Since the opening up of the Chinese economy there has been considerable expansion in its ship repair and ship building capacity on account of low labour costs and investment incentives. Chinese yards are also continuously improving quality, expertise, productivity and broadening the range of work that they can undertake. China’s repair yards are all experiencing very high levels of utilisation and are suffering from shortages of skilled labour that is affecting the industry as a whole, and will need to reach further into its labour pool in order to find skilled employees. The country’s largest single repair yard is located on Mazhou Island in the Pearl River delta, near the growing port of Shenzen and is operated by the well-established Chinese ship repairer Yiu Lian Dockyards Vietnam is the most significant of the recent entrants in the world’s shipbuilding market, and is attracting considerable investment from foreign investors into its yards because of the support from the Vietnamese government, the availability of infrastructure and its large pool of skilled, low-cost labour. While it is understood that the majority of this foreign involvement is focused on newbuilding facilities, there will be an inevitable flow-on effect on other Vietnamese facilities; especially the older ones that may no longer be attractive for newbuilding construction, but which may find a niche by providing repair and conversion services.