March 13, 2025 (EIRNS)—China’s Global Times issued a defense of sanity against the CSIS report issued on March 11 attacking China’s phenomenal shipbuilding success as an “economic and national security challenge” to the U.S. The op-ed column ridicules the CSIS attack as typical of the U.S. rejecting the idea that they should compete with China through improvements rather than trying to undermine Chinese progress: “This stark contrast underscores the futility of the U.S. approach, which prioritizes suppression over self-improvement and stands little chance of stifling the rapid development momentum of China’s shipbuilding sector.”
The contrast is indeed stark: China now produces more than half of the world’s commercial shipbuilding market, while the U.S. share has fallen to just 0.1%. Global Times notes: “This report comes against a specific backdrop. As reported by Reuters, the U.S. is planning to charge fees for docking at U.S. ports on any ship that is part of a fleet that includes Chinese-built or Chinese-flagged vessels, and it will push its allies to act similarly or face retaliation.... After analyzing the factors behind the rise of China’s shipbuilding industry, most of the suggestions in this CSIS report center on how to curb China’s market share in shipbuilding, rather than on how to enhance the competitiveness of the U.S. itself.”
