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Alarming Navy Intel Slide Warns Of China’s 200 Times Greater
Shipbuilding Capacity
The Office of Naval Intelligence is sounding the alarm about the huge
gap in U.S. and Chinese shipbuilding capacity and its implications.

BY
JOSEPH TREVITHICK
| PUBLISHED JUL 11, 2023 1:25 PM EDT
china-us-shipbuilding-gap
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A U.S. Navy briefing slide is calling new attention to the worrisome
disparity between Chinese and U.S. capacity to build new naval vessels
and total naval force sizes. The data compiled by the Office of Naval
Intelligence says that a growing gap in fleet sizes is being helped by
China's shipbuilders being more than 200 times more capable of producing
surface warships and submarines. This underscores longstanding concerns
about the U.S. Navy's ability to challenge Chinese fleets, as well as
sustain its forces afloat, in any future high-end conflict.

In a statement to The War Zone, the U.S. Navy has confirmed the
authenticity of the slide, seen in full below, which has been
circulating online.

<em>USN</em>
USN
The most eye-catching component of the slide is a depiction of the
relative Chinese and U.S. shipbuilding capacity expressed in terms of
gross tonnage. The graphic shows that China's shipyards have a capacity
of around 23,250,000 million tons versus less than 100,000 tons in the
United States. That is at least an astonishing 232 times greater than
the United States.

U.S.-based shipbuilding capacity was in decline even before the end of
the Cold War, but steadily shrunk even more afterward. It is at a
particularly low point, across the board, now.

The slide also includes a note about the relative "naval production % of
overall national shipbuilding revenue" for each country, and that this
is estimated to be over 70 percent in China. The stated estimated
percentage for U.S. shipyards is clearly legible in the versions of the
slide available online, but it appears to be 95 percent.

<em>USN</em>
USN
The slide also includes projected sizes for the U.S. Navy and PLAN
"battle forces" – defined as the total number of "combatant ships,
submarines, mine warfare ships, major amphibious ships, [and] large
combat support auxiliary ships" – for every five years between 2020 and
2035. It says that as of 2020, the PLAN had 355 battle force ships and
the U.S. Navy had 296. By 2035, the gap between the figures for China
(475) and the United States (305 to 317) widens substantially.

<em>USN</em>
USN
China's People's Liberation Army Navy is already the largest in the
world in terms of total vessels and is steadily acquiring a range of
more modern and capable designs, including a growing fleet of aircraft
carriers. The figures provided show the size gap between China's naval
fleets and those of the United States only continuing to grow.

It is important to note up front that the slide presents estimates and
projections, and that gauging shipbuilding capacity is a complex and
multifaceted affair, in general. For instance, is unclear how the naval
percentage of total shipbuilding revenue was calculated.

How ships are categorized can often be a point of debate, as well,
though this often does not impact whether or not ships fall into a
broader "battle force" definition. As a relevant example, the PLAN's
Type 055 warships, its most modern and capable surface combatants, are
typically described as destroyers. However, the U.S. Navy often refers
to them as cruisers based on their displacement and other features.

The U.S. Navy itself has acknowledged that the Office of Naval
Intelligence (ONI) slide does not reflect a definitive data set and is,
at least in part, a living document.

“The slide was developed by the Office of Naval Intelligence from
multiple public sources as part of an overall brief on strategic
competition," a U.S. Navy spokesperson told The War Zone. "The slide
provides context and trends on China’s shipbuilding capacity. It is not
intended as a deep-dive into the PRC [People's Republic of China's]
commercial shipbuilding industry."

"It’s been iterated on over time and the unclassified sources used most
recently were commercially-available shipbuilding data,
publicly-available U.S. Navy long-range shipbuilding plans from the 2023
Presidential Budget (PB23), and the publicly-discussed approximate
projected future PLAN [People's Liberation Army Navy] force," that
spokesperson added.

With this in mind, it is worth pointing out that the slide's projections
and estimates are heavily influenced by the inherently dual-purpose
nature of China's state-run shipbuilding enterprise.

"PLAN surface ship producers are mixed military commercial" and "most
PLAN-associated construction [is] completed in CSSC [China State
Shipbuilding Corporation] facilities," the slide says. "China is the
world's leading shipbuilder by a large margin" and the country "controls
~40% of [the] global commercial shipbuilding market."

This is certainly true and relevant to the emerging gap between the PLAN
and U.S. Navy's battle force sizes. At the same time, it's not clear how
much the U.S. shipbuilding capacity figures in the slide factored in
commercial capacity. The commercial shipbuilding industry in the United
States is far smaller and has less involvement in naval projects,
overall, as well as not being subject to centralized state control.

Still, some examples do exist. U.S. shipbuilder General Dynamics NASSCO
is a prime example, with its two main business areas being large
commercial cargo and tanker ships and auxiliaries for the U.S. Navy. The
design of the U.S. Navy's Lewis B. Puller class of seabase ships is
derived directly from NASSCO's Alaska class oil tanker.

The U.S. Navy's <em>Lewis B. Puller</em> class seabase ship
USS&nbsp;<em>Hershel "Woody" Williams</em>, a design derived from a
commercial oil tanker. <em>USN</em>
The U.S. Navy's Lewis B. Puller class seabase ship USS Hershel "Woody"
Williams, a design derived from a commercial oil tanker. USN USN
In addition, the slide's overall battle force figures do not directly
line up with other official U.S. military data. The long-term
shipbuilding plan that the U.S. Navy published in March 2019 indicated
that the service would have 301 battle force vessels in the coming
fiscal year. The Pentagon's annual report to Congress on Chinese
military and security developments in 2020 put the respective Chinese
and U.S. Navy battle force figures at 350 and 293.

The most recent report on China from the Pentagon, published last year,
says that the PLAN's battle force inventory was 340 vessels in 2021. The
U.S. Navy's long-term shipbuilding plan for the 2024 Fiscal Year,
released earlier this year, says the service expects to have 293 vessels
in its battle force in the upcoming fiscal cycle (which starts on
October 1, 2023). That same document says that it could have as many as
320 or as few as 311 battle force vessels by Fiscal Year 2035 depending
on what courses of action are pursued.

These discrepancies are relatively minor and do not change the fact that
there is clearly a major and widening gap in battle force sizes between
China and the United States. Still, they do highlight the complexities
of comparative counting of naval inventories, which change regularly as
older ships are decommissioned and new ones are brought into service,
especially based on publicly available information. Beyond that, it is
important to point out that a realistic accounting of China's naval
forces is not limited to the PLAN.

In fact, last year, the Pentagon noted that the PLAN's battle force
inventory had actually shrunk in 2021, but that this was due to the fact
that 22 Type 056 corvettes had been transferred to the country's Coast
Guard. These are 1,500-ton-displacement warships that, at least in PLAN
service, had been armed with anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles,
among other weapons. That kind of armament is atypical of vessels in
service with most other coast guards around the world, including the
U.S. Coast Guard.

A Type 056 corvette in PLAN service in 2013. This ship has since been
transferred to the Chinese Coast Guard. <em>樱井千一 via Wikimedia</em>
A Type 056 corvette in PLAN service in 2013. This ship has since been
transferred to the Chinese Coast Guard. 樱井千一 via Wikimedia
A true discussion of China's current and future naval capacity would
have to include at least some ships from its Coast Guard and a number of
other nominally civilian maritime security agencies, as well as the
country's substantial maritime militia.

An unclassified graphic ONI published in 2022 showing the full breadth
of Chinese 'naval' forces beyond just the PLAN.
An unclassified graphic ONI published in 2022 showing the full breadth
of Chinese 'naval' forces beyond just the PLAN.
The U.S. military has made its own moves in this regard in recent years.
The U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, and U.S. Coast Guard notably put out a
tri-service "naval forces" white paper in 2020. Since then, there has
been a clear push to increase routine Coast Guard maritime operations
abroad together with the Navy and independently. This has included
sending Coast Guard ships to patrol in areas of the Pacific where China
has extensive and largely unrecognized territorial claims, like the
South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

On 7/13/23 09:28, a425couple wrote:
> Best to go to the citation, multiple graphics and videos.
>
> from
> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/alarming-navy-intel-slide-warns-of-chinas-200-times-greater-shipbuilding-capacity
>
> Alarming Navy Intel Slide Warns Of China’s 200 Times Greater
> Shipbuilding Capacity
> The Office of Naval Intelligence is sounding the alarm about the huge
> gap in U.S. and Chinese shipbuilding capacity and its implications.
>

Interesting comments include

friendlyneighbourhoodcanadian
1 day ago

Two big questions in my mind:

1) What are the quality of the ships they build? It would be extremely
on brand for Communists to build an awful lot of awful products. I don't
mean the on-paper quality, I'm sure the specs as written/imagined are
pretty impressive, but the actual final-build quality - and how honestly
are they assessing that quality? Is it a "hey, look it floats perfectly
well on calm seas!" or do they conduct proper shock and other
"worst-case scenario" testing?

2) What is the trained-crew to built ship ratio? I look at that number
of ships the same way I look at the ghost apartment complexes that
popped up all over the CCP mainland as they built their real estate
bubble. Housing for millions that either sits empty or are unfinished
husks that weren't sold and remains therefore unfinished. It seems to me
that ships aren't rifles - if you have a stockpile of rifles and no
trained soldiers to use them, you can still just put them in the hands
of conscripts and say "loud end toward enemy" and you'll get some
utility out of it. You can't exactly take some conscript farmers who
have never seen the ocean, plop them on a new ship and expect to get any
functionality out of that vessel.

Manufacturing remains a CCP strength (at least on the surface); the
quality of their personnel and training programs remains a weakness. I
don't find these numbers as intimidating - the numbers of their
ballistic missiles are more concerning IMO.

SaigonDesign
1 day ago

Quantity has a quality all its own. The Chinese can throw large amounts
of labor into building and manning their ships.

Their ships are also much more heavily armed than most of their American
counterparts (aircraft carriers notwithstanding). Their corvettes,
destroyers, and even their new cruisers carry enough missiles to
oversaturate American naval defense systems.

The USN needs a total overhaul on how they manage their sailors and
shipbuilding. They don't have enough sailors to man the ships they have
now, their ships (and shipyards) are falling apart due to lack of
maintenance and investment (and a reliance on contractors), and they
lack enough firepower (both offensive and defensive) to fight off a
major surface action.

The world hasn't seen a major surface action since WW2, and sadly the
USN seems to think that will be the case moving forward.

GintaPPE1000
1 day ago

1) We don’t know what China’s QA processes look like. But I would argue
it doesn’t matter: given the work their yards do for the commercial
sector, it’s certainly dangerous to assume they can’t either build
quality ships or honestly audit themselves. We’d be fools to rely on
that to save us.

On th...
On the subject of “operational verification” like shock tests, the PLAN,
like the rest of the Chinese military, has a known experience and
institutional knowledge shortfall, and that impacts how well they can
assess their equipment too. It’s worth noting they’re not afraid to
publicly disclose this issue, and the need to fix it. It is, however,
also worth pointing out that every navy has this issue, even the USN.

2) Firstly, the housing thing is because the Chinese stock market is
worthless due to government meddling. So China uses real estate as its
alternative. Not saying it isn’t a bubble (stocks can be too), but
empty buildings doesn’t mean an unhealthy market when their market is
different from ours.

Secondly, the PLA has been an all-volunteer force since the 1980s. So
they do have a robust training pipeline. However, as I said above the
PLA has admitted they’re lacking in both specialized knowledge and
knowledge retention. A lot of that is down to their modernization being
so fast they just haven’t had much time to train on their new gear, but
there are some deeper issues like lacking an NCO corps.

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KinjaRefugee
1 day ago

“[W]hen you have unemployment at less than 4%, it makes it a real
challenge whether you’re trying to find workers for a restaurant or
you’re trying to find workers for a shipyard,”

That also applies to crewing the ships too. Nevermind the unemployment
rate. They have 4x our population.

It's a numbers game and they have more.

We will never win on numbers. What we build has to be better. We need
allies and economics. Fighting the Chinese like the old time boxers
trading blows to the face is a losing strategy.

Maybe too this will finally kill that GD LCS. Quit putting capacity and
money into building garbage. If they're worried about a lack of Ticos,
build more with more efficient plants and systems.

Lockmart
1 day ago

I’m not worried about this nearly as much as A2/AD systems precisely for
one of the reasons you mention. Shipbuilding is overwhelming dominated
by 3 countries, China, Korea, and Japan, with the latter two combined
having about the same market share as the first in terms of
displacement. Everyone el...

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