Cities on the sea

Following the successful rollout of China's first home-grown large cruise ship, the Adora Magic City, the second large cruise ship independently built by China—the Adora Flora City—completed its sea trial mission on May 27, 2026. It is scheduled to be officially delivered in November and will then commence new routes.

From the Adora Magic City, which achieved a breakthrough in China's large cruise ship manufacturing, to the efficient sea trials of the Adora Flora City, within just a few years, the Chinese cruise vessel building sector has overcome a series of challenges in power systems, intelligent control, hull stability, interior craftsmanship, and other areas. The domestic cruise ship manufacturing industry has thus advanced from merely "being able to build" to a new stage of "building well, steadily, and fast."

Breakthrough from zero to one 

China's shipbuilding industry has long been a leader in the global market, with mature and comprehensive industrial systems for container ships, bulk carriers, and oil tankers. However, large cruise ships were once a glaring void during the high-end upgrading of China's shipbuilding industry.

International data shows that when a country's per capita GDP reaches US$5,000, its cruise market begins to take off. When it reaches between US$10,000 and US$40,000, the market grows rapidly. In other words, the target customers for cruise travel are mainly people with a certain level of disposable income. The rise of the domestic consumer market has provided a solid foundation for the development of the cruise industry in China.

On July 2, 2006, the Shanghai International Passenger Terminal, located near the Bund and facing Lujiazui across the Huangpu River, welcomed the first regular international cruise that set off from Shanghai—the Costa Allegra. This marked the start of China's cruise economy. Over the next decade or so, the number of domestic cruise passengers continued to grow rapidly. By 2019, China had become the world's second-largest market in terms of cruise passengers. The huge market demand accelerated China's pace of independently building large cruise ships.

After years of technical coordination and business negotiations, on February 22, 2017, leaders of China and Italy witnessed the signing of a memorandum of cooperation involving China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), Carnival Corporation, and Fincantieri on the first China-built large cruise ship. On November 6, 2018, at the first China International Import Expo, the three parties formally signed a construction contract for two Vista-class 135,000-ton large cruise ships, with an option for four more. CSSC Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. (SWS), leveraging its mature assembly capabilities and standardized factory system, became the only builder for the contract in China. At the end of 2023, the first ship, the Adora Magic City, was successfully delivered, and China thus became the fifth country in the world with the capability to independently build large cruise ships.

Dreaming of building large cruise ships

"On clear days, you can see Changxing Island across the water," said Wei Shengsheng, director of the Cruise Ship Project Department at SWS, from the deck of the Adora Flora City. Situated on the south bank of the South Channel of the Yangtze River estuary, the shipyard of SWS enjoys a prime location, with both the convenience of the estuary coastline and access to the supporting industrial infrastructure of Shanghai's thriving shipbuilding sector.

The shipyard has two dry docks. The eastern dock employs a tandem construction model, capable of delivering 16 ships annually. Under normal conditions, the western dock delivers eight ships per year. At peak production, the entire shipyard can turn out a total of 24 ships in a year.

Before steel plates entering the shipyard become a complete ship hull, they go through a series of processes: cutting, sub-assembly fabrication, shot-blasting pretreatment, large-block joining, and painting and coating, turning them into "giant building blocks." The cranes then lift these blocks and move them to the dry docks for final assembly.

Next to the western dry dock, the Thin Plate Center, specially established to produce thin plates for large cruise ships, stands out prominently. Yin Yihong, senior manager of the Information Department at SWS, explained that conventional commercial ships commonly use steel plates with thicknesses of 16 millimeters or more, which are structurally hard and resistant to deformation. However, for large cruise ships, to control the hull's deadweight and enhance passenger comfort, they use mostly thin plates ranging from four to eight millimeters in thickness. These thin plates have unique material properties and are highly prone to thermal deformation during welding. Even slight unevenness on the plate surface can affect the precision and flatness of subsequent cabin outfitting and interior installation.

"The thin-plate workshop uses laser hybrid welding technology throughout the entire production line, precisely controlling the heat input during welding to address the deformation problem at the source," said Yin Yihong. The dedicated thin-plate workshop essentially ensures the processing accuracy of cruise ship thin-plate blocks. The application rate of laser hybrid welding on the thin-plate blocks of the Adora Flora City reached approximately 93 percent, thereby improving the overall quality and efficiency of the construction process.

From manual exploration to data-driven development

In the thin-plate workshop, workers carry industrial tablets to receive production orders. The storage location, manufacturing progress, and equipment operating status of each steel plate are synchronized in real time through a working system. Yin Yihong explained that the workshop is fully covered by a manufacturing execution system, which automatically pushes daily production plans to terminal devices. When a process step is completed, the system reports automatically, without the need to input data manually. In addition, the system automatically allocates materials to trays based on the requirements of the next process, distinguishing material pallets by color codes, so workers can sort by demand, eliminating delays caused by manually searching for the wrong parts.

At SWS, a full set of digital systems is reshaping the way large cruise ships are built. The total design and construction period for the Adora Flora City has been shortened by about eight months, while production efficiency has been improved by about 20 percent, thanks to the deep application of digital and intelligent technologies. During construction of the first cruise ship, the domestic team lacked experience and worked largely by trial and error, with rework and corrections being the norm. To address these problems, SWS built a new 3D digital design platform and constructed a digital twin of the large cruise ship. Even before construction of the Adora Flora City began, the project team had already completed the vast majority of "virtual construction," eliminating design issues such as pipeline clashes at the earliest possible stage.

A large cruise ship requires about 25 million parts, 10 times more than a large aircraft and 50 times more than a high-speed train. Within the limited hull space, so many components must be precisely assembled through coordinating tens of thousands of working procedures. "In the construction process, people used to look for data," said Wang Zhangjian, head of the Design and Research Institute at SWS. "Now data finds people." When a problem is identified during the design phase, the system automatically determines who should be responsible and accurately pushes a work order to them. Designers can directly modify and verify the solution on the 3D model, greatly improving the efficiency of problem resolution. Thanks to this system, the number of design changes for the Adora Flora City was reduced by about 80 percent compared with the first ship, with the vast majority of problems resolved before the modeling stage.

For the Adora Flora City, the innovative approach of "earlier process advancement" was also a key factor behind the leap in efficiency. "When the Adora Magic City left the dry dock, the bridge glass and navigation equipment had not yet been installed," said Wei Shengsheng. "For the Adora Flora City, we moved many operations such as cabin embedment, pipeline routing, and equipment base installation forward to the block and pre-erection stages, converting linear operation into parallel operation, thus maximizing utilization of the dry dock."

Through full-process digital control and optimization of working methods, the sea trial schedule for the Adora Flora City also advanced by two months. Sea trials are the most important "final exam" before a new ship is delivered. On May 27, after 12 days and 11 nights of sea trials, the second domestically built large cruise ship sailed back to Pier No. 5 of SWS. In this comprehensive test covering the ship's maneuverability, safety, comfortability, and environmental performance, 937 engineers and technicians from 12 countries participated. The Adora Flora City passed all verification items in just one trial voyage. Its success was attributed not only to improved construction speed, but also to the maturity of capabilities in design, construction, organizational management, and industrial collaboration.

"When we built the first cruise ship, everyone lacked confidence when problems arose, because few could offer a tested answer," said Wei Shengsheng. "Now, on the second ship, we have a clearer understanding of the processes, standards, and details. Everyone is more confident."

With the continuous improvement of the domestic supporting industrial chain and the maturation of digital building models, the path for China's cruise industry to develop independently has now been clearly laid out.