Daily Caller News Foundation reports: “China’s shipmaking capabilities are far outpacing that of the U.S. and its Western allies, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

China currently represents over half of the world’s shipbuilding output for both commercial and military vessels, according to the WSJ. Meanwhile, the U.S. represents just a small fraction of the globe’s total shipbuilding output, and its Navy struggles to expand amid maintenance delays, worker shortages and a lack of supplies.

‘The scale [of China’s shipbuilding] is just almost hard to fathom,’ Thomas Shugart, adjunct senior fellow on maritime competition at the Center for a New American Security, told the WSJ. ‘The degree to which it dwarfs American shipbuilding is just unbelievable.’

In 2002, China represented roughly 8% of the world’s total shipbuilding output; that number had more than quadrupled by 2012 and hit 51% by 2023, according to the WSJ. China’s ship-making powerhouse underscores a larger goal by Beijing and Chinese President Xi Jinping to assert full control over the maritime stage militarily and economically, as the country’s shipbuilding docks often build both naval and commercial vessels…”