A 115,000?ton oil tanker built by CSSC Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co Photo: Courtesy of CSSC Dalian Shipbuilding Industry

Since the beginning of this year, China's shipbuilding industry has been continuously landing new orders, securing more than 90 percent of global new orders for very large crude carrier (VLCC) and establishing a dominant position in the global market, according to a CCTV News report on Wednesday.

In Dalian, a port city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, a 115,000‑ton oil tanker built by CSSC Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co was officially delivered 164 days ahead of the contracted delivery date, the company said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

The vessel has an overall length of approximately 249.8 meters, a beam of 44 meters, and a depth of 21.2 meters. It is suitable for carrying crude oil and refined oil products with a flash point below 60 C, offering flexible application, good port adaptability, and excellent seaworthiness. Its maneuverability, economic performance, and energy‑saving, green, and environmentally friendly characteristics are all superior to those of similar vessels, giving it strong market competitiveness, according to CSSC Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co.

In addition to the vessel delivered on Wednesday, the CCTV News report said that two 300,000-ton VLCCs are being built simultaneously in the shipyard of CSSC Dalian Shipbuilding.

These VLCCs have a larger tonnage, each being capable of carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude oil per voyage, with a per-barrel transportation cost more than 40 percent lower than those of medium-sized and small oil tankers, thus receiving even greater market demand, the report said.

An employee in the shipyard's marketing department was quoted as saying that the oil tanker business has seen a concentrated boom in 2026. "The oil tanker market has experienced explosive growth. So far this year, we have signed and finalized oil tanker orders totaling more than 6 million deadweight tons, and construction will start on 42 vessels within the year," Peng Guisheng, director of the marketing department at CSSC Dalian Shipbuilding, was cited in the CCTV report as saying.

Chinese shipyards have reached a world-leading level in oil tanker design and construction, and possess significant competitive advantages in construction quality, delivery time, and price, leading orders from global shipowners to concentrate in China, according to the CCTV report.

Liu Wei, a board director with a Ningbo-based shipyard, told the Global Times on Wednesday that a noticeable shift has taken place, with global ship owners increasingly placing orders for crude tanker since the fourth quarter of 2025.

In 2026, the shift accelerated amid the situation over the Strait of Hormuz, Liu said. "Last year, most of our new orders were for container vessels. In 2026, nearly half of ongoing order negotiations are focused on crude tankers."

Many industry participants have said that global crude prices will hover at a high level with the ongoing situation in the Middle East and many shipowners are eyeing orders for crude tankers to tap into the trend, according to Liu.

China's shipbuilding sector posted strong growth across its three major indicators in the first quarter of 2026, maintaining a leading share of the global market, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed earlier in May, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

From January to March, China's shipbuilding output reached 15.68 million deadweight tons (DWT), up 46 percent year-on-year and accounting for 57.3 percent of the global total, the data showed.

New orders totaled 59.53 million DWT, surging 195.2 percent from a year earlier and representing 84.9 percent of the global market share.

As of the end of March, the sector's orders on hand stood at 322.3 million DWT, up 43.6 percent year-on-year. This accounted for 69.8 percent of the global total.  

Liu said that amid increasing demand, Chinese shipyards' ability to deliver vessels on time or even ahead of schedule and their speed of completing orders have been greatly attractive to shipowners.

The Chinese shipbuilding industry's integrated supply chain advantage has fueled these strengths. For instance, our company can get all the intermediate goods under some 80 large categories of equipment and accessories needed for building a vessel from Zhejiang Province and nearby provinces. "Overseas shipyards cannot do that, they have to source abroad, incurring delays," Liu said.