Sailing into a New Golden Age 
Objectively speaking, the quality of shipbuilding in China today is equal to international standards of the early 1990s. China now mainly builds basic merchant vessels. But new high-tech and added value types of vessels are also being developed and built.
Yet, deficiencies in ship design and full exploitation of dockyard facilities narrows the path of further advancement.
Lu Zhiping, Honorary Director of Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute
Generally speaking, we can design most of the ships we build. But we are new to certain types of designs, These will be introduced when needed. As we encounter new designs, we use them as examples and learn from them. Once we master these techniques, we integrate them into our ongoing work.
At present there are two design offices in China for the shipbuilding industry. Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute is one. It is a comprehensive organization capable of developing and designing modern merchant ships. Founded in 1964, the institute has been providing outstanding design guidelines to shipbuilders and gained a high reputation in China and in world shipbuilding markets.
As estimated, within 10 years, the shipbuilding industry in China will account for twice as much as now produced in world shipbuilding markets. This figure means that there will be a greater demand for ship design services in China.
Ma Guodong, Manager of China Shipbuilding of East Shanghai Co, LTD
Improvement is still required before we become a leading shipbuilding country. For example, the cycle from ship design to completion must be shortened. China needs to cooperate with other countries with greater experience to further exploit ship design. But we are very optimistic. As a matter of fact the central government has set a goal that China will be the number one shipbuilding country in the world by the end of 2015.
So we must have a sense of confidence and responsibility to fulfill this task. We will speed up shipbuilding exploitation, so that our techniques will be at advanced levels in the foreseeable future.
In order to accelerate the development of China鈥檚 shipbuilding industry, the state departments concerned are researching to work out supporting policies, increase the investment in this industry, and focus more resources on the construction of the three shipbuilding bases of the Bohai Bay, the mouths of Yangze River and Pearl River.
Great achievements have been made in constructing three major shipbuilding bases located in Bohai Bay,鈥he Yangtze river estuary鈥 and the Pearl River estuary. As a result, it is expected this will enable China to top the world in terms of shipbuilding quality and quantity.
Changxing Island, located near Shanghai, is China鈥檚 biggest shipyards. This represents an investment of 3.6 billion dollars by its owner, the China Shipbuilding Co,LTD.
Chen Jinhai, President of Supervision Committee of Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) Co, LTD
As the shipbuilding mechanism develops, shipbuilding is heading towards a much larger scale, plus rapid modernization and busines practices. In order to meet the needs of the market, two years ago, we started to build bases outside of the Huangpu River and Yangtze River regions. Owing to the limited height of bridges across the Huangpu River, ships bigger than 80,000 tons cannot be built there. The Changxing Island complex, belonging to the Jiangnan Shipyard Co, LTD, is a huge, modern, future base in the region of Yangtze estuary and Shanghai.
Editor:Hu Source:CCTV.com
