At the national ship supporting industry development forum held at the beginning of September, representative from MITT, CANSI, Ministry of Finance, CSSC, CSIC and other key ship supporting enterprises shared opinions and exchanges suggestions on Chinese ship supporting industry.
Consensus was reached that low industrial concentration, insufficient core technology and incomplete after-sale services greatly hindered the growth of ship supporting industry in the sluggish shipping market.
In the 11th five-year plan period, Chinese ship supporting industry has indeed gained great progress by enlarging industrial scale, expanding product catalog and strengthening technology. The ship parts localization ratio and industrial outputting value both increased in the period.
However, compared with the development of Chinese shipbuilding industry, its supporting industry growth is far behind necessary pace.
With the diving shipping and shipbuilding market after financial crisis, Chinese ship supporting industry slid further into predicament. Relevant enterprises are commonly confronted with order shortage and suffer from continuously lower prices, increasingly high shipowner requirements, yuan appreciation, rising labor and material cost and so on. 
Shanghai Marine Crankshaft Co., Ltd, the first crankshaft exporter in China received its German client’s quality recognition after five-year normal usage. However, the company also faces the problem of order shortage and low price, struggling for survival profits. Insiders now worry about that domestic crankshaft market would be monopolized by foreign supplier again with soaring prices.
At the forum, representatives pointed out that short-term growth by introducing patent technology and cooperate production makes those enterprise lag behind in the respect of innovation and independent brands. Without core parts design and production technology, their updates in products and technology would be over-reliant on and subject to the cooperate partners. Enterprises boasting both cooperate brands and independent ones also say that client would be inclined to choose cooperate ones.
All the facts show that Chinese ship supporting industry is in urgent need of independent brands. Although the heavy labor and finance cost for developing independent brands is too tough for most companies, it is essential for relevant enterprises to enhance independent brand development in long terms in lines with future ship demands and new IMO regulations. 
For a long time, the biggest restriction for Chinese ship supporting enterprises to go abroad is the lack of global services network to provide timely after-sale services. It is significant to solve the problem in the period for China to grow as a shipbuilding power. In turn, the scale enlargement of Chinese shipbuilding and ship support industry would lay sound basis for the establishment of global services network.
Representatives also put forward at the forum that no more ship supporting enterprise would be founded for the sufficient ship parts products. Ship supporting enterprises mergers and acquisitions should be encouraged to optimize industrial structure and upgrade productivity.