This ship, carrying more than 20,000 people, sailed more than10.3 million nautical miles, spreading the glory and dreams of emperor China to more than 30 countries and regions along the way.
The first voyage in the west was 87 years later. It was with the support of the Spanish Queen that Columbus led three small light sailboats with 87 people to pursue the mysterious "Sinian country" (China) in The Travels of Marco Polo, because there is a king among kings.
But in modern times, the glory of China shipbuilding industry disappeared. However, there are signs that China has a chance to restore its maritime scenery.
National oil, national transportation, national shipping and national manufacturing.
Not long ago, the Shipbuilding Working Group of OECD, the authoritative organization of the world shipbuilding industry, predicted that the shipbuilding completion of China will exceed 8 million dwt this year, accounting for 15% of the world market share, and will exceed100000 dwt in 2005, accounting for 18% of the world market share.
As early as 2003, China's shipbuilding completion accounted for 1 1.8% of the world's share, which broke through the previous situation that China's shipbuilding industry accounted for 5% to 7% of the world market share in 10.
"At present, shipbuilding is the only industry in China's heavy processing industry that can walk in the forefront of the world and compete with the world's advanced level." Some experts believe that shipbuilding is labor-intensive, capital-intensive and technology-intensive. Compared with developed countries, China's labor cost is low; Compared with other developing countries, China has a solid technical, financial and industrial base. "We have comprehensive advantages that are difficult for advanced countries and backward countries to have at the same time".
Although not known to most people, the comprehensive advantages of China's shipbuilding industry have been reflected: 1995, China's shipbuilding output surpassed Germany for the first time, accounting for 5% of the world market share, ranking behind South Korea and Japan, becoming the third largest shipbuilding country in the world, and has been sticking to this ranking until today.
In fact, the vigorous development of China's shipbuilding industry largely benefits from the rapid development of its own economy. Historical experience shows that the revitalization of a country's shipbuilding industry is often completed during its economic take-off and substantial growth in cargo trade. Therefore, Japan was able to completely surpass Europe as the new center of shipbuilding in the middle of last century, while South Korea began to surpass Japan in the 1990s and became the new darling of the world shipbuilding industry in the early 20th century.
This year, statistics released by the World Trade Organization show that the world ranking of China's import and export volume in 2003 has risen from the fifth place in the previous year to the fourth place. According to the statistics of China Customs, the total import and export volume of goods in China in 2003 reached US$ 8510.2 billion, an increase of 37. 1% over the previous year. Among them, the export was 438.4 billion US dollars, an increase of 34.6%; Imports reached US$ 46,543.8 billion, up by 39.9%.
As an important global strategic buyer of energy and raw materials, the growth of China's import and export trade has obviously affected the trend of the international shipping industry. In the past two years, the flow of dry bulk cargo, which accounts for half of the world's shipping, has increased by about 48%, mainly because China imports a large number of raw materials such as iron ore; At the same time, the annual container throughput of China ranks first in the world.
In another large-scale marine transportation business, crude oil transportation, tankers imported from China account for about 1/3 of the global total capacity. This year, China's crude oil imports exceeded 654.38 billion tons for the first time, and its dependence on foreign countries was close to 40%. Among them, more than 90% of imported oil needs to be transported by sea.
However, it is worrying that 90% of China's imported oil by sea is borne by foreign ships, which makes China's oil safety subject to people.
At present, China mainly imports oil from the Middle East and Africa, and the Malacca Strait and Persian Gulf are exported to the Strait of Hormuz, the Cape of Good Hope and other regions, which are the choke points of China's shipping. However, China's control over these offshore areas is very limited.
It is reported that in the new anti-terrorism plan of the US military called "Regional Maritime Security Plan", the United States will send marines and special forces to the Straits of Malacca to prevent terrorist attacks and combat criminal activities such as weapons proliferation, drug smuggling and piracy.
In addition, India has established a forward base at the western entrance of the Straits of Malacca. The Indonesian Navy announced that it would deploy warships and fighter jets to patrol the Straits of Malacca.
"As can be seen from these oil transportation lines, they are almost all under the control of potential competitors. If there is no accident, it will be very troublesome. " Ren said, director of the International Strategy Research Office of the Institute of Economics and Politics of China Academy of Social Sciences.
In Northeast Asia, China and Japan are two major oil importers in the world, and their transportation lines almost overlap. However, due to the establishment of a system to ensure the safety of oil transportation after World War II, the safety problem of oil transportation faced by Japan is far less than that of China. One of the most important points is that Japan has always adhered to the national oil transportation strategy, and 80% ~ 90% of imported oil is transported by domestic shipowners and buyers. The voice of "the national oil is the national wealth and the national ship is made in China" began to be amplified in China.
Since 2003, the relevant ministries and commissions of the state have held meetings with the three major domestic oil-producing countries and four major oil-transporting countries for many times to discuss the issue of "sinotrans", and formulated the initial development plan of "sinotrans": it is planned to build a large-scale ocean shipping fleet capable of transporting 50 million tons of imported crude oil in 2005, 20 10 and 75 million tons of imported crude oil in 2020.
At the same time, in order to support the domestic shipbuilding industry, the state has long encouraged domestic shipowners to build ships in domestic shipyards, and given financial subsidies of 17% of the ship price to offset the total shipbuilding price. In order to support shipyards to build large oil tankers, the state finance will provide shipyards with full discount loans. Driven by the policy, most of the new ships built by domestic shipowners are built in domestic shipyards. Therefore, China's shipbuilding industry is ambitious.
Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission proposed to build the first shipbuilding country in 20 15, and give preferential treatment and support in taxation and financing to promote the strategic structural adjustment of the shipbuilding industry.
The goal put forward by the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense is: After 10 to 15 years of development, the comprehensive competitiveness of China's shipbuilding industry is close to that of Japan and South Korea at that time. At the same time, in terms of the total shipbuilding volume, by 2005, the ship output will reach100000 dwt, accounting for about16% of the world market share; By 20 15, it will reach 24 million deadweight tons, accounting for 35% of the world market share, ranking first in the world in terms of tonnage.
It is reported that the state has designated three major shipbuilding bases, focusing on the construction of three major shipbuilding bases in Bohai Bay, the Yangtze River estuary and the Pearl River estuary. It is hoped that by 20 10, an industrial structure with large shipbuilding industry groups as the main body and three shipbuilding bases as the support will be formed, and all kinds of shipbuilding and supporting enterprises will develop in harmony.
The curtain of "national oil, national shipping and national construction" has been opened.
Shipbuilding industry space
As oil safety is one of the reasons for the revitalization of shipbuilding industry in this round, taking oil tankers as an example, it is assumed that all crude oil imports in China will be completed by sea in the future to analyze the space of shipbuilding industry in China.
According to some data, the main reason why domestic shipowners are at an absolute disadvantage in the imported crude oil transportation market is the unreasonable ship structure. The profit of international crude oil transportation is relatively low, and the investment in tanker construction is huge, and the scale benefit is very significant. At present, the main types of crude oil transportation in the world are VLCC and ULCC tankers with a deadweight of over 200,000 tons, and some short-haul routes use SUEZMAX tankers with 65.438+0.5 million tons and AFRAMAX tankers with 654.38+ 1 100 million tons.
In contrast, although China's fleet has the third largest tonnage in the world, its ship structure is unreasonable. As the second largest crude oil importer in the world, the tonnage of oil tankers ranks only 13 in the world. To make matters worse, China oil tankers have serious problems of small tonnage and long ship age, and are not suitable for large-scale transportation of imported crude oil at all.
According to incomplete statistics, at present, the capacity of Chinese oil transportation enterprises to transport imported crude oil is 5180,000 dwt, among which only 2 1000 AFRAMAX oil tankers,150,000 SUEZMAX oil tankers and 300,000 VLCC oil tankers can really transport imported crude oil for a long distance. At present, there are only about 10 VLCC tankers that truly represent the national crude oil transportation strength.
In 2002, China imported 49.55% crude oil from the Middle East, 22.76% from Africa, 10% from Europe and the Western Hemisphere, and 17% from the Asia-Pacific region. From the development trend, due to the gradual increase of oil consumption in Southeast Asia, the proportion of crude oil imported by China from this region will be smaller and smaller in the future. As the Asia-Pacific region is close to China, AFRAMAX tanker can be used. The average distance from the Middle East to the coastal ports in China is about 6,000 nautical miles, and the distance from Africa to the coastal ports in China is more than 10000 nautical miles. According to international experience, the distance of imported crude oil is more than 6000 nautical miles, and it is the most economical to transport it by VLCC or ULCC tanker with more than 200,000 tons. Therefore, from the geographical distribution of imported crude oil, it can be predicted that VLCC and ULCC tankers will be the main ship types in China's imported crude oil transportation market in the future, supplemented by a certain number of SUEZMAX and AFRAMAX tankers.
Taking1VLCC 300,000 dwt or 2,000,000 barrels (about 272,000 dwt) as the calculation standard unit, and based on the fact that each ship has completed seven voyages (full load) on the Middle East-China route within one year (excluding the maintenance date), China will need about 65,438 ships in 2005, based on the fact that the domestic shipowners' capacity in China's imported crude oil transportation market reached 25%. At present, 22.76% of China's crude oil comes from more distant Africa, and many of the customers currently developed by China Merchants Group (Information Market Forum) are foreign customers, so the actual VLCC demand can exceed 15 ship.
According to experts' prediction, the proportion of "national oil transport" will reach 25% in 2005, 40% in 20 10 and 60% in 2020. Correspondingly, in 2005, China's demand for VLCC, Suzmanx and Flam will reach 35, with an investment of about 654.38+0.5 billion yuan. In 20 10, the total demand of these three types of ships was 52, and the investment was about 23 billion yuan. In 20 15 years, these two figures are 9.7 billion and 43 billion respectively.
At the same time, with the world shipping industry paying more and more attention to transportation safety, the scrapping speed of some old ship types is accelerated, which also brings opportunities for the further growth of China's shipbuilding industry.
In 2002, the single-hull tanker Prestige sank in the Spanish Sea, which caused one of the most serious ecological disasters in the world history. More than 4,000 fishermen along the coast of Spain were unable to fish in the sea because of the pollution of fishery resources, and the economic loss reached 300 million euros. According to the report of the International Maritime Organization, Prestige is the fourth Japanese-made single-hull tanker that sank in 10.
In view of the fact that the accident rate of single-hull tankers is five times higher than that of double-hull tankers, the European Union banned single-hull crude oil tankers from docking on June 65438+1 October1day, 2003. The 50th meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted the amendment MARPOL 73/78 in early February, which is expected to take effect on April 5, 2005. The elimination time of all kinds of single-hull tankers is much earlier than the original regulations-C1The original planned elimination time is 2007 and C2.
According to the estimation of Japan Maritime Communication, according to the European Union's single-hull tanker elimination rules, by 20 10, the total number of single-hull tankers in the world will reach 2 100, and the total deadweight tons are expected to reach1378.92 million tons.
According to some data, due to the strong demand at home and abroad, the demand in the world shipbuilding market is promising in the next 10-20 years. It is predicted that from 2006 to 20 15, the global annual demand for new ships will be around 50 million deadweight tons, which is more than 20% higher than the average annual output in the past 10. There is a strong demand for three main ship types (bulk cargo, container and oil). In the coming 10 year, the annual demand for new ships in China will be 7 million deadweight tons, and the market for marine development equipment will be broad. Only 70 offshore drilling platforms need to be built.
Undoubtedly, the next 10 year will be the golden age for the development of China's shipbuilding industry. In contrast, at present, the orders for new ships undertaken by CSIC and CSIC, the two major shipbuilding giants in China, have increased substantially, and the production tasks of the backbone shipyards have all been scheduled for the first half of 2007.
New international pattern
1999, China cosco and domestic shipping leader Kawasaki heavy industries 50/50 invested to establish Nantong cosco Kawasaki ship engineering company (NACKS) in Nantong, Jiangsu.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries focuses on the manufacture of LNG (liquefied natural gas) carriers, and gives orders to joint venture cargo ships and container ships with meager profits. Kawasaki Heavy Industries even ordered a VLCC for Nak.
The appearance of NACKS is the epitome of the new industrial division of labor in shipbuilding industry in the international scope.
"The rapid rise of China's shipbuilding industry has further developed the competitive pattern of the world's shipbuilding industry into multipolarization, initially forming a five-pole pattern in South Korea, Japan, China, Europe and other regions." Wang Wenjun of China Ship Economic Research Center said.
Historically, the world shipbuilding center has experienced a shift from west to east: the Mediterranean region once became the world shipbuilding center because of its natural environment. Since then, the shipbuilding center has moved to Spain, the Netherlands and Britain. During World War II, he went to the United States, and later to Japan. In recent years, South Korea has been "ahead".
From the map of the world, this is a shift from west to east. Judging from the process of economic development, it is a transfer from the current industrialized countries to the later industrialized countries. From the perspective of shipbuilding cost, it is a transfer from a country with high labor cost to a country with low cost.
At present, South Korea and Japan account for about 70% of the shipbuilding industry: in 2003, South Korea accounted for 40% of the world shipbuilding market and Japan accounted for 35%. At the same time, the focus of the shipbuilding industry of the two countries began to shift to high-tech, high value-added ships that emerging shipbuilding countries could not produce.
China's shipbuilding industry has the advantages of low labor cost and large-scale wharf construction: since 1998, China's fixed assets investment has increased at a double-digit rate year after year, and a number of internationally advanced shipbuilding berths and large-scale ports, docks and other infrastructure have been built. At the same time, the labor cost in China is only110 to115 of that in Japan and South Korea, and the labor cost in a ship accounts for about 30%. Therefore, China has a strong price competitiveness in general-purpose ships and their marine equipment and materials.
In Europe, due to the high labor cost and the rise of shipbuilding industry in Japan, South Korea and other countries, its global market share has been declining, from 23% in 1993 to only 15% at present.
Germany is the largest shipbuilding country in Europe at present, but its shipbuilding scale is only 2/3 of that of the former West Germany before 1990, accounting for only about 5% of the global market share, ranking fourth in the world. Sweden ranked second in the world in shipbuilding output more than 30 years ago, second only to Japan, but at present there are only a few ship repair shops, naval ship repair shops and various marine equipment manufacturers. There are only a few shipyards left in Greece and a large number of ships need to be imported.
However, the demand for ships in Europe has been rising in recent years, and China has ordered new ships, becoming the largest market for China's ship exports. From October to June in 2003/kloc-0, the total value of ships exported from China to Europe reached 837 million US dollars, up by 135% year-on-year. Among them, the export to Germany was 333 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 200%; Exports to Sweden1.40 billion USD, up 1.70% year-on-year.
According to the analysis of the Ministry of Commerce of China, the rapid growth of European ship demand is a great opportunity for the development of shipbuilding industry in China.
At the same time, Europe still maintains the advantages of high value-added marine equipment. At present, most of the first-class products and brand supporting ships are still concentrated in Europe. 60% of marine equipment in countries such as Germany and Norway is exported.
A new pattern of division of labor in the world shipbuilding industry has been formed.
In this new pattern, "China has become the country with the highest growth rate in the shipbuilding market in the world, and all aspects of the foundation are already available. It is entirely possible to become the world's largest shipbuilding country and have the foundation and ability to move towards higher goals. " Wang Wenjun said, "In addition to the economic environment, the fundamental factor to promote the transfer of the world shipbuilding industry is that low cost replaces high cost."
The pain of inefficiency
However, in order to compete with China and Japan, it is far from enough for Korean shipbuilding industry to rely solely on low labor costs.
"For China, low production efficiency, low scale efficiency and low localization rate of supporting equipment have greatly offset China's labor cost advantage." An expert who pays attention to the shipbuilding industry in China said.
According to some data, there is a gap of 5-7 times between China Shipyard and foreign advanced shipyards in terms of annual per capita shipbuilding tonnage, annual per capita output value and production efficiency. According to calculation, if Japanese production efficiency is 1, South Korea is 2/3, and China is only 1/7 to 1/5.
The man-hours per ship, the number of shipyards and the labor productivity in China are about 5 times, 20% and 10% higher than those in Japan, respectively.
At the same time, the average power consumption per US$ 65,438+0,000 output value of CSSC is 10 times that of Japan, and the time for submitting drawings for review is 3-4 times longer than that of Japan and South Korea.
Wang Rongsheng, president of China Shipbuilding Industry Association, believes that China's overall shipbuilding level is only roughly equivalent to the international level in the early 1990s, and many high-tech and high-value-added ship types, including super-large container ships, large liquefied petroleum gas ships, natural gas ships and luxury tourist ships, are still in the development stage.
"Low cost+low efficiency" has become the most prominent phenomenon in the development of China shipbuilding industry.
In order to change this situation, the government of China introduced the competition mechanism into the shipbuilding industry. From 65438 to 0999, the state-owned shipbuilding industry was divided into two groups. One is China State Shipbuilding Corporation, which mainly manages southern shipbuilding enterprises such as Shanghai; First, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation is mainly responsible for the shipbuilding industry in the northern region.
However, like most state-owned enterprises, these two shipbuilding groups also have some problems, such as backward management mechanism and serious enterprise redundancy. Until today, the production efficiency gap between China's shipbuilding industry and advanced shipbuilding enterprises such as Japan and South Korea is still huge.
At the same time, the shipbuilding industry requires high market concentration and scale efficiency. According to the statistics of Clarkson Research Company, at present, the top five shipbuilding groups in the world occupy nearly 50% of the world market share. For example, South Korea's entire modern shipbuilding group (Hyundai Heavy Industry, Hyundai Sanhu Heavy Industry and Hyundai Taipu) realized 1 1733000 dwt in 2003, accounting for 52.6% of the total shipbuilding in South Korea that year and 265438 of the total shipbuilding in the world.
However, the large-scale shipbuilding capacity in China is insufficient, and the average output of each shipyard is less than 1 1,000 tons, which is only 1/20 of the average size of Korean shipyards. By the end of 2003, none of the shipyards in Chinese mainland had entered the top 10, and only two shipyards had entered the top 20, namely Dalian New Ship Heavy Industry, which ranked 15, and Nantong COSCO Kawasaki Shipbuilding, which ranked 20th. In 2003, the shipbuilding completion of China was 6,465,438+0,000 DWT, which was lower than that of a shipyard of Hyundai Heavy Industry (6,784,38+0 DWT).
In addition, the supporting capacity of marine equipment lags far behind the shipbuilding capacity, which has become the most obvious "soft rib" of China shipbuilding industry.
Shipbuilding industry is known as "equipment industry facing the ocean", which can best reflect a country's comprehensive strength. Building a large ship requires the close cooperation of more than 200 supporting enterprises.
But the loading rate of domestic equipment in China is too low. In 1980s, China shipbuilding industry greatly improved the technical level and supporting capacity of ship supporting equipment by introducing patented technology and cooperative production mode. By the end of the Seventh Five-Year Plan, the actual loading rate of domestic equipment of the former Shipbuilding Corporation reached over 70%. However, since the 1990s, with the expansion of China's shipbuilding industry and the increase and optimization of ship varieties, the loading rate of domestic marine equipment has been declining. 1991-1994, the loading rate of domestic equipment was only 52.9%, which decreased to 43.3% in 1995 and further decreased to 4 1.3% in 65,436. Because domestic supporting enterprises did not digest, absorb and innovate in the process of introduction, and did not transform foreign technology into products with independent intellectual property rights, coupled with the problems of maintenance outlets and ship owners' designation of marine equipment, the localization level of marine equipment declined again and again. By the end of 2000, the localization level of equipment for export ships and ocean-going ships was only about 40%. So far, the matching rate of domestic electromechanical equipment for shipbuilding in China is still less than 50%.
"The low level of supporting industries has become the biggest obstacle to the future development of China's shipbuilding industry." Wang Rongsheng, president of China Shipbuilding Industry Association, said that major shipbuilding countries in the world, such as Japan and South Korea, have complete and powerful shipbuilding industries. The localization rate of Japanese marine equipment industry is not only as high as 97.8%, but also a large number of exports, with an annual output value of 8 billion US dollars. South Korea's marine equipment industry has a short history, but it has developed rapidly, with the localization rate reaching about 80%.
Due to the low level of supporting industries, China's shipbuilding industry has to import supporting products from Europe, Japan, South Korea and other countries, thus greatly reducing the profit margin of China's shipbuilding industry.
It is estimated that over the years, China's backbone shipyards have imported more than $3 billion of marine equipment from Japan, including dozens of varieties such as marine main engines, marine generator sets, communication and navigation equipment, crankshafts, cables and paints. Japanese marine steel exports to China are even more impressive. In 2003 alone, six shipyards in China imported 300,000 tons of steel plates from Japan, accounting for about half of the total steel consumption of the six shipyards.
With the vigorous development of shipbuilding industry, the price of steel for shipbuilding has been rising all the way. It is reported that shipbuilding enterprises such as Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Samsung Heavy Industries recently raised the price of heavy plate for shipbuilding by 153 USD per ton in negotiations with Japanese steel enterprises. Japanese thick plates cost $280 per ton in the first quarter of last year, and rose to $420 and $450 in the second and third quarters of this year respectively. At the beginning of this year, the South Korean government gave priority to domestic shipyards on the grounds of "tight domestic demand" and stopped fulfilling the contract of exporting shipbuilding steel to China.
Tan Naifen of China Shipbuilding Industry Association believes that due to the particularity of marine steel plates-many specifications and few batches, sometimes a ship will use 700 steel plates and need more than 200 specifications, coupled with the high quality and complicated inspection of marine steel plates, China iron and steel production enterprises are reluctant to do such laborious business when the market is booming.
At the same time, when purchasing shipbuilding equipment from Europe, China enterprises settle in euros, and overseas shipowners pay China enterprises in dollars. With the strengthening of Euro, some profits of China shipbuilding enterprises have also been eroded.
Therefore, although in the first quarter of this year, 605 shipbuilding enterprises above designated size achieved a total industrial output value of 654.38+09.2 billion yuan and a product sales income of 654.38+02.2 billion yuan, the total profit of the whole industry after breakeven was only 8.62 million yuan. There are 205 loss-making enterprises in the shipbuilding industry, with a loss of 34%.
"Profitability and debt ratio can't meet the listing requirements of the CSRC." Tan Naifen explained why there is only one listed company in thousands of shipyards in China-GSI (Information Market Forum), and the 2003 annual report released by GSI 19 in April showed that the sales cost of shipbuilding products was 2.07 billion yuan, and the gross profit margin was only 1.9%.
Even the labor cost advantage that China's shipbuilding industry prides itself on will gradually weaken or even disappear with the development of China's economy and the rise of wages and other labor prices. Korean shipbuilding experts predict that the price gap between Korean and Chinese shipbuilding enterprises will be greatly reduced in the next 5 ~ 10 years.
"At present, the international industrial transfer of shipbuilding industry has changed greatly compared with the situation when it was transferred to Japan and South Korea in the past, and its technical and management advantages are more obvious." According to experts' analysis, after the golden period of 10, China's shipbuilding industry must work hard on high-tech and high-value-added ships if it wants to step up. In this way, when China's existing advantages are no longer available, it can use industrial upgrading to make up for the losses caused by industrial transfer to China's shipbuilding industry. In fact, such efforts have already begun.
199 implemented the national major imported technology digestion and absorption project of "large-scale, high value-added oil tanker", with a total investment of nearly1300 million yuan. Dalian New Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co., Ltd., which participated in the project, built the first VLCC in China on 200 1.
In August this year, Shanghai Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. undertook the construction of two LNG carriers, which is the first time that China shipbuilding enterprises undertook the construction of LNG carriers-and LNG carriers are recognized as the most difficult ships to build in the world.