Over many months, journalists for CSIS tracked China’s navy using aerial footage, financial data, and congressional research documents. What they found was eye-opening: foreign companies are helping modernise China’s navy by spending billions of dollars on its shipbuilding industry.
According to the report, the global shipping industry meets rising demand by having many of its newest hulls constructed in China. But container ships weren’t the only items being built there — warships were also on the construction line.
The investigative journalists step through why this is a genuine security concern for China's neighbour, Taiwan, and the implications that the lack of transparency at the shipyards has for other democracies like South Korea, Japan, and the United States.
To complement the article's aerial photography, CSIS also includes maps and graphs to help the reader visualise China's footprint on the global ship industry and understand where the construction is taking place.