Subject type: State-owned enterprise, naval and commercial shipbuilding
Jurisdiction: People’s Republic of China
Also known as: China Shipbuilding Group, 中国船舶集团有限公司
File opened: 14 September 2026
Last updated: 14 September 2026
Origin
The name has been split and rejoined twice, and the current entity is the product of the second reunion.
A single China State Shipbuilding Corporation was created in 1982 out of the ministry that had run Chinese shipyards since the 1960s. In July 1999 Beijing divided it along geography. CSSC kept the yards in the east and south, centred on Shanghai. A new China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, CSIC, took Dalian, Tianjin, Wuhan, Kunming and Xi’an, together with most of the naval research institutes, and ran them from Beijing. The two came to be known domestically as South Ship and North Ship.
The split was supposed to create competition. It mostly created duplication, with the two groups bidding against each other for the same commercial hulls while both drew on the same state balance sheet. In November 2019 the parents were folded back together into China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited, headquartered in Shanghai and holding vice-ministerial administrative rank. That fixed the group level and left the problem one floor down, where two separately listed subsidiaries still competed. Resolving that took another six years.
Command
Chairman and party secretary: Xu Peng, in post since December 2024. He came from China First Heavy Industries, a state equipment manufacturer, rather than from inside the shipbuilding system.
His predecessor, Wen Gang, held the post from early 2023 and lasted under two years. The change was published on the company website without explanation. Lloyd’s List reported at the time that Wen had been absent for more than a month, that he had missed the opening of the China International Import Expo, and that his removal was connected to an anti-graft investigation; the same reporting placed deputy party secretary Du Gang under investigation alongside him. No formal charge against either man has been announced publicly.
Ownership sits with SASAC, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, which has itself changed hands recently. Cheng Fubo took over as SASAC chairman and party secretary in mid-2026, arriving from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and succeeding Zhang Yuzhuo. CSSC’s reporting line therefore runs to an official with a defence-industrial background rather than an energy or infrastructure one.
Capability
CSSC is the largest shipbuilding group in the world by orderbook, and the margin over second place is roughly two to one. As of early August 2025 the group held 812 vessels on order, 31.3m cgt, about 19.2 per cent of the global total. HD Hyundai, the nearest rival, held 11.6 per cent. Group headcount was reported at just over 196,000 in 2023.
The important structural fact is that the commercial and naval work runs through the same industrial base. CSSC builds container ships, tankers and LNG carriers for foreign owners, and it builds surface combatants and auxiliaries for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, in many cases at related yards drawing on shared suppliers, design institutes and workforce. The group describes itself as the principal force behind Chinese naval equipment development. This is the concrete form that military-civil fusion takes in the maritime sector, and it is what makes commercial orders a defence question rather than only a trade one.
Two significant assets sit outside the main listed vehicle. Hudong-Zhonghua, in Shanghai, builds large LNG carriers and container ships, and the parent has committed to transferring it into the listed arm within three years of the 2025 consolidation. Southern yards are held separately through CSSC Offshore and Marine Engineering.
Funding and ownership
The listed vehicle is China CSSC Holdings, Shanghai Stock Exchange code 600150. In 2024 it announced a share swap to absorb CSIC Ltd, the listed arm holding the northern yards including Dalian Shipbuilding Industry. The Shanghai exchange approved it in July 2025. CSIC delisted on 5 September 2025, and 3.053bn newly issued shares listed on 16 September 2025.
The deal was valued at about RMB115.2bn, roughly $16bn, and is the largest absorption merger in the history of China’s A-share market. Combined assets exceed RMB400bn, about $56bn. The result is the world’s largest listed shipbuilder by assets, revenue and orderbook.
Cash flow is commercial, and increasingly it is domestic. In December 2025 CSSC signed a newbuilding agreement with COSCO Shipping covering 87 vessels worth around RMB50bn, of which about RMB47bn was structured for cross-border renminbi settlement. The settlement currency is arguably the more interesting number than the order count.
Restrictions and exposure
CSSC is listed by the US Department of Defense as a Chinese military company under Section 1260H of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act, on the basis of indirect SASAC ownership. The listing imposes no asset freeze. Since June 2026 the Department has been barred from contracting directly with listed entities and entities they control, and from June 2027 the bar extends to procuring goods and services produced or developed by them.
Separately, the Section 301 maritime action finalised by the US Trade Representative in April 2025 imposed port service fees on Chinese-owned and Chinese-operated vessels, and on Chinese-built vessels regardless of who operates them. Fees took effect on 14 October 2025. They were suspended on 10 November 2025 for one year, through 9 November 2026, as part of the bilateral trade understanding reached between Washington and Beijing; China suspended its reciprocal port fees on US-linked vessels for the same period. The scheduled April 2026 escalation did not take place. The measure is paused at zero, not cancelled, and the published fee schedule continues to ramp through 2028 if it resumes.
Watch items
- Whether the Section 301 suspension lapses, is extended, or is renegotiated before 9 November 2026.
- Transfer of Hudong-Zhonghua into the listed arm, promised by 2028.
- The June 2027 extension of the US defence procurement bar to goods produced by listed entities.
- Further leadership turnover; three of the last four group chairmen left before the end of a normal term.
- Share of the orderbook coming from Chinese state charterers rather than foreign owners.
Related files
- People’s Liberation Army Navy: force structure and build rate
- COSCO Shipping: state charterer and fleet operator
- SASAC: the holding structure above China’s defence industrial base
- Section 1260H: scope, consequences, and what listing does not do