Nantong, September 16 (People’s Daily Online) — (Reporter Wang Jiliang) On the morning of the 16th, the 2025 National Advanced Manufacturing Cluster (Nantong) Development Promotion Conference for High-Tech Ships and Marine Engineering Equipment and the opening ceremony of the Ship and Marine Engineering Industry Exhibition were held in Nantong. At the conference, the “Strategic Cooperation Agreement between the Shanghai Changxing Island Development and Construction Management Committee, the Shanghai Chongming District People’s Government, and the Nantong Municipal People’s Government of Jiangsu Province to Jointly Build a World-Class Ship and Marine Engineering Industrial Cluster” was signed. The China Classification Society, the 708th Research Institute of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, and the Nantong Municipal People’s Government signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Sixteen projects, including supply chain procurement, comprehensive credit facilities, and bank-enterprise cooperation, were signed collectively.
“We will anchor ourselves in high-end, intelligent, green, and international development, accelerate the promotion of high-quality development in the ship and marine engineering industry, and focus on building a world-class ship and marine engineering industrial cluster. We sincerely invite global partners to become partners in Nantong’s ‘ocean dream,’ to share new opportunities and explore new blue oceans on this hotbed of industry, and to jointly write a new chapter in the high-quality development of the ship and marine engineering industry,” said Wu Xinming, Secretary of the Nantong Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China. He introduced that in 2024, the output value of Nantong’s ship and marine engineering industry exceeded 210 billion yuan, with substantial growth in shipbuilding completions, new orders received, and hand-held orders. Enterprises have orders on hand scheduled until around 2030. More than 420 scale enterprises and over 30 national champion and specialized, sophisticated, distinctive, and new “little giant” enterprises are gathering in ten specialized parks to form a chain and build momentum.
Jiangsu is the largest province in China for the ship and marine engineering industry, and Nantong is the leader of this industry in the province. Currently, the scale of shipbuilding in Nantong accounts for about 1/10 of the national total, and the scale of marine engineering equipment accounts for about 1/4 of the national total. It has built and delivered brand ship types such as the heavy-duty self-propelled cutter suction dredger “Tian Kun Hao” and has delivered in batches ultra-large container ships of the 24,000 TEU class. A technological innovation system for ships and marine engineering centered on leading enterprises has been initially established, and numerous domestic gaps have been filled in the fields of new marine engineering equipment and special shipbuilding. It has been successively rated as a National New Industrialization Industrial Demonstration Base, a National High-Tech Ship Industry Base, and a National Ship Export Base. In 2022, Nantong joined with Taizhou and Yangzhou to jointly build a national advanced manufacturing cluster for high-tech ships and marine engineering equipment.
The conference also released the China Classification Society’s “Guidelines for Offshore Hydrogen Production Facilities 2025,” the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry’s “China Shipbuilding Industry Yearbook 2025,” and new technologies and products for 2025 in Nantong’s ship and marine engineering industry.
