China's shipbuiders launch new platforms for aquaculture tourism

The potential of China’s vast tourism industry as a prop for the aquaculture sector has pitted two of the country’s giant shipbuilding firms against each other in competition to build ocean viewing platforms for seafood companies.

Shanhai Guan (Qinghuangdao) Shipbuilding Co., a unit of the state owned SINOTRANS & CSC Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (known for building a replica of the Titanic), has just completed two “floating fishery viewing” platforms for a joint venture of Qinhuangdao Hai Dong Qing Foodstuffs Co .and the Qinhuangdao Fan Xing Cultural & Travel Co. With a processing capacity for 11,000 tons of shellfish per year, Hai Dong Qing has advertised its new venture to attract day-trippers from Beijing, who can reach Qinghuangdao by an hour via high-speed railway connection.  Tourists are charged for angling and for viewing and feeding fish in offshore pens.

Not to be outdone, CSIC, yet another of China’s state-owned shipbuilding giants, this week launched the “Hao Heng 1006,” which it claims is the first “modular-built” platform. The company, which has sought to cash in on the expansion of China’s offshore aquaculture systems, built what it billed as the world's largest and most capable deep-water fish farming fishery in the South China Sea. 

China’s state-owned shipbuilders have come to dominate the global shipbuilding trade, alongside peers in South Korea and Japan. SINOTRANS & CSC Shipbuilding Industry Corporation was established in 2009 with the merging of China National Foreign Trade Transportation Corporation (SINOTRANS) and China Changjiang National Shipping Corporation (CSC).

China's tourist market is the world's largest in terms of spending at home and abroad.

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