The reform of Chinese state-owned ship crewing agencies and implications for China’s seafaring labour export

ABSTRACT

With the economic reform in China, the international shipping industry and some academics anticipated, as early as the 1990s, that Chinese seafarers would flood the world’s seafaring labour market. However, China’s seafarer export has been far lower than these expectations. This article seeks to explain this lack of development through research into the management strategies of two major ship crewing agencies in China, which have been reformed to different degrees, and the experience of the seafarers who work for them. To examine this question, 86 interviews of managers and seafarers were conducted in two Chinese state-owned crewing agencies (SCAs) between 2008 and 2013. The studies demonstrate that despite the economic reform in China, the SCAs were still supported and constrained by institutions at higher levels, instead of becoming independent, market-oriented economic entities, which constrained the development of foreign manning business. This partly explains the limited rate of increase of China’s seafarer export.

KEYWORDS:

• Reform of management strategies
• seafaring labour export
• Chinese state-owned ship crewing agencies
• experiences of Chinese seafarers

Acknowledgements

The fieldwork was supported by the Nippon Foundation, between 2008 and 2011 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (3132013) in China, between 2012 and 2013.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. With 24 seafarers onboard each ship and a backup rate of 1.5, demand of seafarers equals to (number of manned ships) * 24 * 1.5

2. In the planned economy, workers were the ‘working class’ and the ‘masters of enterprises and the state’. Guided by this socialist ideology, workers were treated well and also as equally as possible, no matter of their skills or capability. Concerning seafaring industry, there was no big difference in the wages of seafarers of different ranks. For instance, in 1988 a Captains’ wage was around 110–150 USD per month, while ratings could earn almost 90 USD.

Additional information

Funding

The fieldwork was supported by the Nippon Foundation, between 2008 and 2011 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [3132013] in China, between 2012 and 2013.