<h1 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;"><span style="color:#0000CD;"><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>China’s shipbuilding boss confident on cruiseships</strong></span></span><br></h1><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Dalian: The boss of China’s shipbuilding association is confident the nation will be building cruiseships in the very near future.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Guo Dacheng, the new president of the China Association of National Shipbuilding Industry (CANSI) spoke to AsiaCruise News at Shiptec China in Dalian this morning.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Guo said he was keeping a close eye on the progress of cruise building in China, following the recent signing between state shipbuilding conglomerate CSSC, global cruise giant Carnival and European builder Fincantieri to pursue cruise building in the People’s Republic.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">“We are very excited about building cruiseships in China,” he said, adding: “Currently CSSC is working on the various preparation work and I think we will enter this market in the very near future and it will be a new breakthrough of China’s shipbuilding industry.”</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Carnival’s Chinese ship plans follow on from Royal Caribbean’s mooted tie up with a CSSC yard in Xiamen to look at building ships too.&nbsp;</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 5px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;"><br></p>