Earlier this year, the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry released data showing the nation's shipbuilding completion volume reached 36.5 million deadweight tonnes in the first half, a year-on-year surge of over 50%. Yet even this blistering pace has failed to keep up with global demand, as Chinese shipyards currently hold more than 70% of the world's orders.
Backlogs at leading shipbuilders are already stretched to 2030, with profits routinely doubling. Netizens have grown numb to such figures, while military enthusiasts celebrate the "annual launch of a French Navy's worth of vessels" and ship fans boast that "Japan and South Korea combined can't outbuild us."
On February 27th of this year, however, a faint discordant note emerged. The Nantong Shipbuilding Industry Association issued a document titled "A Request for Government Assistance in Maintaining a Stable Talent Ecosystem in the Industry," noting that local shipbuilders in Nantong had been significantly impacted by rivals poaching workers with handsome pay packages. China's booming shipbuilding industry is now facing a severe shortage of skilled labor across the board—the supply-to-demand ratio for ordinary hull welders stands at 1:8.5, while for special material welding it has reached 1:12.
This talent crunch has forced shipbuilders to adopt a slogan once synonymous with real estate: "ensure delivery." To meet deadlines, enterprises are now fiercely competing for workers. A standard hull welder can earn 10,000 to 20,000 yuan per month, while top-tier talent commands 50,000 to 70,000 yuan, with benefits like six insurances, two funds, talent apartments, and free shuttle buses thrown in as standard. Chinese shipbuilding is often seen as an industrial Cthulhu—a voracious entity that consumes not just iron ore, electricity, and capital, but also the youth of a generation. And the most terrifying fate for such a beast is to grow old.
Master Zhao, a welder in his late 30s at a state-owned shipyard, has spent his entire career since graduation at the same post. His workweek spans six days, with at least 8 to 10 hours per day. In summer, temperatures inside ship hulls exceed 35°C, while steel plates reach a scorching 50°C or more, sparks flying and fumes thick in the air—enduring eight hours of this demands sheer grit. The older generation toughed it out, downing a bottle of water every hour in summer and not visiting the restroom all day, as sweat did the work. Years of such labor leave welders with chronic ailments like lumbar disc herniation, and with many shipyards located far from urban centers, the isolation makes finding a spouse difficult. Slowly, young people have stopped applying.
Master Zhao notes his last apprentice was taken on seven years ago. In fact, almost every ship welding team is now facing a generational gap. Training a qualified ship welder is daunting—for structures like FLNG platforms, workers must weld without a single pause, maintaining perfect composure and precision, as any tiny leak or oversight could trigger a natural gas explosion. According to Master Zhao, turning a fresh graduate into a competent welder takes at least five years of apprenticeship, and only if the trainee is willing to work hard. Traditionally, veteran welders begin to step back from frontline work by their 40s due to physical strain. But at Master Zhao's shipyard, the average age of welders is now 42—and that's considered a good situation. Industry-wide, only 20% of shipbuilding workers are under 35, and the average age of welders across the sector has climbed to 47. Welding consistently ranks near the top of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's list of most scarce trades. Now, more robotics companies are touting their ability to handle ship welding, and Master Zhao just laughs, saying, "Let them try. The next decade needs more than just robots in the dry docks—it needs young people."
Back in 2013, People's Daily published a story about dozens of welders from Shandong province emigrating to Australia. Most hailed from Houchuzhuang Village on the outskirts of Jinan, and starting in 2006, they went through labor agencies to Perth, where they worked in electrical welding at local shipyards. The first to go was Yin Fagang, who within a few years saved enough to buy a 200-square-meter home with a 600-700 square meter lawn, secured permanent residency, and fathered a son who became an Australian citizen. Houchuzhuang's welding exodus became a trend, with the headline boasting: "Monthly income of 20,000-30,000 yuan, living in a 200-square-meter house." That was two decades ago—now, Australian statistics show starting annual salaries for shipyard workers have risen above 90,000 Australian dollars, with experienced hands earning up to 150,000. Notably, Australia's shipyards don't build commercial vessels, so the Shandong arrivals were likely welding warships.
In that same year, a welding instructor at a vocational school in Jinan noticed his class size had shrunk from over 100 students at the start to fewer than 20. Some schools in the same city had even abolished welding programs entirely. Even those who enrolled often had no intention of pursuing the trade—reports from Dalian indicated students wouldn't even attend mandatory factory internships. Teachers tried everything, from inviting model workers to give motivational talks to lecturing on career values, all to no avail. The chief welding technician at Dalian Shipbuilding Industry, the yard that builds China's aircraft carriers and Type 055 destroyers, was so desperate he began giving free lectures at vocational schools. Across the entire facility, fewer than 10% of its 1,700-plus welders hold degrees from junior colleges. Yet all technical trades—welding, machining, and others—require both theoretical knowledge and systematic training. Students are savvy these days, scrolling through short videos that make clear the poor conditions and hard labor involved in welding. A contact told me that in the past, shipbuilders relied on their own company-run schools for a steady pipeline of talent. But with those schools now banned, the worker supply has dried up. A quick check shows only two vocational schools in the country with "shipbuilding" in their names—one in Wuhan, one in Huludao—and only about 30 junior colleges nationwide offer ship engineering programs, roughly 2% of the total.
The welding shortage isn't confined to ships. Zhao Lei, a national youth model worker and welder at an aerospace unit, recalls that of his entire junior college class, only two still work in welding today—himself being one—and he's approaching 40. In 2021, the China Education Daily surveyed over 26,000 vocational students and found that more than half had no desire to work in factories after graduation, with only 20% of those under 25 willing to take blue-collar jobs. Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Statistics surveyed 90,000 manufacturing enterprises above a certain scale, revealing that over 40% reported recruitment difficulties. Many vocational graduates now gravitate toward e-commerce or self-media rather than factory floors. Teachers report that at campus job fairs, internet company booths draw long lines while manufacturers sit ignored. One student admitted that out of 30 classmates, 28 abandoned their major for other industries, prioritizing quick returns and novelty over a state-owned enterprise job as a blue-collar worker, fearing it might dull their edge. Young people aren't afraid of hard work—they're afraid of having no future.
In 2022, Pan Jiluan, a renowned academician from Tsinghua's mechanical engineering department, passed away. At 17, Pan enrolled in Southwest Associated University's mechanical engineering program, and after the founding of the People's Republic, he went to Harbin Institute of Technology, where he chose welding—a field none of his classmates wanted—studying under the famed Soviet expert Plokhorov. Over the decades, Pan's students went on to weld nuclear power plants and high-speed rail tracks. He once said his lifelong wish was to do something meaningful for humanity. His integrity commands deep respect. Yet globally, young people are increasingly shunning blue-collar work. Germany boasts the world's most sophisticated vocational education system, where students enter as apprentices, splitting time between school and company internships while earning wages. But even there, fewer young people are willing to take up trades, forcing reliance on foreign workers and better apprentice perks. Japan's kosen system offers five-year continuous technical education, yet semiconductor firms in Kyushu still complain of annual shortages exceeding a thousand workers, prompting them to rehire retirees and import foreign labor—over 600,000 foreign workers have joined Japanese manufacturing in recent years. The U.S. faces a welder gap too, along with shortages in machinists, toolmakers, and industrial electricians. Lightcast estimates around 2.1 million annual openings in skilled trades, against roughly 800,000 newly trained workers each year—three jobs competing for every person. South Korea, another shipbuilding powerhouse, also struggles; young people there prefer waiting tables to working in shipyards. Money isn't the only factor—time, occupational hazards, workplace dynamics, and social prestige all weigh on decisions. Data shows that about 40% of food delivery riders in China come from manufacturing backgrounds, meaning for every three new riders, one was a factory worker.
Other nations can afford to deindustrialize, but can we? I can't answer that. Yet the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's periodic lists of scarce trades consistently put welders and machinists in the top three—clearly, something is amiss. Foshan, a hub of textile, aluminum, and ceramics manufacturing, sees frontline workers in local ceramic plants over 45 years old, while aluminum enterprises face a 30% labor shortfall. In textiles, despite monthly wages of 7,000 to 10,000 yuan, turnover rates hit 70%. Some truths were spelled out years ago, but people chose not to look. In 2013, the Houchuzhuang emigration trend was widely covered, yet just two years later, follow-up reports showed many had given up on going abroad due to the financial crisis and stricter visa rules, with some even being deported. Thirteen years on, the entire village has been relocated into urban residential areas—yet as of a report around the 2026 Spring Festival, over 100 of its 837 former residents still lived long-term in Australia.
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