If measured by the number of ships produced and the number of vessel orders received, China is the world's leading shipbuilder. However, in order to become a real superpower in the shipbuilding industry China still needs some more time, so being said by a senior industry official.

On a press conference on Saturday Li Dong, vice-director of equipment industry department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that China aims to become the builder of the most advanced ships by 2015.

In 2010, China built ships with a total deadweight capacity of 65.6 million tons, accounting for 43% of the deadweight capacity of all ships built in the world, and received ship construction orders with a total deadweight capacity of 75.2 million tons, accounting for 54% of the new orders in the world, he said. In the same year, China was trying to catch up with unfulfilled orders for ships with 195.9 million tons of deadweight capacity, making up 41% of the unfulfilled ship orders in the world.

Steen Brodsgaard Lund, executive vice-president and head of maritime services Asia-Pacific of the Germanischer Lloyd SE, said, "China has surpassed South Korea to become the foremost shipbuilder in the world." The Germanischer Lloyd (GL) is a German classification society based in Hamburg. "This momentum is likely to be maintained as China's booming shipbuilding industry is now on its way to become the world's leading shipbuilding nation from a quantity perspective and also continues to make impressive quality improvements.", Steen Brodsgaard Lund added.

Li said China is looking to move from being a great sea power to a shipbuilding superpower as part of its 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) but still lags behind other shipbuilding nations when it comes to the ability to innovate and improve the technology used on seagoing vessels.

Technical director of Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) Co Ltd, Hu Keyi, told China Daily in an exclusive interview this year, "I want to answer those who wrongly hold that China's shipbuilding industry is too weak to compete with those of other nations, such as Japan and South Korea. As a matter of fact, after more than 10 years of rapid development with support from both State-owned banks and government policy, we can build high-end ships just as well as our counterparts." He is confident China enjoys great prospects in the shipbuilding industry.

Hu agreed China lags behind countries like Japan, the United States and South Korea in terms of high-tech ships construction. However, he said, China has advantages. Recently Shanghai Jiangnan Changxing Heavy Industry Co Ltd., which is affiliated Jiangnan Shipyard, received an order for the construction of six 9,000-TEU containerships from a German ship owner.

"Those are the largest of their kind that have ever been designed in China," Hu said and added, "The order shows Chinese shipyard's ability to build containerships in accordance with international standards." Business between Chinese shipyards and overseas clients will spread the reputation of vessels made in China, he stated.