The inspiration of the shipbuilding industry

First, the current deep-seated problems in China's shipbuilding industry

After 70 years of hard development, on the one hand, China's shipbuilding industry has made brilliant achievements, on the other hand, it has accumulated many deep-seated problems, it is necessary to objectively examine the main difficulties and challenges facing China's shipbuilding industry. At present, facing the continuous downturn of the world shipping market and severe international competition situation, China's shipbuilding industry in the external market environment, industry living space, internal management, science and technology system and mechanism, there are many deep-seated contradictions to be solved, the shipbuilding industry to achieve a big and strong historical leap-forward situation is complicated and severe.

(1) Effective demand in the external market has been in a downturn for a long time

Since the outbreak of the international financial crisis in 2008, the external market environment of China's shipbuilding industry has been depressed for a long time, and the problems of receiving orders, shipping difficulties, financing difficulties and survival difficulties have existed for a long time, and it is still in the deep adjustment period of "L" type economy. Affected by the international financial crisis, the European debt crisis, the slowing domestic economic growth, the Sino-US "trade war" and the implementation of new regulations on ship environmental protection and many other international and domestic factors, the external market environment of China's shipbuilding industry has been relatively bad. On the one hand, the world economic recovery has slowed down, international trade protectionism has returned, the contradiction between supply and demand in the shipping market has not been fundamentally resolved, and ship orders have gradually decreased. On the other hand, the collapse of international oil prices has reduced the enthusiasm of shipowners to order energy-saving ships, delayed the dismantling of old ships, and increased ship speed to release shipping capacity, reducing the demand for new ships. In particular, under the background of the increasingly fierce Sino-US "trade war", the global economic growth has slowed down, the shipping market has continued to be depressed, and the effective demand of China's shipbuilding industry market has been insufficient. Affected by the continued downturn in the international market and the bankruptcy and reorganization of some enterprises and other factors, financial institutions have relatively tight credit policies for the shipbuilding industry, and the implementation of differentiated credit policies is not obvious, "difficult financing, expensive financing" is still a prominent problem facing the shipbuilding industry, and the financing pressure of enterprises is relatively large, which seriously affects the healthy development of China's shipbuilding industry.

(2) The internal transformation and upgrading of the industry has many tasks and heavy burdens

From the perspective of supply, the contradiction of excess capacity in China's shipbuilding industry has not been fundamentally alleviated, and the internal transformation and upgrading of the shipbuilding industry has many tasks and heavy burdens. Although shipping enterprises have effectively alleviated the adverse impact of excess capacity of ships through various measures such as mergers and reorganizations, the capacity utilization rate of China's shipping industry is still at a low level in the face of a sluggish market, and there is still a large gap from the reasonable level of capacity utilization of the industry as a whole (Institute of Industrial Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2018). At the same time, due to the continuous decline in the price of new ships, the sharp rise in raw material costs, the frequent change of shipowners' orders, the lack of construction of shipping enterprises, high financing costs and other factors, coupled with the rigid rise of labor costs, financial costs and logistics costs in recent years, the operation of shipping enterprises has brought great pressure, and the profitability of the shipping industry has declined significantly, and the overall economic benefits of the industry are not good. The stable and healthy development of the industry faces great challenges (China Shipbuilding Industry Association, 2019). Under the combined effect of the market forcing mechanism and policy guidance, China's shipbuilding industry excess capacity still needs to be further reduced, mergers and acquisitions need to be accelerated, and industrial concentration can be further improved.

(3) The system and mechanism of collaborative innovation need to be further optimized

At present, the innovation ecology and innovation system of China's shipbuilding industry need to be further optimized, the system mechanism to encourage continuous innovation needs to be further improved, and the overall level of innovation is still a big gap compared with the world's shipbuilding powers (Li Yizhong, 2016). Ship enterprises are generally faced with many problems, such as poor innovation ability, low added value of product science and technology, weak independent design ability of high-end products, high dependence on external design support, and serious separation of scientific and technological innovation from industrial demand. With the increasingly fierce competition in the international ship market, developed countries and regions such as Japan, South Korea and the European Union have strengthened their technological blockade on China, and the importance of establishing an independent system and mechanism to encourage the continuous innovation of ship enterprises has become increasingly prominent (Wu Xiuxia, 2017). From the perspective of innovation, the understanding of innovation leading the real economy in China's shipbuilding industry is not yet in place, the understanding of the connotation of innovation is too narrow, more attention and emphasis on technological innovation, while ignoring the business model, enterprise system, organization mode, operation mode, production mode, salary incentive, management methods and other aspects of innovation, collaborative innovation ability is obviously insufficient. It is necessary to establish and improve the system and mechanism to encourage the continuous innovation of shipping enterprises, give full play to the overall leading role of innovation in the transformation and upgrading of the shipping industry, strengthen the upstream and downstream of the shipping industry chain, deepen the "industry-university-research and application" cooperation, build an interconnected and global collaborative innovation network, and enhance the collaborative innovation capacity of the shipping industry.