From shipbuilding power to ship power, China still needs to do something

(3) There is a significant gap in labor efficiency

In terms of per capita sales revenue, Chinese shipping companies lag far behind Japanese and South Korean companies. The first tier is Japanese shipping companies with per capita income of more than $400,000. The second tier is South Korean shipping companies, with per capita income of more than $260,000. Chinese shipping companies belong to the third tier, with per capita income between $150,000-260,000, and CSSC is only 34.6% of Mitsui Shipbuilding.

(4) Research and development investment intensity reached a relatively high level

Second, the reason why Chinese shipbuilding enterprises are big but not strong

China's large ship enterprises are large but not strong, and there is a certain gap between them and the world's first-class enterprises in high-quality development.

(1) The upgrading of product structure is limited by the weak industrial base and supporting capacity

The upgrading of China's ship product structure has made great progress, but in general, it is still dominated by middle and low-end ship types, and there is a significant gap with Japanese and Korean ship companies. South Korea is dominated by medium and high-end merchant ships such as oil tankers, LNG carriers (liquefied natural gas carriers) and very large container ships, and the global share of VLCC (very large crude oil carriers) and LNG carriers has reached 72.5% and 60.6% respectively. Japan is dominated by high-quality energy-saving and environmentally friendly bulk carriers, and the proportion of medium and high-end products such as very large container ships and VLCCS has also been increasing in recent years. Relatively speaking, the proportion of high-tech and high value-added vessels of Chinese enterprises is obviously low, and the profits of large shipbuilding and military enterprises mainly rely on military products, and the profits of civilian products are low.

The reasons for affecting the upgrading of product structure: First, the industrial base is not strong enough. China's shipbuilding industry has a short development time and insufficient technology accumulation, which is highlighted by the lack of independent large-scale industrial design software, small R&D reserves for new ship types, insufficient development and design capabilities for high-end ship types, and weak R&D capabilities for key components and basic materials. Second, the ship supporting industry is small in scale and not competitive. China's shipbuilding scale has ranked first in the world, but the competitiveness of the shipbuilding supporting industry is not strong, and it is difficult to meet the needs of structural adjustment. Data show that Japan, South Korea's ship supporting industry and shipbuilding industry scale ratio of 1:2.5 and 1:2.7, supporting domestic ratio of 90%-100%, 80%-90%, Europe's ship supporting industry is the most developed, the scale is more than 3 times that of the shipbuilding industry, supporting domestic ratio of 90%-100%. The ratio of China's shipbuilding supporting industry and shipbuilding industry is 1:6, the supporting domestic ratio of 60%-80%, and the supporting industry lacks international well-known brands, the technical level and the gap between Europe, Japan and South Korea is obvious, and some core supporting equipment is heavily dependent on imports from Europe and Japan.

(2) Low resource allocation efficiency affects operational efficiency

First, the level of fine management is not high. Compared with world-class enterprises, China's large ship enterprises have no obvious gap in shipbuilding facilities and equipment, and have basically established a modern final assembly shipbuilding model characterized by the organization and production of intermediate products. The main reason for the backward shipbuilding efficiency is that the production organization and management are not highly refined, so that the efficiency of people and money can not be fully utilized.

Second, overcapacity has caused a sharp decline in profitability. Since 2008, the global shipping market has been in a downturn. As of early August 2019, the global handheld-to-existing fleet (GT) ratio was about 10%, the lowest level in the past 20 years, and global handheld-to-order volume has declined by nearly 60% in 10 years. Market downturn and excess supply of production capacity have caused varying degrees of impact on shipbuilding enterprises in various countries. In addition to the continuous decline in the price of new ships, the sharp rise in raw material costs, and the frequent change of orders by shippers, Chinese enterprises have also had a negative impact on their operations due to the huge financial costs caused by the digestion of excess capacity, and the average profit margin of ship enterprises above scale has fallen from 9.4% in 2007 to 2.4% in 2018.

Third, the ability to optimize the allocation of global resources is insufficient. The international development of China's large shipping enterprises started early, but the progress is slow, and the export of products has been dominated for a long time. At present, with the promotion of the "Belt and Road" construction, some large Chinese shipping enterprises actively promote the international strategic layout, but overseas research and development, marketing, after-sales network layout and overseas investment and financing center construction is still in the initial stage, the scale of overseas mergers and acquisitions is relatively limited, and it is still unable to effectively optimize the allocation of resources in the global industrial chain and maximize benefits.