Credit：Visual China

With a number of well-known wealthy entrepreneurs who held leading shipping companies, Greece has long been the top ship-owning nation in the world, while China has narrowly surpassed Greece by global fleet gross tonnage recently, CSA cited Clarksons Research data in a recent post of its official WeChat account. CSA, founded in 1993, is a Shanghai-based voluntary trade organization whose members are owners, operators and managers of merchant ships registered in China and engaged in waterway transportation and relevant shipping related entities.

Japan was the largest shipowner country by gross tonnage in the early 2000s and ceded its role of champion to Greece in 2013, then was overtaken by China in 2018, starting China’s decade-long race to catch up Greece, according to the CSA post. The fleet size owned by Chinese shipowners has a robust growth since 2015, especially the growth of dry bulk carriers and container fleets, according to Clarksons Research, the U.K-based leading shipping services provider that offers leading maritime consultancy and shipping solutions in 23 countries.  

The fleet of Chinese shipowners has reached 249.2 million gross tonnages (GT), slightly greater than Greek feelt’s 249.0 milion GT, and Japan ranked the third with 181 million GT, trailing with the South Korea and the United States, which had 66 million GT each, based on the latest rankings of ship-owning nations released by Clarksons Research last week. GT of Chinese-owned fleets accounted for 15.9% of global market with a valuation of about $180 billion, and Greek fleets had a market share of 15.8%, valued around $163 billion.

China's growth in its fleet GT is not a surprise given the country's formidable cargo scale, well-developed shipbuilding industry and increasingly active financial sector, said Stephen Gordon, an analyst at Clarksons Research. “Because of the abovementioned advantages in cargo scale, shipbuilding and finance, Chinese shipowners are very active in building new vessles,” Gordon said. “At present, the shipbuilding orders held by Chinese shipowners are almost twice that of Greek shipowners. Chinese shipowners are also highly active in transactions of second-hand ships.”

While China has taken the lead in GT , which is a nonlinear measure of a vessel's overall internal volume, Greece still maintains the first place in terms of deadweight tonnage, which measures the total weight a ship can carry, according to Clarksons Research. Its data showed Greece had 423 million deadweight tons (DWT) with a market share of 18%. Greece still holds the lead in delivering crude carriers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers. Greek shipowners had 25% of share in the market of crude carriers, their shares of LNG carriers increased to 21%, up from merely 3% in 2013.

Geographically speaking, Stephen Gordon noted the fleet size of Asian shipowners has exceeded that of European shipowners in 2019, and the gap has been widening since then. The trend seems in consistent with the view that the center of worldwide shipping is indeed shifting from Europe to Asia.Gordon expected this trend may be impacted by increasingly complex changes in trade and technology choices about decarbonization in the coming years.

China's consistent growth in importing dry bulk cargo and sustained high demand for containerized goods for export have propelled the rapid expansion of the country's fleets in bulk cargo ships and containerships, the state-backed newspaper Global Times cited an industry insider. China's shipowners still have room for advancement, commented Li Muyuan, executive vice-president of the China Container Industry Association in Beijing, noting the 15.9% of global market share that domestic shipowners now hold remains relatively modest considering the country's sheer volume of foreign trade.

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