Building a Ship in China Now Costs 60 to 70 Percent less than Building the Same One in Russia, Moscow Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 23 – China enjoys an enormous advantage over Russia when it comes to shipbuilding. Its yards can build the same ship that Russia wants for 60 to 70 percent less than Russia can, and that advantage hurts Russia in another way too Mikhail Burmistrov says: it means China isn’t prepared to sell Russia the electronics needed for modern vessels.

            The Infoline-Analysis expert says that Russian wharves have become so uncompetitive that that problem, along with corruption, sanctions, and the inability to come up with financing means that Russia cannot realistically expect to meet its shipbuilding targets for the next decade at a minimum (vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2025/12/23/1165527-plan-grazhdanskogo-sudostroeniya).

            It almost certainly also means that Chinese ships rather than Russian ones are likely to come to dominate the Northern Sea Route in the next several years, an outcome that will in turn mean that Beijing rather than Moscow will have the whip hand for the development of the Arctic and its natural resources, all of Putin’s boasts notwithstanding.