The statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are repeated at the end of this article
Which shipbuilder is stronger in the world? In the east of the earth, you look for the Chinese side. The shipbuilding industry on the mainland is a traditional industry in which the mainland has advantages in many heavy industries, and six of the ten ships produced in the world were built by us. The mainland's shipbuilding industry can be said to be soft in getting orders and making a lot of money. [I don't look at it]
At the beginning of May, the mainland even cut South Korea down and directly won the shipbuilding order of Qatar Energy Company, which signed 18 ultra-large LNG (LNG ships specializing in transporting liquefied natural gas) carriers of 271,000 cubic meters with the mainland.
Winning this order means that the mainland has set two world records for the world's largest LNG carrier and the largest single shipbuilding order, and this order will further promote the development of the mainland's shipbuilding industry.
The shipbuilding industry of China and South Korea grabbed orders
South Korea's shipbuilding industry is very developed, South Korea's shipbuilding three generals, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries (Samsung's business involves a lot including shipbuilding), Daewoo Shipbuilding Marine, its strength is extremely strong.
In fact, Japan used to be the world's first shipbuilding industry, before South Korea to Japan's shipbuilding industry can not cause an impact at all, both technology and experience have been comprehensively crushed, but in South Korea found that shipbuilding can earn a lot of foreign exchange, ready to vigorously develop the shipbuilding industry.
The luck of this old boy in South Korea is surprisingly good, and it happened to catch up with the transfer of the American shipbuilding industry, and South Korea took over the shipbuilding business in the United States. After these generals chased all the way, they caught up with Japan step by step, and finally surpassed Japan to reach the top.
But what South Korea didn't expect was that the ass of the first throne was not yet hot, and China came out. With the rapid development of the mainland's shipbuilding industry, South Korea's No. 1 throne is about to be untenable.
Qatar's 100-ship program
Qatar, as one of the wealthy tycoons in the Middle East, relies on its abundant natural gas resources, and making money is as simple as drinking water. Although we all know that the Middle East is rich, we don't know how rich it is.
Hey, just in the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the people of the world were taught a lesson on "what is rich". In the 2022 Qatar World Cup, a big wave of 220 billion US dollars will be used to invest in the construction of the World Cup, which is more than 5 times the total investment in the 2018 World Cup.
Other countries have built at most venues for hosting the World Cup, but Qatar has built a modern city directly outside the center of the capital, Doha! Not only are there all kinds of social and public facilities, but also a large number of large parks and entertainment centers have been built.
Not only that, everyone knows that the climate in Qatar is very hot, and Qatar not only equipped the stadium with air conditioning but also built an artificial island, so the cost is really inhumane.
In 2020, QatarEnergy unveiled a plan that has attracted worldwide attention, the 100 Ships Program. More than 100 large LNG carriers are planned to be built to cope with the lack of capacity due to the expansion of natural gas capacity.
Subsequently, large orders were placed for shipyards all over the world, and in the first batch of orders in Qatar, South Korea won the largest order, and the mainland only got a fraction of it. However, after the rapid development of the mainland's shipbuilding industry, the world also saw the achievements of China's shipbuilding industry, and this time it successfully won the largest order, directly kicking South Korea from the first place in the shipbuilding industry.
The history of the mainland shipbuilding industry is sad
In fact, the predicament of shipbuilding in the mainland at the beginning is the same as that of South Korea, and the foundation is poor. New China had just been founded, and in that era of lack of money and materials, not to mention the steel for shipbuilding, the supply of iron was not very sufficient.
As a result, marine steel was first supplied to the construction of naval warships, and civilian operating ships in the inland of the mainland could only be manufactured using cement. However, because the cement is too heavy for ships made of cement to enter the sea, the mainland's maritime industry cannot be carried out at all.
In addition, with the advent of peacetime, the production of warships has decreased, making the mainland's already sluggish shipbuilding industry even more embarrassed to the point of going out of business.
Therefore, the mainland began to turn its direction to connect with the world and began to try to seek overseas shipbuilding orders. However, the mainland is completely aware of the gap between itself and the world's shipbuilding industry, so it began to fight a price war, starting with the export of small and medium-sized ships, I will take orders that others do not look down on, and people who are too small will not do it.
In this way, the continent began a new direction of shipbuilding for the world, but there is still one most important problem that has not been solved, that is, there is no technology.
We have no technology to manufacture these small and medium-sized ships, so after two years of hard work by Chai Shufan, director of the Sixth Industrial Machinery Department of the mainland, we have introduced shipbuilding technology from many countries to completely solve the problem of the technology that the mainland has explored itself. But you said you could do it, but no one believed it, after all, there was no finished product, and the mainland was not very rich at that time, so there was no need for large ships at all.
At this time, the noble man came, the Hong Kong ship king Bao Yugang. Patriotic businessman Bao Yugang handed over the order for a large ship that was originally going to give Japan $100 million to the mainland out of his feelings for his family and country.
The mainland also did not want to live up to expectations, and wrote a letter of guarantee to Bao Yugang, but it made another mistake at the beginning, because the mainland's shipbuilding index at that time was the same Soviet one, and the overall data of the ships was completely different from the international one.
Later, in order to successfully launch the ship, Pao Yugang negotiated with a British shipping agency to supervise the construction of the ship. Since the international standards were stricter than those of the Soviet Union, there were only three manuals brought by the supervising company.
In 1981, the mainland's first 27,000-ton "Great Wall" was successfully launched in Dalian.
The successful launch of the "Great Wall" also made Chai Shufan and Bao Yugang feel relieved, one is because the mainland has finally taken a huge step in the world's shipbuilding industry, and the other is because the 100 million US dollars have not been wasted.
With the success of the "Great Wall," the mainland finally has the ability to undertake overseas orders, and not only that, the patriotic businessman Bao Yugang has also brought a lot of business to the mainland, and he is a noble man in the mainland's shipbuilding industry.
Subsequently, the mainland has achieved technological breakthroughs and moved to the forefront of the world step by step, but there is still some gap between the two mountains of Japan and South Korea, and it is difficult for the mainland to do it only for liquefied gas carriers.
Because the Koreans were cautious and gave money that they could not teach and hide well, the mainland directly threw money to buy technology from France, and from then on the mainland began to really embark on the road of "slaughtering" the world's shipbuilding industry.
Since recent years, the mainland's shipbuilding industry has been soaring, and the mainland has won the three major pearls of the shipbuilding industry one by one (aircraft carriers, LNG carriers, and large cruise ships). The mainland's current warships are the same as dumplings, and the 0.55 million ton destroyer is also coming, and the new self-developed aircraft carrier Fujian has also begun sea trials, which shows that the mainland's shipbuilding industry is very developed both for commercial and military use!
Resources
[1] CCTV Finance - May 13, 2024 [Undertake the construction of the world's largest LNG carrier! Why is Continental Shipbuilding leading the world? Field Visits→】
[2] China Marine Development Research Center - October 11, 2019 [Documentary of the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China]