Shanghai is the birthplace of a Chinese shipbuilding industry, and in possession of 19 shipbuilding enterprises now, including four major key shipyards, namely Jiangnan Shipbuilding (Group) Corporation, Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Corporation, Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Corporation, Shanghai ChengXi Shipbuilding Co., Ltd, and 23 relevant mating enterprises, 11 research institutes, 2 universities. It has about 3,500,000 tons shipbuilding productivity per year, accounting for more than 40% of the whole country. The products mainly include the oil carrier, bulk cargo ship, chemicals ship, roll-on-roll-off ship, load and unload ship, large-scale LPG ship, large-scale container ship, large-scale self-unload ship and high speed ship, etc. civil boat and ocean engineering, and ship auxiliary equipment, such as low-speed, moderate speed diesel engine, large-scale forging piece, ship stencil plate, etc., which have formed the product series of many varieties and many grades.

　　According to a new development plan, the Shanghai shipping industry is changing the whole strategy, moving from the Huangpu margin to the entrance of the Yangtze River and relying mainly on the Changxing Island. In the entrance of the Yangtze River, the Shanghai shipping industry base has been formed from the Changxing Island shipbuilding base, Waigaoqiao shipbuilding base and Chongming shipbuilding industrial base.

　　The Changxing Island shipbuilding base is regarded as a general plan of the China Ship General Co. With 1 kilometer away from the downstream of the Xinkai Harbor as a start point, the about 8 km long shore is all used for shipbuilding. It plans to build 7 large shipyards to form shipbuilding capacity of 8 million tons.

　　The Waigaoqiao shipbuilding base plans occupied land of 2,100,000 square meters with gross investment at the first stage of the project is 3,214 million yuan, and its planning occupied area is 1,440,000 square meters, which has passed completion acceptance on October 18, 2003 and has formed basically shipbuilding capacity of 1,050,000 t.

　　The Chongming Ship Repair Base of the Shanghai ChengXi Shipbuilding Co., Ltd has a planned area of 1,510,000 square meters and shore of 2350 meters long. It plans to build one 150,000 ~ 200,000 t, one 100,000 t and one 40,000 t floating dock, 70,000 t half-floating slipway. The shipbuilding capacity will be 1,500,000 tons after being completed.

　　 The main target of 2010 is to have 8,000,000-ton-shipping vessel-building capacity, which will be 1/6 of world total capacity. In 2015,the total ship building capacity will be 12,000,000 ton with the most competition ability in the domestic market. It will become the shipping-vessel-building base with international influence.