Experts and Scholars in Ship Design Explore the Industry’s Future
What Will Tomorrow’s Vessels Look Like?
From small fishing boats to massive ships, China’s shipbuilding industry has undergone a transformative leap in just a few decades, evolving from catching up with global competitors to surpassing them. By 2023, China’s shipbuilding industry achieved a significant milestone, with completed shipbuilding volume, new orders, and order backlog each accounting for over 50% of the global market. This means that one out of every two newly built ships worldwide is now made in China.
While these achievements mark the past, the question remains: where is the future of China's shipbuilding industry headed? On November 16, the China Ship Design Masters Seminar was held in Fuzhou. Academicians, scholars, and industry experts gathered to discuss the latest trends, technological innovations, and collaborative opportunities in ship design and construction.
Strengthening Efforts in Green Ship Design
At the seminar, one speaker drew a striking analogy: if the global shipping industry were a country, it would rank as the seventh-largest polluter in the world. Unsurprisingly, “greening” emerged as a central theme of this seminar.
“The dominance of diesel as the primary energy source for ships is bound to be broken,” stated Yan Xinping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Chair of the Academic Committee at Wuhan University of Technology. He noted that China’s shipbuilding industry, having previously focused on securing market share during its WTO entry phase, must now prioritize the high-end and green transformation of its product structure.
In the field of inland waterway ship design, Yan Xinping and his team have innovated and developed green intelligent inland waterway ship projects, in-depth research on technology, ship type, system, and other aspects, and have achieved remarkable results. In his view, the future goal of green technology is to achieve near-zero emissions sailing of ships.
However, achieving zero-emission navigation faces the challenge of endurance. Wu Kai, Chief Scientist atContemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd.(CATL), offered a solution: a combination of batteries and green fuels to address both range limitations and noise pollution.
Drawing parallels between ships and automobiles, Wu noted that the advancements in automotive power batteries provide a roadmap for ship power battery development. CATL began exploring maritime electrification in 2017, launching the first fully electric public service ship in the Yangtze River Basin by 2019. By 2023, CATL-powered vessels, including five tourist boats, made their debut at the Hangzhou Asian Games. The company also introduced the industry’s first cloud platform for the collaborative lifecycle operation of new energy ships.
To further propel green ship development, Wu proposed an innovative battery solution: “By enabling electric ships to achieve ship-battery separation, with rechargeable and replaceable batteries, we can ensure customers are willing, eager, and able to adopt these technologies.”
Accelerating the Development of Maritime “Smart Brains”
To seizethe global market, intelligence is the key competitive factor. In the future, ships will no longer be mere transportation tools. Instead, they will evolve into integrated maritime “smart brains”integrating information perception, intelligent decision-making, and autonomous navigation.
“To achieve remote control, safety supervision, operational management, and maintenance services for ships, we must build shore-based operation and control centers using digital infrastructure technologies,” said Tang Min, Chief Expert at the ChineseSociety of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. Tang believed that in the digital and intelligent era, it is imperative to reconstruct ship equipment systems and supporting structuresand revolutionizethe operation model of ships.
Currently, with the development of autonomous ships, the global shipbuilding industry stands at the same starting line. How can China carve out its place in the international market? The answer lies in intelligent digital technologies! Tang Min suggested that establishing a global digital remote operation and maintenance service platform could ensure the safe operation of ships worldwide, thereby enhancing core competitiveness.
Zhou Guoping, a researcher at the Shanghai Merchant Ship Designand Research Institute, shared a similar perspective. He remarked that intelligence is the primary direction for ship development and a crucial strategic project tied to the nation’s ambitions of becoming a maritime and manufacturing powerhouse. By using three major ship types as application carriers and advancing the development of intelligent functional modules and related smart systems, wecanboost independent innovation in intelligent ships and systems. This will foster coordinated transformation and upgrading across relevant industry chains, ultimately enhancing the productivity of the shipbuilding industry and the competitiveness of enterprises.
Focusing on High-level Technological Innovation
How can China transition from a “big shipbuilding country” to a “strong shipbuilding nation”? The path lies in advancing conventional ship types toward high-tech, high-value-added vessels. High-end development is the only way forward.
“Developing marine research vessels requires more than simply adding intelligence to ships.”Wu Gang, chief expert of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and chief technical officer of the Polar Equipment System Research Center at the 708Research Instituteof CSSC, emphasized that integrating intelligence with marine research vessels is not merely an additive process. He noted that, in the face of extreme environments, marine research vessels must incorporate advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence to drive the high-quality development of unmanned research vessels.
High-tech ships and marine engineering equipment occupy a core position in the marine equipment industry chain. How can domestically produced gas turbine equipment reach global markets? Lin Feng, director of the 703Research Instituteof CSSC, shared insights: “China has forged a path of coordinated military-civilian development. By leveraging military technologies to address bottlenecks in civilian development, we have raised the starting point for developing civilian equipment. Meanwhile, long-term applications in the civilian sector have, in turn, enhanced military equipment technologies.” (Reporter: Lin Rongsheng)
