r/technology • u/rezwenn • 23h ago
Transportation China Creates World’s No. 1 Shipbuilder, Driven by Rivalry With U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-shipbuilding-company-trump-rivalry-17eb6265?st=GiKn4s146
u/Three-Swallows 21h ago
China possesses 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the U.S., according to the U.S. Navy.
How is this even considered rivalry?? This is an absolute, land-sliding dominance by Chinese ship builders.
This sounds like a massive cope by WSJ.
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u/Fairuse 20h ago
China trying to climb the tech tree. US just needs to rush to beat China fast.
Watch US declare war on China for trumped up reasons.
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u/Three-Swallows 20h ago
I mean, what else is US good at other than being a war machine for the last 30 years? Albeit didn’t win most of the wars at the expense of our tax dollars
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u/Fairuse 20h ago
US was just good at not getting bombed into the ground in WW2 basically.
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u/lucun 16h ago
The US was already a manufacturing powerhouse before WW2. Everyone else being bombed just let the US maintain being the global leader for the decades after... along with picking up useful tech from allies and refugees.
Japan's strategy was to hit very hard with a surprise attack to break the US's will to fight a long war due to massive losses. Some of their leadership already knew they would never win a protracted war, so they went for a hopeful quick devastating attack and then negotiate from there.
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u/Deathwatch72 12h ago
I wish more people understood that the US becoming a "superpower" had so much to do with the fact that we didn't have the world Wars occurring on our continent and the fact that because of that we used the Marshall plan which resulted in the underpinnings of the situation we have today
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u/Three-Swallows 19h ago
I mean I’d love for our manufacturing prowess to be like what it was like during WW2. We were the tech and manufacturing powerhouse and our economy flourished after that.
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u/Fairuse 19h ago
Yeah it was only possible because the US didn’t get bombed. Guess what we did to German and Japan? Fired bomb them both until all their factories burnt down. German and Japan basically did the same to the Allies. Basically the rest of the world was in shambles.
US was also not a tech powerhouse in WW2. The US became a tech powerhouse after WW2 because everyone else was still recovering and we absorbed all the talent from war torn countries.
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u/Three-Swallows 19h ago
U.S. was indeed a technological powerhouse by WW2. We made more planes, ships, and weapons than any other nation. It advanced radar, sonar, aviation, and medicine, while also leading in early computing and mass production of penicillin. Look at The Manhattan Project , it basically cemented America as the world’s foremost scientific and technological leader by the war’s end.
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u/Fairuse 19h ago
Yeah at end of war where everyone else's infrastructure was in ruins.
US was able ramp up production because their factories were never bombed.
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u/07Ghost_Protocol99 18h ago
By 1890, the U.S. had by far the world's largest industrial economy, producing twice as much as its closest competitor, Britain. By 1913, the U.S. accounted for nearly 40% of the manufacturing output of the entire planet.
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u/Efficient_Resist_287 2h ago
What cemented was the need for immigration to attract foreign talents to contribute to its rise….
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u/Three-Swallows 1h ago
Well, the war contributed to scientists immigrating to US…and the talents snowballed from there until 21st century, albeit the reverse brain drain has already started
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u/Efficient_Resist_287 27m ago
That for sure!!! We are in agreement. It is just a matter of time for China to reach its Yuri Gagarin breakthrough….
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u/Solcannon 4h ago
Being across the ocean on both fronts helped. That's why they called the Japanese pilots that bombed pearl harbor kamikaze pilots. They couldn't fly that far and have enough fuel to return.
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u/jakajakka 17h ago
Most of the modern tech is developed by US, yes including the device you used to type in the comments, and this platform too
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u/baordog 18h ago
There’s a bit of nuance for Chinese ship building capabilities. The majority of those ship builders specialize in building small ships.
If you compare the constructing of various ship sizes, the us still has a capability edge in building large naval ships whereas china has focused on building large numbers of small ships (military is what I mean)
There’s a lot of panicky literature out there, but I don’t think it’s as one sided as the numbers coming out of china mean.
Personally, given the advances in naval drones I wouldn’t necessarily invest in building large numbers of ships right now. They are extremely vulnerable platforms.
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u/ratbearpig 10h ago
Right, but the large industrial capacity can be turned on to build...large numbers of naval drones, aerial drones, and almost anything else that they put their mind to. Quantity has a quality of its own.
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u/baordog 6h ago
Yes, but also no. Naval ship building, the kind where you build very large ships is a specialized thing that requires specialized facilities. It is something you build as a separate capability to those other ship yards rather than something you can directly re-use them for.
There are other bottlenecks that prevent commercial shipyards from being totally useful as military shipyards. Just about any important electronic on a ship is going to be classified, and a lot of the internals on a modern ship would be handled carefully by military people for that reason.
So yes, in an emergency world war II style solution China could repurpose some of those small ship building facilities to make small war ships, but it wouldn't be an instant crossover and it wouldn't help build things like nuclear submarines or aircraft carriers.
China could ant-ship missiles on civilian style freighters to some extent. It's not impossible. It wouldn't bode well for the long term survival of the crew in a real war, but you could do it.
With regards to drones, you really wouldn't even need to make them in a shipyard, so the shipping capacity discussion isn't super relevant. Unless you mean making larger destroyer sized drones, I think most drones will be made by armaments companies more similar to Raytheon / Lockheed in the US (China has state equivalents) than ship yards.
The shipyards distinction matters because they are a very specialized physical space. Drydocks are huge industrial installations and they can *only* work on ships of a pre-determined size.
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u/ratbearpig 1h ago
"Naval ship building, the kind where you build very large ships is a specialized thing that requires specialized facilities."
Unquestionably true.
The rest of your post would require some qualifications and data to back up.
We would need to know:
How many military ship yards does China have, what their production is annually, can they surge this capacity?
How many civilian ship yards does China have and what would be required to retrofit them in time of war?
How much manpower is currently working in these yards and potential to surge in time of war?
How much of the supply chain is vertically integrated within China and how much of the external supply of necessary material would be at risk of interdiction during war time?
What can they build with the their existing stockpile of material?
And probably 1000 other questions that I haven't even thought of.
Then, do the same for the US. If the US loses ships, how quickly can they rebuild them given likely worse constraints endemic to the US?
To be clear, I'm not asking you to supply the answers to these questions. This is a discussion forum after all and not a thesis defense.
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u/Deathwatch72 12h ago
Probably a combination of quantity versus quality and the fact that the US isn't really an industrial manufacturing base anymore and hasn't been for quite a while.
Their logic is bad but I can at least understand where it's based in
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u/Comrade80085 3h ago
Whenever western news report on China, they downplay a lot of China success.
“But at what cost?”
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u/Codex_Dev 7h ago
The disparity is worse than how outmatched Japan's shipbuilding was against the USA during WW2. If China and the USA ever get into a hot conflict, China would be spamming ships like they were McNuggets.
The only realistic way we could even neutralize this advantage is by nuking their ports and shipyards.
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u/Three-Swallows 6h ago
I mean, China’s got nukes too lol. Our power infrastructure is like 40+ years old. It’s not going to sustain in a war environment
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u/Specialist-Many-8432 22h ago
China preparing for war meanwhile US has a pedo in charge ruining the country.
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u/ReelNerdyinFl 21h ago
The US is preparing for war as well, we are just preparing to roll over and play dead in a war instead of fight it.
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u/Culverin 20h ago
And ruining alliances with closest allies.
And still jerking around Ukraine, so US can't devote its efforts towards China.
As a Canadian, watching the rising racism in the west and authoritarianism is very frustrating.
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u/Specialist-Many-8432 20h ago
It’s been there bud. It just has a perfect Petri dish to grow in now.
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u/ProcrastinateDoe 17h ago
A pedo who is actively sabotaging his country and her (former? on pause?) allies.
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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 22h ago
Don’t worry, the US is innovating in concentration camps and surveillance states.
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u/protomenace 21h ago edited 15h ago
I mean, China has had those for ages.
Edit: lol at the downvoters.
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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 20h ago
Yes but we’re going to do it America style since the new end goal of our economy is to put us in camps and make us annotate data for Palantir
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u/harryoldballsack 20h ago
Guantanamo bay had 700 people and we hated that. Chinese reeducation camps have 500,000 to 3 million.
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u/Narf234 20h ago
Traditional warships are going to get smoked in the next major war. I’d rather the US build drone carrier ships capable of swarm launches.
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u/TheEagleDied 20h ago
The China shills won’t like hearing this. China’s military is untested and unproven. It’s only real theatre is Reddit right now.
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u/LBishop28 18h ago
Yes, they are untested and do not have the level of war technology that we do. Their planes don’t have the stealth and or other components ours do, but they making strides. They could shut down our utilities grids easily while they have an extremely robust grid there.
The US is moving away from carrier based combat since China has missiles that have 1400 mile ranges, hence why the next gen F/A carrier fighter is on live support while the Air Force will get their plane for sure. The B-21 is going to be a major deterrent in Pacific warfare given how many will be produced and how long they can fly without refueling.
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u/Daleabbo 15h ago
China? The place where all them drone parts are made will be unhappy about drone warfare?
All the data they will be getting from Ukrane would be amazing.
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u/interestingpanzer 2h ago
Like the US military in WWII
Japan was by far the more experienced party in terms of carrier training. You can ask multiple historians about this. Japanese pilots on average were more experienced than their US counterparts.
The issue is they ran out of pilots and ships because
The US manufacturing power was 10 fold that of Japan.
For most experts, including Yamamoto himself, the entire war Japan fought was a massive cope they knew if it dragged any longer they would lose.
Thus when you look at who will win in a conventional war, you look at fundamentals. Industrial output etc.
Another example was against Germany. US was not experienced unlike the British in convoy escorting and lost HUGE amounts of convoys early war. Within a year, they had gained experience and we're understanding convoy defence.
Experience is fickle. Only a generation remembers and it can only be passed on verbally to the next generation but until they experience it for themselves it is worthless.
It is why at Kasserine Pass in 1943 when the Americans first engaged in Germans they were defeated BADLY. But after that one battle, the experience gained was invaluable.
So don't place too much premium on experience. What matters is learning quickly on the spot and the capacity to learn is sustained by the ability to REPLACE MAN AND MATERIAL in a wartime situation quickly. If not the war doesn't last long enough to grasp experience.
Not to mention quantity is a quality of its own. The USA understood that in WWII.
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u/bwrca 18h ago
China probably has a bigger edge on drones than on traditional ships. You guys are cooked.
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u/Narf234 18h ago
No one wins in a war between China and the US. Unless you happen to be a state leader or the head of a weapons manufacturing company.
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u/IllustriousSign4436 2h ago
Umm, guess who also manufactures pretty much all of the drones on the planet?
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u/SoCal_GlacierR1T 20h ago
This isn’t even news. Shipbuilding capacity in China surpassed the US and any other long ago.