China’s largest state-owned shipyard, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), built more commercial vessels by tonnage in 2024 than the entire US shipbuilding industry had since World War II. This reflects the declining shipbuilding capability of the US, which currently has only four active public shipyards compared to China’s 35 sites.
China has implemented shipbuilding policies that have proved detrimental to the US and its allies’ shipbuilding industry. Japan and South Korea, which once dominated the market, are now struggling to keep pace with China. The share of the US commercial shipbuilding sector has plummeted to just 0.11 percent of the global total in 2024.
The Chinese Navy is undoubtedly the biggest naval force in the world, with a flotilla of over 370 ships and submarines. The US has the advantage in terms of guided-missile cruisers and destroyers. Also, its 11 aircraft carriers ensured that it has more tonnage than China.
However, the latest report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has revised the estimated vessel numbers for the PLA-Navy in its latest report earlier this week.
In its report “Ship Wars – Confronting China’s Dual-Use Shipbuilding Empires,” the CSIS says that China would have a 425-ship strong fleet by 2030, compared to the US Navy’s 300 vessels. The 2024 report from CSIS indicated that the PLA Navy operated 234 warships against the US Navy’s 219.
China’s rising maritime force is indicative of the exponential rise that its shipbuilding sector has undergone. In a matter of two decades, China has been catapulted to the status of a major shipbuilding country from a peripheral player in the sector. The major force behind this meteoric rise has been the CSSC, the largest shipbuilder in the world today.
The shipbuilder constructed the country’s first aircraft carrier, Shandong. Now, its Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai is building the country’s second homebuilt aircraft carrier, Fujian, equipped with an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS).
More than the sophistication of the warships being constructed by the shipbuilder, the US has been alarmed by the rate at which they are built. The world is fast becoming dependent on Chinese shipyards to meet demand for its commercial trading vessels.
Such is the dominance of the Chinese shipbuilders that even the US military is dependent on the Chinese warships. According to the 2023 US Congress report: “Three of the ten commercial oil tankers selected to ship fuel for DOD (Department of Defense) as part of the newly enacted Tanker Security Fleet are Chinese-built. As for dry cargo supplies for DOD, 7 of the 12 most recently built ships in the Maritime Security Fleet are Chinese-built.”
Civil-Military Fusion Paving The Way For A Global Maritime Force For China
China has been following the strategy of civil-military fusion as a national strategy, and its shipbuilding sector is no aberration. The division between the military and commercial shipbuilding has been blurred in China, pushing the country’s maritime rise.
The CSSC, the largest shipbuilder in the world, is the poster child of China’s seamless fusion of civil and military shipbuilding capabilities. The CSSC incorporates several shipyards, factories, and research institutes overseen by China’s top political and military leadership. In 2024 alone, the CSSC produced more commercial vessels by tonnage than what the US has produced since World War II.
In addition, the company has been building warships for the Chinese Navy, which is ascending to become one of the largest navies in the world.
Civil-military fusion means the CSSC can redirect its commercial revenue toward naval warship construction.
The CSSC has also benefited from the state-driven consolidation. In 2019, Beijing merged CSSC and its largest domestic rival, the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC). The merger brought together the two giants’ dual-use shipyards and nearly 100 subsidiaries and research institutes under one corporate umbrella. This has streamlined financing, technology sharing, and personnel transfers across civilian and military lines.
China’s astounding rise in commercial shipbuilding has also facilitated the country’s access to dual-use technologies like specialized engines and propellers, navigation and control systems, integrated electronics, and radar modules. Many foreign companies, including those based in the US, have unwittingly helped the Chinese shipyards with these technologies, which can also be used for military development.
Speaking with the EurAsian Times, Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, a retired Indian Navy officer, said: “China has risen because, in 2015, they declared that seas are the future of prosperity and trade. Therefore, it was necessary for China to build a robust maritime infrastructure and a strong PLAN to protect its interests. These are two factors that made them realize that shipbuilding infrastructure should serve a twin purpose where the facility can be used to its full potential since these infrastructures are expensive to build.
“This has fructified and China has built large fleets of commercial ships as well as warships. In fact, there is a lesson to learn from this.”
Shrinking US Shipbuilding Capability
A mapping by Newsweek has shown that the US has only four active shipyards. The decline has been stark, as the US Navy had over a dozen shipyards during World War II. The active shipyards include Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound on the US’s Pacific coast and Norfolk and Portsmouth in the Atlantic. These sites are used for aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine maintenance.
The shrinking US shipbuilding capability means that the US builds around 5 ships or less every year compared to China’s hundreds. In terms of gross tons, which measures a ship’s volume, China, Korea, and Japan build over 90 percent of the world’s tonnage; the United States builds about 0.2%.
If corrective measures are not taken, the decline of US commercial shipbuilding and shipping will soon be followed by the decline of military shipbuilding. US production of commercial vessels—at least the ones used in international trade—has been reduced to naught.
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told Congress in 2023 that a single Chinese shipyard had more construction capacity than the entire US industry. A leaked slide of the US Naval Intelligence presentation indicated that Chinese shipbuilding capacity is over 232 times that of America. In a futuristic war with the US, China will have the upper hand in combat repair and replacement.
The US Navy has established a 2025 shipbuilding plant, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will cost an average of USD 40 billion per year beginning in 2024 for the next three decades. These budget estimates are in sync with the US Navy’s plan to have a maritime force of 390 warships by 2054.
The CBO said that the Navy’s plan would strain the US industrial base, meaning that “over the next 30 years, the nation’s shipyards would need to produce substantially more naval tonnage than they have produced over the past 10 years. In particular, the production rate of nuclear-powered submarines would need to increase significantly.”
Trump’s Revival Plan
US President Donald Trump has underscored the dire need for an overhaul of the US’s shipyards. “We used to make so many ships. We don’t make them anymore very much, but we’re going to make them very fast, very soon,” Trump said in March.
Also, a group of veterans, cutting across party lines and led by Representative Mark Green, is set to introduce new legislation aimed at revitalizing US Shipyards and shipbuilders.
The Save Our Shipyards (SOS Act), endorsed by the American Shipbuilding Suppliers Association and Heritage Action, intends to address the decline of the shipbuilding industry. It proposes the creation of a National Commission on the Maritime Industrial Base to evaluate the current state of the US maritime industry. The commission will identify the impediments to its growth and give policy recommendations.
