alt Hacker NewsNot really, China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of US. See: https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/chinas-shipbuildi...
The problem with Iron curtain has been that you were not allowed to import stuff from the West unless you were specifically permitted to (i.e. military purposes). The ideology of Eastern block was to employ everyone, that caused low automation demand which caused high prices for goods. Furthermore lack of quality processes caused that products were expensive and also garbage. So after iron curtain fell you can buy cheap garbage from the east or expensive quality goods from the west.
That compounded with USSR imploding (losing market) and management of communist companies not being able to innovate because there was no demand for it and you got industries falling apart like Hindenburg.
Jones act has created exactly same trap. US shipbuilders are not being forced into innovation nor automation (so they can reduce labor costs) because they don't need to. And now with China eclipsing them 200 times, Jones act can't be repelled
Why are chinese shipbuilders incentivized to compete with eachother while US shipbuilders are not incentivized to compete with eachother? The answer is probably due to cartel behavior on the part of the american shipbuilders, which tends to happen in any industry that has coalesced into few enough players to get into a conference call. If the chinese are still innovating I would say it is because they are merely early in the inevitable march capitalism takes from smallholder to largeholder based industry. I would expect after several decades of mergers and acquisitions that the chinese shipbuilding industry begins to behave a lot like the American shipbuilding industry today, if they haven't already begun to do so.