China's natural advantages of state subsidies, cheap labour and booming exports will allow it occupy another global top slot with its shipbuilding industry now edging South Korea to the number two spot as the world's top shipbuilder.

As for South Korea, it will be the first time it will have slipped to the number two position after 2003, when it finished behind Japan. South Korea is home to seven of the world's top 10 shipyards.

According to Clarkson Research Services, a leading London-based integrated shipping services provider and market researcher, the total completed shipbuilding volume of Korean shipyards stood at 13.36 million compensated gross tons (CGT) in the first 10 months of the year, compared to Chinese firms' 14.8 million CGTs.

The market share of Korea and China for that category was 31.8 percent and 35.3 percent, respectively.

According to Clarkson, Korean shipbuilders also lagged behind their Chinese counterparts in the number of new orders they won in the same 10-month period, accounting for a combined 9.81 million CGTs of orders as against a Chinese gain of 11.7 million CGTs.

The Korean new orders accounted for 37.9 per cent of the global total whilst the Chinese new orders accounted for 45.3 per cent of the world's total.

The order backlogs at Korean shipyards, as of 1 Nov, stood at 45.39 million CGTs, far below that of Chinese shipbuilders, which stood at 51.67 million CGTs.

''In light of the current trend, it is almost certain that China will overtake Korea and emerge as the world's largest shipbuilding country this year,'' an industry source said. ''China has a lot of small and medium-sized shipyards, most of whose orders are coming from within the country,'' Clarkson said.

The researcher pointed out that the global downturn hadn't affected the Chinese shipbuilding industry, which grew exponentially over the past few years on the back of cheap labour, government support and technological development