Non-Tariff Barriers: China's hidden shipbuilding subsidies

This article from VoxEU focuses on recent research on the scale of government subsidies to the Chinese shipbuilding industry.

The author reflects that the costs of production in shipbuilding are very difficult to observe making it tough to detect the true scale of Chinese government financial help to a sector that is heavily-biased towards exports. But between 2001 and 2012, the author finds a strong, significant decline in Chinese costs equal to between 13% and 20% of costs, or $1.5 to $4.5 billion at observed production levels.

Largest shipbuilding nations in 2016, based on completions in gross tonnage (in 1,000s)