This workshop examines contrasting varieties of state capitalism through a comparative analysis of Italian and Chinese shipbuilding, with a focus on industrial policy, global competition, and shopfloor relations.
Building on two international conferences on deindustrialisation and industrial policy held in Vienna in 2023 and Munich in 2025, the workshop explores why two shipbuilding companies, Fincantieri in Italy and Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group in China, have proven resilient despite dominant narratives of European industrial decline and Chinese state-led capitalism.
Fincantieri’s survival as Europe’s largest shipbuilder since the turn of the millennium stands out against widespread bankruptcies in German and eastern European shipyards. While this outcome is often attributed to its strategic focus on technologically demanding cruise ships, the workshop highlights a less conventional factor, namely sustained majority state ownership and the long-term influence of trade unions, including through neoliberal reforms and its stock market listing in 2014. At the same time, Fincantieri’s competitiveness increasingly relies on labour reorganisation, including outsourcing to eastern Europe and the recruitment of migrant labour from south Asia.
The Chinese case challenges similarly entrenched assumptions. Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Group emerged from socialist industrialisation but rose to global prominence in the 1990s through privatisation, export orientation, and internal competition with state-owned enterprises, well before shipbuilding was declared a strategic industry in 2006. Its success suggests that China’s dominance in shipbuilding owes more to dynamic private firms and flexible labour regimes based on subcontracting and migrant labour than to direct state subsidies or price dumping.
Rather than treating shipbuilding as a sectoral exception, the workshop positions it as a frontrunner of globalisation and as a lens for understanding broader transformations in industrial capitalism, labour relations, and state intervention. The discussion aims to generate comparative insights relevant to interdisciplinary research and contemporary industrial policy debates, particularly in Europe.
At the EUI and the Robert Schuman Centre, we are dedicated to removing barriers and providing equal opportunities for everyone. Please indicate in the registration form your accessibility needs, if any. Alternatively, you can contact the logistics organiser of the event.