This Day, That Year: May 6

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

On May 6, 1982, China State Shipbuilding Corp was officially established in Beijing, as the country targeted shipbuilding as a pillar industry for economic growth.

It consisted of more than 150 organizations that ranged from shipyards to technical research and design institutions.

An item from Feb 18, 1983, showed a ship undergoing maintenance at the Dalian Shipyard in Liaoning province.

To further streamline the sector, in July 1999, some of CSSC's companies were spun off to form a separate conglomerate, China Shipbuilding Industry Corp.
And thanks to a series of measures, in 2012 China replaced South Korea as the world's top shipbuilding order holder for the first time.

In the first quarter, orders for the country's shipbuilding sector ranked top in the world, followed by South Korea and Italy, according to data released by British shipbuilding and marine analysis agency Clarkson Research Services.

The research found that China's cumulative order volume for the first quarter reached 2.58 million compensated gross metric tons, or 35 vessels, securing 45 percent of the global market. It means China's shipbuilding and container transportation sectors have reached international standards.

In 2017, French shipping company CMA CGM and CSSC signed a contract for the construction of nine 22,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) ships, the largest container vessels ordered so far.

Last year, CSSC launched its first domestically built research icebreaker, Xuelong 2, and plans to officially put it into service this year.

Last month, CSSC said it's building the world's largest liquefied natural gas carrier, with a capacity of 270,000 cubic meters to cope with the rising demand for clean fuel in the nation. Research and development work on the new vessel is set to be completed by the end of 2020.