Zhoushan in East China's Zhejiang province has taken a major step in shipbuilding standardization, with two local companies, Zhoushan Changhong International Shipyard and Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry (Zhoushan), initiating the development of two national ship data exchange standards in the city's Dinghai district.

The standards target core areas of ship design and layout, covering ship arrangement and ship molded forms under the industrial automation systems and integration framework, aiming to address critical data exchange needs in the industry and support its shift toward high-end, intelligent, green, and internationalized development.

Zhoushan is a key national base for shipbuilding and marine engineering equipment. In 2025, the city's shipbuilding output of industrial enterprises above the designated size — enterprises with annual revenue of at least 20 million yuan (about $3 million) — reached 56.5 billion yuan, up 32.5 percent year-on-year.

Dinghai district, the core of Zhejiang's high-end shipbuilding cluster, contributed more than 24 billion yuan of shipbuilding output of industrial enterprises above the designated size, up 63.4 percent year-on-year, with 1.73 million deadweight metric tons completed and 6.77 million deadweight tons of new orders. Total outstanding orders reached 13.98 million deadweight tons.