Source: Huashang Taolue. Shipyard berths are booked through 2030, builders can barely keep up with the orders, and more than 80% of the world's new vessel orders are flowing to China. Leading in orders taken is only the starting point 鈥?mastering the hardest ships to build and setting the rules of shipping is the real ticket into this age of great navigation.
On June 5, 2026, at Changxing Island in Dalian, two 306,000-deadweight-ton ultra-large crude carriers built by Hengli Heavy Industries for Greek shipowner Dynacom, named "EVROS" and "ACHELOOS", left the same dock at the same time and were named and delivered on the same day. Each ship is 332.8 meters long, and both were handed over at least three months ahead of the contractual delivery date. Dynacom's on-site manager Panagiotis stood on the quay and offered just one sentence in assessment of the two vessels: extremely satisfied. It is hard to imagine that four years ago this was an idle, bankrupt shipyard that had sat unused for nearly a decade.
Its predecessor, STX Dalian, declared bankruptcy and liquidation in 2015, and repeated auctions drew no bidders. In 2022, Hengli Group took it over for 2.11 billion yuan. The rebirth of a bankrupt shipyard collided with an era in which the world is scrambling for Chinese ships.
September 29 was another such day: COSCO Shipping Specialized Carriers announced the addition of 14 60,000-ton-class multi-purpose heavy-lift vessels at once, while CSSC Huangpu Wenchong signed another 2 container ships with Greek owner Evalend Shipping. Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that in the first half of this year China took new shipbuilding orders totaling 121.06 million deadweight tons, up 173.1% year on year, exceeding any full year in history in just half a year.
Orders Coming in Faster Than They Can Be Counted
The pace at which Hengli Heavy Industries is taking orders has to be measured in days. In 2025, the yard took on 115 new ships for the full year, with contract value exceeding 100 billion yuan, an average of less than three days per vessel. In the first half of 2026, it took on another 207 ships: 94 tankers, 56 container ships, 49 bulk carriers, plus 8 ultra-large liquid ammonia carriers, setting an industry record for orders taken by a single yard in half a year. Over the same period it delivered 40 vessels, with more than 30 giant ships still queued at the quayside awaiting delivery.
Behind these numbers are more than 80,000 shipbuilding workers inside the Hengli Heavy Industries industrial park, along with 4 slipways and 4 large dry docks. Steel plate cutting, block assembly, pipeline laying and cabin commissioning 鈥?dozens of processes advance simultaneously along the Changxing Island coastline. The yard's delivery schedule has already been written through to 2030.
The weight of the order book is clearest in the repeat customers. Dynacom has now ordered a cumulative 20 VLCCs at Hengli; another Greek shipping magnate, Marinakis, signed 11 vessels in one go in February through his Capital Maritime. More telling still, a VLCC still under construction in a Hengli dock was resold by a Greek owner in May this year to a Trafigura-related customer for about $163 million, while it had been ordered at about $118 million per vessel last October 鈥?a paper premium of roughly $45 million in little more than half a year. Even ships not yet launched have become hard currency in the market.
Hengli's ambitions go beyond mere volume. On June 23, its first 93,000-cubic-meter ultra-large liquid ammonia carrier was launched. Large gas carriers have traditionally been built in dry docks, but this one was built on a slipway and slid into the water 鈥?the world's first vessel of its type built on a slipway. Ammonia must be kept liquid at minus 33 degrees Celsius, placing extremely high demands on cargo tank materials, welding and safety systems, and such ships were once the traditional turf of Japanese and Korean yards.
This is not a one-yard show. Heading south from Dalian, along the Yangtze River, lies Jingjiang in Jiangsu, a city of just 665 square kilometers with 660,000 permanent residents. Yet this small city accounted for 10.9% of the world's order backlog in 2025 鈥?roughly one in every ten ships under construction worldwide comes from here.
On the morning of July 22, a methanol dual-fuel container ship capable of carrying 9,016 standard boxes slowly left the dock at New Yangzi Shipbuilding. Its owner is Danish shipping giant Maersk. Zhou Kewei, deputy general manager of Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, explained on site that unlike traditional vessels burning diesel or heavy fuel oil, this ship uses new energy, and its dual-fuel design can cut emissions of multiple greenhouse gases. Speaking of the changes in recent years, he offered an analogy: in the past, delivering two or three ships a year was remarkable; now deliveries come "like dumplings going into a pot." Yangzijiang Shipbuilding's revenue and profit both hit record highs in the first half, with net profit of about 5.4 billion yuan. By the end of last year, clean-energy ships already accounted for 74% of its order backlog. Executive Chairman and CEO Ren Letian disclosed in the half-year report that berths for 2029 deliveries are already close to full capacity, and the company will next "steadily release" 2030 slots. In other words, place an order now and the earliest you can get a ship is three to four years away.
Further south, in Guangzhou, cooperation between CSSC Huangpu Wenchong and Greek owner Evalend Shipping refreshes almost quarterly: in March, 1,800 TEU feeder container ships were signed; in June, 2+2 1,900 TEU vessels were signed jointly with CULines; in July, another 2; and on September 29, another 2 of the same type were added. The same owner has come back four times in little more than half a year. Price can win the first order; only delivery can win the second and third.
Put these yards together and you have the entire industry running at full volume. Data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on July 23 show that in the first half China's shipbuilding completions reached 36.5 million deadweight tons, up 51.2% year on year, accounting for 62.2% of the world total; new orders reached 121.06 million deadweight tons, up 173.1%, accounting for 82.3% of the world total; and as of the end of June, the order backlog stood at 363.25 million deadweight tons, up 54.9%, accounting for 71.2% of the world total. In the three mainstream ship types 鈥?bulk carriers, container ships and tankers 鈥?China's share of new orders all exceeds 80%.
Clarksons Research offers an even more intuitive measure: in the first half, 1,481 new ships were contracted worldwide worth $132.6 billion, equivalent to about $730 million of shipbuilding contracts signed every day. Measured in compensated gross tonnage, China took 72% and South Korea 19%. Li Yanqing, vice president of the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry, described the surge in new orders as "explosive" and "remarkable progress." With shipowners around the world queueing for berths, Chinese shipbuilding has climbed to its highest peak in history.
One Strait Blocked, Orders Erupt
The first spark for this wave of orders was lit by a single strait. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched joint military action against Iran, and Iran retaliated immediately. In the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about one-fifth of the world's oil trade, the number of tankers passing through each day plunged from more than a hundred to single digits. Large numbers of tankers were trapped in the Gulf of Oman or diverted around the Cape of Good Hope. Voyages lengthened and capacity was frozen, sending freight rates soaring: VLCC spot charter rates jumped from about $132,000 per day in February to more than $500,000 by mid-September. After the U.S. and Iran reached a memorandum of understanding in June, the strait technically reopened, but as late as September navigation was still far from normal.
It was at this moment that veteran New York shipowner Peter Georgiopoulos made his decision. He and his partners' team had not placed a major ship order for eight years, but in the first quarter of this year they committed to about $1 billion of VLCC orders. In their own words: either go big or go home. They were not alone in thinking so. According to shipping analytics platform Signal Group, global VLCC orders have reached 217 so far this year, compared with only 93 in all of 2025, with total transaction value exceeding $20 billion 鈥?a high not seen in at least 25 years. BIMCO statistics show that of this year's 151 new VLCC orders, 133 went to Chinese shipyards, about 88%. Veson Nautical analyst Galanopoulos believes shipowners are betting on one judgment: after Middle East supply is disrupted, long-haul crude transportation from the Atlantic to Asia will continue to grow.
But attributing the entire order wave to the fires of war is not accurate. The war lit this round, but the firewood had long been stacked. The first reason is that ships are old. Clarksons data show that by early 2026, 42% of the global VLCC fleet was more than 15 years old, and about one-fifth was more than 20 years old. Tankers are generally designed for a service life of about 20 years, so a large number of older vessels must exit in the coming years. The second reason is that regulation is forcing fleet renewal. The International Maritime Organization's energy efficiency index and carbon intensity rating are already in force, old ships must undergo an annual carbon emissions "score," and vessels with poor ratings find it increasingly hard to win cargo. When ordering new ships, owners generally require dual-fuel or fuel-ready designs. In the first quarter of this year, China's international market share of new green ship orders reached 80.2%. The third reason is that shipowners have money. Several years of high freight rates have markedly improved shipowners' balance sheets, and many new faces have entered 鈥?Clarksons estimates that more than 40% of tanker orders in the first half came from players that had not previously been involved in this ship type. And since shipbuilding takes years from contract to delivery, waiting until the market is hottest to order often means good berths are already gone. The fourth reason is the push and pull of U.S. port fees. In 2025, the United States announced port fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated vessels on the grounds of a "Section 301 investigation," prompting many shipowners to wait and see; that year China's new orders fell about 35% year on year, while South Korea grew 8% against the trend. It was only on November 10, 2025, when China and the United States simultaneously suspended reciprocal port fees for one year, that suppressed orders flowed back in a concentrated wave.
So where do these orders come from? First, a clarification: the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology only publishes the share of export ships 鈥?in the first half, export vessels accounted for 93.4% of China's new orders. But "export" does not equal "foreign shipowner," as many Chinese shipowners order through offshore companies, and this ratio cannot be directly split into "how much is European and American, how much is Chinese." What can reveal the structure is shipowners' investment amounts and names. Clarksons data show that in the first half Greek shipowners invested about $23.4 billion in new ships, exceeding all of 2025 in just half a year and returning to first place globally; Chinese shipowners followed with about $22.4 billion. Together they accounted for about one-third of global new ship investment, with the rest spread among owners in other European countries, Japan, Singapore and the Middle East.
The choices of Greek shipowners are the most representative. They control about one-fifth of global merchant shipping capacity and signed 299 new ships in the first half, of which 235 went to Chinese yards, about 79%, with Hengli alone taking about 36% of that. As early as the end of 2024, 68% of Greek shipowners' order backlog by deadweight tonnage was already under construction in China. Change is also happening among "old customers." Greek owner Thenamaris, which previously built mainly in Japan and South Korea, handed an LR2 tanker order to a Chinese private yard for the first time; Evalend, long a buyer of gas carriers in South Korea, ordered 4 ultra-large liquid ammonia carriers at Hengli this year.
Looking further out, it is almost a "who's who" of global shipping: the world's largest container line, Mediterranean Shipping Company, has placed all 128 of its new ships with Chinese yards; France's CMA CGM placed its first new ship order in China this year at Hengli; Japan's Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha ordered 4 LNG dual-fuel car carriers at China Merchants Jinling; and Nigeria LNG ordered 3 174,000-cubic-meter LNG carriers at Hudong-Zhonghua. The cycle brought demand, but what determined where orders flowed was who can build, who can deliver, and who delivers reliably. Geopolitical conflict lit the fire, fleet replacement and the green transition added fuel, and the orders ultimately flowed to China, which delivers fastest and has the most complete supply chain.
A Longer Chain Behind the Age of Great Navigation's Orders
On September 29, COSCO Shipping Specialized Carriers announced it had commissioned Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry to build 8 60,000-ton-class multi-purpose heavy-lift vessels for no more than 2.624 billion yuan, with delivery from 2029 to 2030; at the same time it will bareboat charter 6 vessels of the same type from four leasing companies including CITIC Financial Leasing and ICBC Financial Leasing, for about 20 years, at about 61,000 yuan per vessel per day including tax. The company acknowledged in its announcement that, based on future specialized transport demand, its heavy-lift capacity "still has a gap."
Where does the gap come from? The answer lies in the cargo hold. These vessels are specially designed to carry "big blocks" such as wind turbine blades, construction machinery and port cranes. COSCO Shipping Specialized Carriers' annual report shows that in 2025 its mechanical equipment shipments grew 76% year on year, wind power equipment 55%, engineering equipment 73% and port machinery 150%, with advanced manufacturing cargo already accounting for more than 40%. As China's major equipment goes global, China's fleet must go global with it.
On the same day, China Merchants Energy Shipping also announced that its subsidiary had signed a 25-year long-term transport agreement for 6 ultra-large ore carriers, with a total value expected to be no less than $2.8 billion, to participate in transporting iron ore from Guinea's Simandou project. With long-term cargo on one side and shipyard capacity on the other, Chinese shipowners and shipyards are being bound together by the same flow of goods.
Demand is also transmitting upstream. Fuda Co Ltd in Guilin, Guangxi, previously focused on automotive engine crankshafts, with customers including Yuchai and Cummins. In June this year, it set up a dedicated large marine electric crankshaft business unit; on September 17 it announced an investment of 880 million yuan to build a production line for 15,000 large marine electric crankshafts a year, ranging from 2 meters to 4.5 meters in length, as well as a precision forging line with annual output of 20,000 pieces, with the project starting that month. A company that made auto parts turning to marine power shows that the shipbuilding boom has already reached engines and key components.
The other end of the chain is ship registration and shipping services. On September 20, the vessel "Yuanhai Longmen" entered the registry of Hainan's Yangpu Port, becoming the 104th Yangpu-registered ship, with total capacity of Yangpu-registered vessels exceeding 9 million deadweight tons. In Guangxi, the Pinglu Canal opened to navigation on September 16, allowing 5,000-ton-class vessels to reach Nanning directly; just days before the opening, in the Liujing Industrial Park adjacent to the canal's starting point, a new energy shipbuilding base with first-phase investment of about 700 million yuan broke ground, with planned annual output of about 70 green vessels at full capacity. From shipbuilding to shipowning, to ship registration, to cargo sources 鈥?China is completing the full puzzle of a major shipping power.
As early as 2023, the fleet owned by Chinese shipowners had already surpassed Greece by gross tonnage to become the world's largest; COSCO Shipping Energy Transportation's tanker fleet also ranks first in the world. History has repeatedly shown that shipbuilding centers follow manufacturing centers and trade centers. From the Netherlands and Britain to Japan and South Korea, every shift in the shipbuilding center has been accompanied by a rearrangement of the global industrial map. China only began building export ships to international standards in 1982; more than four decades later, 80% of global new orders flow to China. When the world's factory also becomes the world's shipyard, China's industrial economy truly enters its own age of great navigation.
Many Challenges Remain Beneath the Prosperity
Yet beneath the prosperity, not a single challenge has disappeared. The first is high-end ship types. LNG carriers are called the "pearl on the crown" of shipbuilding, and according to Wood Mackenzie data, South Korea still holds about two-thirds of global LNG carrier orders. South Korea's HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, under HD Hyundai, has publicly said that Chinese yards still lag South Korea in quality and technology. But Leszczynski, research director at shipbroker Banchero Costa, offers another judgment: the build quality of Chinese yards is already not far from South Korea's, while their quotations are more competitive. The gap is narrowing, but it has not vanished.
The second is that being "strong in shipbuilding" does not equal being "strong in shipping." Route networks, port services, ship insurance and financing, maritime arbitration and bunkering 鈥?these links that determine shipping pricing power are still deeply accumulated in established shipping centers such as London and Singapore. Being first in orders does not automatically translate into being first in rule-setting.
The third is the cycle. Shipbuilding is a classic highly cyclical industry; after the frenzy before 2008 came a decade-long winter, and STX Dalian itself was a casualty of that round. At present, the VLCC order backlog as a share of the existing fleet has risen from about 12% a year ago to 33%, and a large wave of new ships will be delivered in concentrated fashion from 2028 to 2030. Pressure inside shipyards is also building: the fuller the order book, the tighter recruiting, steel, equipment arrivals and quality control become, and the green fuel route has not yet been settled.
The last is geopolitics. The U.S. suspension of port fees is due to expire in early November, leaving just over a month from today. In late September, the National Retail Federation and several other industry organizations jointly called for an extension of the suspension, but as of now there is no final decision. At the same time, the United States is working with South Korea and Japan to revive its own shipbuilding industry. If the rules change, the flow of orders may change with them.
Signals of cooling have already appeared. Clarksons data show that in August global new ship orders fell 23.7% year on year, while China's share rose to 85.4%. Looking ahead, Chinese shipyards' berths are already booked through 2029 and 2030, and the next three years will bring a delivery peak, making China's position as the world's top shipbuilder hard to shake in the short term; new orders are likely to retreat from their highs, and the market will shift from "scrambling for berths" back to "competing on quality." The next stage of competition will no longer be just about who takes the most orders, but about who can stand firm in high-end ship types such as LNG carriers and cruise ships, who can strengthen main engines and core supporting equipment, and who can gain a voice in green fuel standards and shipping rules. Being first in orders is only the starting point 鈥?mastering the hardest ships to build and setting the rules of shipping is the real ticket into the age of great navigation.
In June on Changxing Island, two giant ships sailed side by side away from the quay, heading for the open ocean. Four years ago, this was still a stalled shipyard. For Chinese shipbuilding, the best era has arrived; but the true long voyage has only just begun.