Top private shipowners and shipbuilders joined state-owned financiers on the podium last week at the annual conference of the Shanghai Shipbrokers Club (SSC).
The Shipbro forum heard management of private shipowners and operators, including Seacon Ships Management and Union Faith Marine, as well as Taizhou Kouan Shipbuilding, Keppel Nantong Shipyard and Penglai Zhongbai Jinglu Ship Industry, discuss the outlook for their sectors.
Panels led by SSC organiser Liu Xunliang of the China Newbuilding Price Index addressed topics on international shipping centres and the rise of the financial shipowner.
The SSC is China's leading association of shipbrokers. In keeping with its origin as a collegial gathering of industry friends, panel discussion and questions from the floor tend to be less reserved than at some commercially organised industry events in China.
There was frank discussion over whether international shipping centres are created by official policy initiatives or whether they just grow. And there was plenty of debate on the question of whether financial shipowning is the creature of temporary circumstances or the unstoppable wave of the future — and, in either case, whether it is wholesome for the industry.
SSC's conference is also a feast, which concluded this year with a song-and-dance routine by the China heads of Howe Robinson, Navig8, the Liberian Registry and the SSC, singing karaoke hit The Old Devils' Hearts Are Still Beating by local songwriter Wu Liqiang.
Wu, who has no connections to shipping, learnt through a shipbroker's employee that his song was to be performed and turned up to hear his popular ode to Shanghai tradition. He also contributed a guest rap in Shanghainese.
