China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has stated that in the first seven months of the current year China's completed shipbuilding volume reached 35.2 million deadweight tons (dwt), up 87.4 percent year on year. Export orders made up 79 percent of this volume.
Meanwhile, new orders received by Chinese shipbuilders in the given period amounted to 33.32 million dwt, which is 4.2 times the volume of new orders recorded in the same period of last year. Export orders for news ships accounted for 72 percent of this total. In addition, as of the end of July the volume of shipbuilding orders on hand totaled 188.16 million dwt, practically unchanged from the data at the end of 2009, while export orders accounted for 88 percent of this volume.
In the January-July period, China's completed shipbuilding output, its new order volume and volume of shipbuilding orders in hand respectively constituted 40.3 percent, 48.7 percent and 39.4 percent of the overall world totals.