The Blue Whale 1, the world’s largest offshore ultra-deepwater drilling platform, mines combustible ice on May 17, 2017. Manufactured by China, the platform can drill to the deepest depths of the sea.

QINGDAO—At a recent forum, scholars stressed the importance of technological innovation and upgrading industrial structure to boost marine economy.

The first Summit Forum on Marine Economy and Culture was held in Qingdao, Shandong Province, on March 16. It was hosted by the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences and co-organized by the Shandong Provincial Commission on Marine Economy and Shandong Institute of Marine Economy and Culture. 

As the exploitation of oceanic resources continues to grow across the world, major maritime countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan are adjusting their strategies on marine economy.

Chen Mingbao, an associate research fellow from the Center for Ocean Studies at Sun Yat-sen University, said that marine economy is playing an increasingly prominent role in China’s overall economic strategy as the country improves its understanding, utilization and management of maritime issues. 

Developed countries occupy the high end of the industrial chain, with high-quality and high-value products. At the same time, they have secured long-term control of the international market by grasping key materials, components and core technologies, said Pan Kehou, secretary-general of the Academic Board of Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology.

The deep sea has become a new focus of developed nations in exploiting the ocean, Pan said, adding that Western countries and Japan have established a global value chain in the development of technological equipment for deep-sea exploration. 

China desperately needs technological innovation to foster new competitive advantages and elevate its status in the international marine industrial value chain, Pan said.

Marine economy cannot develop without technological support. Current ocean industries feature sophisticated technologies, involve high risks and demand a variety of products, but the small scale in reality makes it difficult to absorb large amounts of capital to produce scale effects. Pan said that technological innovation is the driver of marine economy, and ocean industries rely more heavily on technological progress than other industries. 

Statistics show that China’s gross ocean product grew 6.9 percent in 2017. The value added of emerging industries like marine biomedicine and electric power rose by 11.1 percent and 8.4 percent year on year, respectively, but the share of strategic emerging industries remains low.

Li Naisheng, a research fellow at the National Oceanographic Center in Qingdao, said that around the world, traditional sectors on the sea have begun to look to emerging industries, so ocean industries should shift their focus from quantity to quality and efficiency, from low-end to mid-range and high-end products, and from labor-intensive to automated and smart processing.

Optimizing the industrial structure is essential to transforming the driving force of marine economy, and technological innovation is a means to that end, Pan said.

Dai Guilin, deputy dean of the School of Economics at the Ocean University of China, said that the growth of marine economy will promote the coordinated development of the real economy, technological innovation, modern finance and human resources. 

In the future, with the support of new production factors like knowledge, technology, information and data, the scale effect of marine economy and innovation capacity of ocean industries will continue to improve while threats to the oceanic ecosystem of the sea will abate substantively, thereby shaping new advantages for China’s open economy, Dai said.

(Edited and translated by SUI JINGJING )