 310,000 employees. A decade ago, there were nearly half a million employees but recessions and continued competition from rivals South Korea and Japan forced the change. The new company, CSG (China Shipbuilding Group), as well as the two it merged from, are all state-owned. The merger is a return to the situation in 1999 when CSSC and CSIC were created from the then single state-owned shipbuilding operation. This was meant to encourage competition and it worked.

Chinese shipbuilders, mainly the now reunited two large firms, account for most shipbuilding in China and have been striving to overtake their main rival South Korea as the largest shipbuilder in the world in all categories. There are several ways to measure shipbuilder output and South Korea is the champion in most of them. Japan was once in first place but now must settle for third place. South Korea and China have been close competitors for first place since 2012 and to that end, the two largest South Korean shipbuilders also merged in 2019.

South Korea has been making a comeback in shipbuilding, an industry it led until 2012 when it was briefly overtaken by China. By 2018 South Korean firms surpassed China in new orders. This was mainly because South Korean shipbuilders are seen as leaders in the construction of more complex transports, in particular, LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) vessels, which transport refrigerated (enough to turn natural gas to a more compact liquid) natural gas. Demand for LNG ships is driven by the growing output of natural gas in the United States and Canada as a result of improved extraction methods, mainly fracking. The North American natural gas market is saturated and American and Canadian producers can afford to lower prices enough to export large quantities via LNG carriers. Europe is eager for LNG because the current major supplier (via pipeline) is Russia and Russia is seen as more of a danger than a reliable economic partner. Another form of unique ship construction that South Korea has excelled at is off-shore oil exploration and drilling vessels and structures. The offshore platforms are built in shipyards and are mobile, via towing at slow speeds from one work site to another.

All major shipbuilders are also dealing with a sharp decline in orders since the global economic recession began in 2008, which was the year with the highest number of orders ever. The business has never recovered, all major shipbuilders had to cut prices and many ships were built at a loss or for no profit just to keep the yards operating. One way China helped its shipyards cope was by increasing orders for warships. This was going to happen anyway but the government gave the navy all it wanted and then some. This resulted in 2019 being a record year for warship construction with 28 surface warships launched, including a record ten destroyers plus 16 corvettes and two large amphibious ships. While warships are more complex ships to build, commercial ships still accounted for over 95 percent of the work at the new China Shipbuilding Group. Now China is also the largest producer of non-nuclear warships.

China continues to lead the global shipbuilding industry in new orders. This is mainly because of their lower prices and gradual improvements in quality. Chinese prices are not as low as they used to be because a growing labor shortage has driven wages up. In the long-term China can learn to compete on quality but that is not something that can be achieved quickly, like cutting prices. When it comes to moving LNG or offshore drilling for oil, buyers tend to go with the most reliable shipbuilders, even if it costs more. Moreover, Chinese shipyards have some unique financing and management problems that may get a lot worse because of problems in the Chinese banking industry.

In 2012 South Korea lost its decade long battle with China to retain its lead in shipbuilding. Because of a five-year long depression in the world market for shipping, South Korean ship exports fell 30 percent in 2012, to $37.8 billion. China, helped by government subsidies, saw ship exports fall only 10.3 percent, leaving China with $39.2 billion in export sales. The Chinese government has also been giving its shipbuilders lots of new orders for warships, which made its yards more profitable and better able to beat South Korea on price. The Chinese government also provides its shipbuilders with more loans, allowing the builders to offer better credit terms to customers. South Korea was still ahead of China in total orders for ships but that lead was being lost as well as in 2011 South Korea was barely ahead of China. Since 2012 China and South Korea have been competing for overall first place but so far South Korea has the edge in quality and innovation, and the recent Chinese merger was meant to deal with that by combining nearly all Chinese research and development of new ship designs in one company.

China has been helping its shipyards since the late 1990s, and that enabled Chinese shipbuilders to gradually catch up to South Korea and Japan. In 2009, sooner than anyone expected, China surpassed South Korea as the world's largest shipbuilder in terms of tonnage. In late 2009, Chinese yards had orders for 54.96 million CGT of ships, compared to 53.63 million CGT for South Korea. Thus, China had 34.7 percent of the world market. In 2000, South Korea previously took the lead from Japan in 2000 in having the largest share of the world shipbuilding market.

The terms used to measure commercial ship size can be confusing but they serve a purpose. CGT stands for Compensated Gross Tons. This is a new standard for measuring shipyard effort. Gross tons have long been used as a measure of the volume within a ship. CGT expands on this by adding adjustments to the complexity of the ship design. Thus, a chemical tanker would end up with a value four times that of a container ship. China is producing far more ships, in terms of tonnage of steel and internal volume, than South Korea, mainly because a much larger portion of Chinese ships are simpler designs. South Korea has, over the years, pioneered the design and construction of more complex ships (chemical and LNG carriers).

Note that deadweight tons measure the actual weight of everything carried in the ship, including supplies, miscellaneous equipment, fuel, and even crew, expressed in long (metric) tons. As a rule, for every 1,500 deadweight tons, a cargo ship could carry about 1,775 measurement tons. Warship tonnage is measured differently, in terms of "displacement tons." Each cubic meter (35 cubic feet) of seawater displaced by the vessel is a "displacement ton." As that volume of seawater weighs approximately one long ton, displacement gives a rough indication of the actual weight of the vessel.

China has invested a lot of money and effort into expanding its merchant shipbuilding industry, to improve its warship building capability. In 2006 China produced about a quarter of the world's merchant shipping, while South Korea was in the first place, producing about a third. It was then believed that China would take first place in the next 5-10 years.

The big thing holding China back in the warship building area has been the shortage of skilled personnel. By encouraging merchant shipbuilding, the government creates experienced shipbuilders ready to learn the more complex tasks needed to build warships. In most cases merchant ships are larger than warships and much less complex. For example, a common type of merchant ship is the VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) of 300,000 deadweight tons (DWT). This is the largest size tanker that can use the Straits of Malacca to carry oil from the Persian Gulf to East Asia. These ships haul over two million barrels (about 290,000 tons) of oil per trip. These ships are larger than the biggest American aircraft carriers, such as the Nimitz class which are 110,000 tons displacement and nearly 354 meters (1,100 feet) long.

The major difference between merchant vessels and warships is what equipment they have. Merchant ships are quite basic and plain. A 300,000 DWT VLCC is about the same size as a Nimitz class carrier but costs much less to build ($130 million for the VLCC versus over $4 billion for the carrier). It costs more to run a carrier for one year than the VLCC costs to build. Part of that has to do with crew size, with the carrier having a hundred sailors for every one sailor needed to run the VLCC. A VLCC is highly automated and the crew size is usually under fifty sailors and officers.

By building all those merchant vessels China has acquired the ability to cheaply build basic warship hulls. Where it has big problems is in creating the complex electronics, mechanical systems, and weapons needed to make a warship work. China is making progress there as well, but not nearly as much as it has in the shipbuilding area.

China became a major force in commercial shipping partly because it became more difficult for South Korean builders to expand. There were more restrictions on land use in South Korea, in addition to higher labor costs. South Korean builders, seeing that they could not match the expansion of Chinese shipyards, expended more effort on building more complex, and expensive, ships. Japan was following a similar path when it lost the lead to South Korea a decade before China grabbed it. China also gained more market share by offering generous loan terms to foreign buyers of Chinese ships and cheap loans for their own shipbuilders.