Attracting the world's largest container shipping line to establish operations, with continuous improvements in maritime legal services and talent support systems, and securing 36 signed projects with a total investment of 7.08 billion yuan in the first half of the year—Qingdao's shipping services industry is making a decisive push toward the high-end segment.
In the 2026 Xinhua-Baltic International Shipping Centre Development Index Report, Qingdao's ranking climbed one place from 2025 to 12th, surpassing Houston. The city also hosted its first International Shipping Week, drawing over 3,200 participants from more than 30 countries and regions, with 352 companies exhibiting. Qingdao Port signed a new port-shipping cooperation memorandum with 12 shipping lines including Maersk. The city's international shipping center task force visited 15 key port and shipping institutions across Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wuhan, finalizing 36 projects worth 7.08 billion yuan. Four new platforms were inaugurated, including the Qingdao representative office of the Ministry of Justice's Belt and Road Legal Services Alliance and the Dalian Maritime University Qingdao Research Institute. Mediterranean Shipping Company established a ship management company in the city, and a first-phase training program for registered marine surveyors launched in the Qingdao Free Trade Zone. Notably, Qingdao lawyer Wang Zhonghua was appointed as a roster arbitrator at the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration.
Qingdao is currently in a critical phase of accelerating its development as an international shipping center, striving to build a world-class hub. As the global shipping industry evolves, high-end shipping services have become a key indicator of a city's openness and global influence. While infrastructure resilience underpins the safety baseline of shipping networks, the capacity for high-end shipping services ultimately determines a shipping center's value proposition—a goal shared by leading Chinese hubs like Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan.
As an international comprehensive transportation hub, Qingdao leverages its unique advantages of coordinated sea, land, air, and rail connectivity. The province's 15th Five-Year Plan outline, issued in April, explicitly supports the construction of the Qingdao International Shipping Center. The city's rise to 12th place in the global index, surpassing Houston and leading the northern port cluster, reflects robust development resilience amid global shipping transformation.
Qingdao's progress stems from maintaining strong "hard indicators" like port throughput while steadily improving "soft power" in shipping services and the overall business environment. Over the past two years, the city has focused on high-end shipping services—including shipping operations, finance, and maritime law—to address gaps while maintaining its lead in port scale. This approach has attracted high-end factors across shipping trade, finance, insurance, and legal services, continuously improving the development ecosystem for port and shipping services. However, compared to advanced cities like Shanghai, significant room for improvement remains.
Strengthening modern shipping service functions is a key breakthrough area for Qingdao's goal of becoming a world-class international shipping center. According to the Qingdao International Shipping Center task force, the city leveraged its port and shipping advantages in the first half of the year to accelerate the growth of modern shipping services. The first International Shipping Week was successfully held on a market-oriented basis, featuring 16 events over five days and significantly enhancing Qingdao's global shipping influence. The port signed new cooperation memoranda with 12 shipping companies, including Maersk. The task force visited 15 key institutions in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Wuhan, securing 36 projects with total investment of 7.08 billion yuan. The inauguration of four platforms—including the Ministry of Justice's Belt and Road Legal Services Alliance Qingdao office and the China Pilot Association simulator training base—has accelerated the ecosystem clustering effect, continuously elevating the capacity of the Qingdao International Shipping Center.
After years of development, Qingdao's shipping services industry chain is rapidly taking shape, gathering key players in shipping logistics and ship management. For instance, Hairun International Logistics (海程邦达) specializes in supply chain logistics, covering multimodal transport services across sea, air, rail, and road, while integrating customs affairs and warehousing to build an end-to-end intelligent supply chain service system. Intercontinental Ship Management (洲际船务) is dedicated to providing comprehensive "one-stop" shipping solutions across the maritime value chain. It has been ranked among the global top ten ship management companies for three consecutive years (2023–2025), marking the first time a Chinese ship management company has entered this elite ranking. Currently, its third-party ship management fleet ranks first nationally and ninth globally.
While local enterprises accelerate their global expansion, international shipping giants are also making strategic moves to "heavily invest" in Qingdao. Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world's largest container shipping line, saw its container volume at Qingdao Port exceed 3 million TEUs for the first time in 2025—nearly one-tenth of the port's total annual throughput and a record high. In March of this year, MSC established a ship management company in Qingdao to deepen its presence in the northern ship management market and further refine its Asia-Pacific regional service layout. The head of MSC's Qingdao branch stated that selecting Qingdao for its North China regional core subsidiary reflects both a strategic commitment to the Chinese market and recognition of the city's shipping location advantages, industrial foundation, and development potential. Qingdao boasts a natural deep-water port, serves as northern China's largest foreign crude oil unloading port and container trunk port, connects to over 700 ports globally, and has a complete shipping industry chain—meeting MSC's needs for ship management, crew dispatch, and vessel maintenance. The company will focus on container and specialized ship management, leveraging its mature management systems, experienced professional teams, and global resources to provide safe, efficient, and compliant full-chain support for vessel operations.
Classification societies play a crucial role in international shipping by assessing vessel technical conditions. In February 2025, the globally renowned Greek classification society Phoenix Register of Shipping made its first foray into Asia, establishing Phoenix Register of Shipping (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. in the Qingdao Free Trade Zone to provide ship classification, certification, and verification services. This marks Qingdao's first classification society Asian headquarters, filling a significant gap for a major Chinese port city. The company is now using Qingdao as its base to radiate across the region and plans to establish branches in other Chinese cities.
As global trade order undergoes restructuring, Chinese enterprises venturing overseas face both opportunities and challenges. Settlement risks, data compliance, standard mutual recognition, and contract disputes have become pain points for companies "going global." To some extent, competition among international shipping centers has evolved beyond throughput and route numbers to a contest of rule-setting power, governance capability, and legal environment quality. Maritime legal services are a vital component of international shipping center development—they ensure smooth shipping operations and safeguard fairness, justice, and transaction security.
Qingdao maintains a commitment to openness and rule of law, continuously optimizing its legalized business environment with internationalization and professionalism as goals. In 2025, the city established a maritime and admiralty legal service team—its first specialized, international, and high-level legal service contingent—comprising lawyers, arbitrators, and academics who provide full-chain legal services to maritime enterprises, serving over a thousand companies. Many Qingdao lawyers have grown into composite "legal-business" talents with expertise in law, shipping, and foreign trade, offering customized legal solutions for port construction, shipping finance product innovation, and green ship delivery. In July, Qingdao lawyer Wang Zhonghua was appointed as a roster arbitrator at the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration—the first from Shandong Province and the 11th nationally to receive this distinction—marking a substantial improvement in Qingdao's influence in international maritime legal services.
Qingdao has also established high-level platforms for maritime legal services. The Belt and Road Legal Services Alliance, the first international legal service organization initiated by China, inaugurated its Qingdao representative office during the International Shipping Week opening ceremony—a landmark achievement in the city's foreign-related legal development and international shipping center construction. Going forward, Qingdao will leverage this "national-level" platform to integrate full-chain legal service resources including lawyers, arbitration, notarization, judicial appraisal, and mediation, positioning itself as a preferred destination for foreign-related legal services and international commercial and maritime dispute resolution.
The newly revised Maritime Law took effect on May 1, representing not only a milestone in China's maritime legal system but also a strategic instrument for the nation's participation in international maritime rule governance. Chu Beiping, President of Shanghai Maritime University, noted that Qingdao, situated in the core of Northeast Asia, serves as a northern hub connecting to Japan and South Korea, radiating across the Bohai Rim, and linking with the Belt and Road Initiative. Unlike Shanghai's ecosystem focused on global resource allocation and high-end services, Qingdao possesses unique advantages in near-sea shipping, port operations, industrial development, and openness to Northeast Asia—enabling a differentiated path of legalized and digital development. He suggested using the new Maritime Law as an opportunity to position Qingdao as a preferred destination for Northeast Asian international maritime dispute resolution and a source of maritime rule innovation, establishing high-standard maritime arbitration centers and legal service clusters while promoting the new law to domestic and international shipping enterprises and legal professionals. He also recommended coordinating with Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and the Hainan Free Trade Port to attract renowned arbitration institutions, law firms, and high-end shipping service providers, while creating a green shipping legal demonstration zone that pilots carbon emission accounting and green credit rules aligned with IMO carbon reduction targets and EU ETS requirements.
The shipping industry's demand for high-quality composite talent is particularly urgent during this period of profound transformation and significant opportunity. Qingdao has been intensifying industry-education integration efforts to cultivate and attract shipping talent. The Shanghai Maritime University Qingdao Research Institute has operated in the city for several years, establishing practical training bases, joint talent development programs, and research collaborations. In March, the Dalian Maritime University Qingdao Research Institute was inaugurated, specifically deploying high-end shipping talent cultivation functions to serve Qingdao's development needs. With a mission to serve Qingdao, Shandong, and the surrounding region while advancing maritime ambitions, the institute focuses on building four major platforms: a full-chain maritime science and technology innovation center, an international maritime rule source highland, a high-end shipping talent training base, and an alumni intelligence and industry-education integration platform—aiming to become a core engine for high-quality development in port logistics and the marine economy.
Maritime transport handles over 95% of China's international trade, and seafarers serve as the "ferrymen" of global trade, ensuring smooth supply chain operations worldwide. Qingdao has a high concentration of seafarers, with over 60,000 registered with maritime authorities, involving more than 120 companies, institutions, and service organizations. The city's 15th Five-Year Plan proposes exploring a "Qingdao model" for senior crew training, developing the crew economy, and building an international seafarer service center. Qingdao is committed to building an ecosystem where seafarers are attracted, retained, well-utilized, and able to develop, creating a high-quality shipping talent pool to support the world-class international shipping center goal.
In April, the Shandong Shipping (山东海运) seafarer training base was launched, invested and constructed by Shandong Marine Group's subsidiary. Covering 1,843 square meters, the base integrates practical training, accommodation, comprehensive services, and humanistic care in a modern, comprehensive seafarer service facility. It features full-scenario large ship maneuvering simulators, marine engineering and electromechanical training rooms, green environmental training equipment, 100 standardized beds, and amenities such as a reading corner and fitness facilities. With an annual training capacity of 2,000 person-times, it supports skill development across the full cycle from interns to senior officers. The base also houses a "seafarer station" providing one-stop services including administrative consultation, psychological counseling, legal advice, 24-hour remote medical consultation, and family reception—further improving the seafarer service support system.
Marine surveyors serve as the "health guardians" of ships, with responsibilities covering construction inspection, electromechanical equipment verification, and weld and coating quality control. From pre-construction checks and welding quality testing to non-destructive testing, dimensional precision measurement, and mooring trials, every vessel—from blueprint to launch and operation to scrapping—depends on professional surveyor oversight. In August, the first training session of the Shandong Jiaotong University & Baishi Zhihang registered marine surveyor Qingdao training center commenced in the Qingdao Free Trade Zone, with over 100 participants undergoing systematic training as professional talent for the shipping industry rapidly gathers in Qingdao.
Following the principle of gathering industry through ports, revitalizing the city through industry, and promoting ports through urban development, Qingdao is accelerating the layout of five major clusters according to the Medium-Term Plan for Qingdao International Shipping Center Construction and 2035 Vision: the Qianwan Modern Shipping Services Cluster, the SCO Multimodal Transport and Airport Economy Demonstration Zone, the Dongjiakou Port-Industry-City Integrated Development Pilot Zone, the International Cruise Economy Coordinated Development Zone, and the Shipping Services Headquarters Economic Zone. These five clusters will feature distinct characteristics and coordinated development, accelerating the formation of a competitive shipping services industry cluster, enhancing the agglomeration and radiation effects of the international shipping center, and elevating the city's global resource allocation capacity and openness.