How will China respond to US Navy’s shipbuilding push with South Korea, Japan?
- A shortage of domestic industrial capacity and concerns about China’s dominance are behind courting of Asian allies’ shipyards, analysts say
- But the move could increase Beijing’s wariness of the trilateral partnership’s growing naval capacity, they warn
On Tuesday, US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said his service would be open to having shipyards in South Korea and Japan assemble certain warships to increase domestic production rates.
“We do this in the aircraft industry … for example, in India we’re building aircraft engines now and reinstituting them here in the United States,” he told an event at the Stimson Centre, a Washington-based think tank.
“So there are opportunities I think that we can pursue, and we need to keep open-minded about those opportunities.”
Del Toro visited South Korea and Japan in February, touring facilities run by South Korean shipbuilding giants HD Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan and Hanwha Ocean Co Ltd in Geoje Island, as well as a Japanese shipyard run by Mitsubishi in Yokohama.
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While in South Korea, Del Toro said that as China continued to “aggressively pursue worldwide shipbuilding dominance”, the importance of Korean shipbuilding as “an asset” to the Washington-Seoul alliance “and to the network of global maritime democracies cannot be overstated”.
