Around 98.5 percent of the global containership fleet is built in China, South Korea and Japan, to analysis company Alphaliner. More than 10 million teu of new container ship orders are dominated by the three East Asian countries, with China taking the lion’s.

According to data disclosed by Alphaliner in its weekly report, Chinese yards are building container ships with a total capacity of 7.36 million teu, for 73.7 percent of the global total orders. It is followed by South Korea with 2.04 million teu, making up 20.4; Japanese yards order volume is 430,000 teu, taking only 4.3 percent. Excluding yards from China, South Korea and Japan, 29 container ships have been ordered from yards in the rest of the world.

The US has set its sights on China’s dominant position in the global shipbuilding through Section 301 investigations by the Office of the US Trade Representative, leading to the imposition of additional port charges for vessels built in China to call at US ports from14 October.

From a comparison of the current orderbook composition with the locations of the existing fleet, it is not difficult to see the rise of Chinese yards in the shipbuilding sector in recent years.

In the existing container ship fleet, 50.1 percent (i.e. 16.4 million teu) built in Korea, 29.4 percent (i.e. 9.6 million teu) in China. Another 9.9 percent (i.e 3.2 million teu) are built in Japan, 10.7 percent (i.e. 3.5 million teu) in other countries.

Apart from the three major shipbuilding powers in East Asia, other countries have been basically marginalized in the market for the construction of container ships. Among the 29 ships ordered outside the Big Three, 16 were built by yards in China’s Taiwan region, among which Taiwan’s CSBC still belongs to a small force in the shipbuilding industry.

In addition, there are four container ships built in Turkey and three built in the United States.

"There are often specific reasons why these vessels ordered to be built in yards outside the “Big Three”. For example, the two largest vessels built in Turkey (both with a capacity of 4,012 te) are built by a sister company of the shipowner/operator which ordered the two ships,” Alphaliner commented.