On October 20, 2026, Defense News reported that China built more than twice the naval tonnage of the United States in 2024-25, according to the World Defense Shipbuilding report published by Euronaval ahead of its 2026 show in Paris. The combined tonnage of combat ships China delivered in the two years to December 2025 came to 636,208 tons, against 270,509 tons for the United States, based on data compiled by Flottes de Combat and the French maritime industry association Gican. By my arithmetic that is about 2.35 times as much. China accounted for more than a third of all naval tonnage built worldwide, and U.S. lawmakers and congressional researchers have warned that its larger shipbuilding capacity, combined with delays and bottlenecks in American yards, could undermine the U.S. ability to keep pace.
The most striking part is how quickly the position reversed. In the previous edition covering 2022-23, the United States led with 245,703 tons against China’s 202,520. China’s output has therefore roughly tripled while the United States built about 10 percent more, again by my calculation from the report’s figures. The same report shows the effect on the fleets themselves. The U.S. fleet of combat vessels above 200 tons stood at 3.11 million tons on January 1, 2026, down from 3.22 million two years earlier, while China’s rose from 1.3 million to 1.44 million tons. So the gap is narrowing, but the United States still has a fleet more than twice as large by tonnage, about 2.2 times by my calculation.
Tonnage is only one way to read it, and the value figures tell a slightly different story. The report puts the value of Chinese combat-vessel construction at $43.5 billion in 2024-25 against $26.8 billion for the United States, a ratio of about 1.6 to 1, well below the 2.35 to 1 ratio in tonnage. One plausible reading, and it is only mine, is that American yards produce more expensive tons per ship, since the U.S. programme is weighted toward nuclear-powered submarines and carriers, though the report as described does not break the figures down by ship type. It could also reflect differences in cost, accounting and how Chinese values are estimated, which are hard to verify.
The wider picture is a naval building boom. Global combat-vessel construction reached 1.47 million tons in 2024-25, up from 959,671 tons in the previous two years, and its value rose from $81.8 billion to $123.9 billion. Russia ranked third with 149,056 tons, followed by India with 76,430 tons and Italy with 53,700 tons, and Türkiye, France, Japan, South Korea and Romania completed the top 10. Philippe Missoffe, Gican’s general director, said the industry is seeing a substantial expansion of naval forces and shipbuilding, with a particular increase in capability such as nuclear-powered attack submarines. For readers following Asia, it is notable that India is fourth, in a list that also includes Japan, which we covered in our post on the seventh Taigei-class submarine, and that India’s yards are busy with ships like the Fleet Support Ship Surya.
There are limits to what the numbers show. Tonnage measures what was built, not how capable, ready or well-armed it is, and the report says nothing about crews, munitions, maintenance or the quality of the ships. A two-year snapshot is also a narrow window, and large hulls such as carriers and big destroyers can swing the totals. Chinese yards also build for a single navy, while American naval power relies on allies, and the top-10 list includes several U.S. partners, though the article does not discuss how allied shipbuilding capacity might change the balance. The Defense News piece links to a June story about Congress seeking to limit U.S. Navy ships built in foreign yards, which shows how contested that question is. That is my own reading of the context and not a finding of the report.
Ultimately, the report quantifies something analysts have long said: that China’s shipyards are now producing at a scale the American industrial base is struggling to match. Three markers will show how far it goes: whether the next edition of the report, expected around 2028, shows the gap widening or closing, whether U.S. yards resolve the delays and bottlenecks that lawmakers describe, and how quickly China’s nuclear-powered submarine and carrier programmes, including the Type 004 we covered earlier, turn tonnage into capability. Until then, the fair summary is that China is building faster, the United States still has the larger fleet, and the distance between them is shrinking.
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