The United States shipbuilding industry, which has suffered a precipitous decline since the beginning of the epidemic, not only has its infrastructure been seriously aged, but also has a large loss of engineering and technical personnel and technicians, and the supply chain that provides shipyards with various spare parts is also very weak.
As of now, the domestic shipbuilding industry in United States has not shown any signs of recovery, but has become a worsening recession. This has saturated United States shipyards with maintenance and insufficient capacity to repair all types of ships of the United States Navy.
The Los Angeles-class attack nuclear submarine SSN-764 "Boise" is in a difficult situation for its maintenance. The last patrol to the sea of the scheduled deadline was completed in 2015. After losing the diving certification, it is in an "idle" state, and begins to wait to enter the shipyard for repairs.
On February 26, 2024, the SSN-764 Boise was able to enter the privately owned Newport News Shipbuilding Company's repair shop, where it waited for nine years. The repair work is expected to be completed in 2029 with a contract value of $1.17 billion.
Now, the United States Navy has to go to shipyards in Korea and Japan to undertake maintenance, repair and overhaul of large surface ships such as aircraft carriers, missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and logistics support ships in service.
United States Secretary of the Navy Carlos ·· del Toro, who is negotiating with relevant shipyards through the military of other countries, intends to set up logistics and maintenance centers in India, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia and other Asia-Pacific countries.
In the future, the maintenance of United States Navy ships and other projects, except for nuclear submarines carried out in domestic shipyards, it seems that the repair of most surface ships needs to be outsourced. The extent of the failure of the shipbuilding industry in the United States is evident from this.
In sharp contrast to the decline of the shipbuilding industry in United States, China's shipbuilding industry is booming. Not only in the manufacture of civilian ships, but also in the development of military ships, showing an overwhelming advantage over the United States shipbuilding industry.
At present, among the world's major shipyards, only China is the only one that can build what is known as the "three pearls" of the shipbuilding industry, namely aircraft carriers, large cruise ships, and liquefied natural gas carriers.
Against this backdrop, on the eve of the Korean War, a comprehensive strategic research institute with a focus on military affairs, successfully predicted and concluded that "China will send troops to North Korea," making it more famous than other think tanks, and recently released a report entitled "China's Shipbuilding Industry: Navy and Commerce."
The RAND Corporation, known for its strategic research, delves into the evolving relationship between China's navy and merchant marine manufacturing and provides unique insights into how the two industries have interacted over the past two decades.
Through a detailed analysis of the trends in China's shipbuilding industry, the report explores the complementary commercial operations and military aspects of China's rise as a dominant maritime power, revealing the complex interactions between these sectors.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has gradually become a leader in the global shipbuilding industry. China's global market share in the field of merchant shipping has soared from 4.7% of ship completions in 2000 to 51.9% of the global open order tonnage in 2023, which can be called an explosive growth in civil shipbuilding.
With the development of China's merchant marine industry, correspondingly, the Chinese Navy's aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, supply ships, amphibious assault ships, permanent nuclear submarines and other main combat ships have grown from scratch, and some are rapidly expanding in number. Let the Chinese navy's fleet grow larger and larger, quickly surpassing Russia to become the second strongest navy in the world, second only to the United States navy in size.
This dual growth model, in which merchant and warships go hand in hand, has sparked speculation about the relationship between China's naval and commercial shipbuilding capabilities. According to the foreign mass media and some of the more specialized military websites, these industries complement each other, and the progress made in the commercial shipbuilding industry strongly supports the naval industry, and vice versa.
Judging from the history of the development of China's naval ship equipment, the so-called "missile destroyers" and "missile frigates" that have been decommissioned are relatively simple, and there were frigates with pure artillery in the past. Generally, only anti-ship missiles are equipped, and the vast majority of ships are not equipped with anti-aircraft missiles, anti-submarine missiles, or even hangars, flight decks, anti-submarine torpedoes, and anti-submarine helicopters.
These ships are relatively simple in armament and can be built in large quantities using commercial shipbuilding techniques. However, as the Chinese Navy broadens its horizons, from offshore defense to deep into the ocean, building an ocean-going navy with both offensive and defensive capabilities, and requiring more complex large maritime mobile platforms such as aircraft carriers and air defense destroyers comparable to the United States Navy, the demand for highly specialized shipyards is also growing.
The shift has become increasingly prominent, and while China's commercial shipbuilding prowess remains formidable, the growing technical need for modern, large combat ships is limiting China's ability to quickly repurpose that capability for naval production. Not any shipyard can undertake the construction of aircraft carriers, 10,000-ton drives, and nuclear submarines.
Major shipyards such as Dalian and Jiangnan, which used to manufacture both warships and merchant ships, are now increasingly focusing on naval projects, especially advanced platforms such as Type 052D air defense destroyers and Type 055 missile cruisers (known as Type 055 10,000-ton drives by Chinese netizens) and Type 001/002/003 aircraft carriers.
This trend towards specialization has made it more challenging for China to devote its vast commercial shipbuilding infrastructure to focusing on the development of naval vessels, especially as modernized large surface warships require more sophisticated design and production techniques.
Overall, the RAND report highlights the complex relationship between China's navy and commercial shipbuilding, which has been separated by the growing maturity of the Chinese navy, and that Dalian and Jiangnan, two of the most famous shipyards in the north and south, have long since come to the fore. In the field of military shipbuilding, it is far ahead of other shipyards in China.
Under the premise of an increasingly complex geopolitical environment, these two powerful shipyards in the eyes of netizens are focusing on the development of large naval ships, and continuously exporting aircraft carriers, air defense destroyers, 10,000-ton large drives and other surface main combat ships with strong comprehensive combat capabilities for the Chinese Navy.
In recent years, the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard on the banks of the Huangpu River has become the main force in building tens of thousands of tons of large combat ships such as Type 071 dock landing ships and Type 075/076 amphibious assault ships, as well as manufacturers of Type 054/054A/054B missile frigates.
This makes Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard also become a large-scale shipyard based on warships and merchant ships, which can meet the equipment needs of the Chinese Navy for frigates and amphibious assault ships in the new era.