China's first domestically built cruise ship expected to be delivered this year

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China's first domestically built cruise ship expected to be delivered this year

Domestically built liner to be delivered to the local tourism market at the end of the year.

China's first large domestically-made cruise ship is being built by Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding at a shipyard in Shanghai. It is expected to be delivered around the end of the year. According to a project manager at China State Shipbuilding Corp, China's first large domestically-made cruise ship is scheduled to be delivered to its user around the end of the year.

We completed 90 percent of the cruise ship's construction so far. The engineers have begun to install inner equipment and decoration, and fine-tune devices already mounted. In June we plan to move the vessel out of the dry dock to continue the outfitting process, according to Chen Gang, general manager of Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding and chief designer of the cruise ship.

After the construction finishes, there will be two sea trials in the summer to test the vessel's capacity and its subsystems, and also to check whether the rooms and entertainment facilities are comfortable, according to Chen.

There will be about 25 million components on the ship after its completion, five times that of China's domestically designed C 919 jetliner and 13 times that on the country's Fuxing-series bullet train. The total length of electric cables on the vessel is more than 4,200 kilometers, the manager said, noting that his shipyard has used a host of advanced techniques and machinery to build the ship.

In November 2018, CSSC, a State-owned conglomerate and the world's largest shipbuilder, signed a cooperation agreement regarding the design and construction of two 135,500 metric-ton Vista-class cruise ships with Carnival Corp and Fincantieri.

Carnival, a British-American cruise operator, is the world's largest leisure travel company, while Fincantieri, an Italian company, is one of the world's largest cruise ship makers.

According to the agreement, CSSC will work with Fincantieri to design the ships, which will be built based on the Chinese market's needs and Chinese tourists' needs. The three parties also agreed to an option for another four vessels of the same type.

Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of CSSC, will build the ships and then deliver the ships to a joint venture between CSSC and Carnival that will be tasked with operating the vessels to serve the Chinese tourism market.

China has built a large, advanced cruise ship on its own for the first time. It marks a new milestone for the nation's shipbuilding industry because it marks the end of China's inability to design and build large cruise ships, according to shipbuilding industry experts.

The first of the colossal cruise lines will be 323.6 meters long, 37.2 meters wide and 72 meters tall, roughly the height of a 25-story residential building. It will be powered by five diesel generators and driven by two electric thrusters.

The gigantic craft will have a cruising speed of 33 kilometers per hour and a maximum speed of about 42 km h.

The vessel will have 2,125 passenger rooms, capable of accommodating 5,246 tourists. There will be nearly 700 rooms for the crew. The construction of the first cruise ship, which has yet to be named, started at the shipyard in October 2019.