Located by the Yangtze River, the "Explorer" is 83 meters long, 22 meters wide, with a total power of 18,000 kilowatts. It mainly provides services such as towing, standby, anchor handling, and cargo supply for oil platforms. It can operate around the clock in wind, waves, and currents, and can perform offshore auxiliary operations such as oil extraction in deep-sea areas from 1,000 to 3,000 meters.

    "This is currently the world's most advanced offshore vessel series, and the only 'Made in China' in this type of offshore vessel," said Wang Wangsheng, deputy general manager of Wuchang Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co., Ltd., the builder.

    Taking the "Explorer" as an example, its advanced features include dynamic positioning, one-person operation, 24-hour unmanned engine room, and a low-pressure dual-fuel engine system provided by Rolls-Royce.

    This "Made in China" VS series of offshore vessels includes two types of commercial tugs and two types of platform supply vessels, totaling 11 vessels. Wuchang Shipyard took 10 years from receiving the order in 2003 to completing the delivery, which reflects the decade of upgrading and development of China's marine engineering equipment manufacturing industry.

    Wang Dong, general manager of Haiba Ship Consulting, an intermediary for marine engineering projects, said that in the past, it was difficult for China to enter the vision of foreign marine equipment manufacturing contractors, and Chinese manufacturing also had a negative image of competing on price and relatively weak safety and quality assurance. However, in recent years, the continuous success of Chinese shipbuilding enterprises has gradually changed this image.

    According to reports, the first order was for three VS4612 tugs. Later, because our construction quality, craftsmanship, and performance were highly recognized by foreign shipowners, three additional orders were placed, and finally the entire VS series of offshore vessels was handed over to us for production.

    Ali, the manager of Det Norske Veritas responsible for this project, told reporters that the VS series offshore vessels were built under the strictest international standards, and according to current data, the quality and performance are quite good. Ali believes that China's shipbuilding level has developed rapidly in recent years, and its manufacturing technology is on par with countries such as Japan and South Korea, even surpassing some shipbuilding powers.

    Internationally, the traditional strong countries in marine equipment manufacturing are Singapore, Japan, South Korea, etc. In recent years, Chinese shipbuilding enterprises have gradually emerged. For example, in orders for jack-up platforms for offshore oil extraction, China has won 50% of such global orders this year, while the former powerhouse Singapore only received 20%.

    In its "12th Five-Year Plan", China proposed the goal of achieving an output value of 100 billion yuan in the marine engineering equipment manufacturing industry, accounting for 20% of the world market share. To achieve this goal, Chinese shipbuilding enterprises need to integrate with the global market, exchange with large international companies through cooperation, and achieve upgrading and development in technology, design, management, and standards.

    Lian Lian, a professor at the School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the media that in the next five years, the global marine engineering equipment industry will enter a golden development stage, with a market size of 276.5 billion US dollars. China currently accounts for 15% of the global market share, and the market size during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period will reach 80 billion US dollars, with investment exceeding 250 billion US dollars.

    Industry insiders believe that the construction and design capabilities of Chinese shipbuilding enterprises are improving in all aspects in international competition, but they still face the dilemma of being constrained by "people".

    "The biggest difficulty is workers," said Wang Wangsheng, who is familiar with the international marine equipment manufacturing market. Chinese enterprises can reach the world's most advanced level in construction, management, standards, and other aspects, meeting the most stringent standard requirements, but the training of industrial workers takes time.

    Wang Wangsheng introduced that it takes 5 to 8 years to train a skilled and qualified shipbuilding worker. South Korea's strength lies in having a stable and abundant industrial workforce. Chinese enterprises currently cannot do this: first, due to cost considerations, they cannot afford a huge workforce; second, the worker training mechanism is incomplete; third, shipbuilding is a tiring and hard profession, and its appeal to young people is increasingly limited.

    "Everything needs people to do it, so under the same strictest production standards, the construction cycle of Chinese shipbuilders is often 1 to 2 months longer than that of Japan and South Korea," sighed a shipbuilding company executive.

    Wang Wangsheng believes that technological competition will ultimately come down to talent competition. To become a maritime power and an equipment power, talent is indispensable.