Is China’s shipbuilding industry doing well or poorly? Here come the data!


Release time:

2025-12-18

From January to May, the nation’s completed shipbuilding volume totaled 16.43 million deadweight tons, down 28.3% year-on-year. New ship orders received amounted to 19.68 million deadweight tons, up 99.6% year-on-year. As of the end of May, the backlog of ship orders stood at 89.03 million deadweight tons, an increase of 7.5% year-on-year and a rise of 2.1% compared to the end of 2017.

Is China’s shipbuilding industry doing well or poorly? Here come the data!

From January to May, the nation’s completed shipbuilding volume totaled 16.43 million deadweight tons, down 28.3% year-on-year. New ship orders received amounted to 19.68 million deadweight tons, up 99.6% year-on-year. As of the end of May, the backlog of ship orders stood at 89.03 million deadweight tons, an increase of 7.5% year-on-year and a rise of 2.1% compared to the end of 2017.

From January to May, the nation completed the construction of 15.48 million deadweight tons of export ships, a year-on-year decrease of 28.2%. New export ship orders reached 18.34 million deadweight tons, up 108% over the same period last year. As of the end of May, the backlog of outstanding export ship orders totaled 80.04 million deadweight tons, representing a year-on-year increase of 1.5%. Export ships accounted for 94.2%, 93.2%, and 89.9% of the nation’s total completed shipbuilding output, new orders received, and orders on hand, respectively.