In March 2026, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, and the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly issued the Smart Shipping 2030 Action Plan. The Plan outlines the overall requirements, key tasks, and supporting measures for the development of smart shipping during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), in order to accelerate the deep integration of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) with the shipping industry, aiming to foster new quality productive forces in the sector.

The issuance of the Plan not only provides a systematic solution to the bottleneck problems restricting the development of intelligent shipping in China, but also injects strong momentum and lays a solid foundation for basically achieving the construction of a country with strong transportation network by 2035, helping China's shipping to achieve a leap from "running alongside" to "leading" in the global wave of intelligence.

The Plan takes technological and industrial innovation as the path and scenario application as the guide, and clarifies the development goals in two stages. By 2027, China aims to achieve deep integration of AI with core shipping elements, make breakthroughs in key technologies, establish more than three comprehensive smart shipping pilot zones, open over five pilot routes, develop more than 10 replicable typical smart shipping scenarios and operate over 100 smart vessels. By 2030, China will fully master core and key technologies, establish a new model for the coordinated development of technology, industry, and governance, and bring the development of smart shipping to internationally advanced levels.

To meet these targets, the Plan systematically deploys 11 key tasks across four dimensions: technological and equipment breakthroughs, application pilot empowerment, infrastructure enhancement, and regulatory governance improvement, striving to build a smart shipping development system covering the innovation chain, industrial chain, and value chain, and promote China's smart shipping to move towards a new stage of system integration and large-scale application.

(Source: Ministry of Transport)