“That’s the way the industry moves: from Europe to Japan, Japan to Korea, and now from Korea to China,” Tsao says. “It’s got to happen.”

China Shipbuilding `Juggernaut’ Gains on Leaders Japan, Korea
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=aB9E3jJm15cc

March 22 (Bloomberg) — Five years ago, He Baoxin was putting the finishing touches on a ship small enough to fit through the Panama Canal. Now his company is making a vessel five times that size to service offshore oil and gas rigs.

“We’re building ships now that we could only dream of five years ago,” says He, 48, who runs Shanghai-based Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., China’s largest shipyard.

With leading yards worldwide at full capacity until 2008, China’s rise in market share has come at the expense of such publicly traded shipbuilders as South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. and Japan’s Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. China, the world’s No. 3 shipbuilder, raised its share of new orders by 2 percent to 17 percent last year and won its first contract to build liquefied gas tankers.

“In volume, China can overtake the Koreans by 2015,” Continue reading →