Data recently released by the Ministry of Natural Resources show that, after preliminary accounting, the gross marine product in 2023 amounted to 9,909.7 billion yuan, an increase of 6.0 per cent over the previous year, 0.8 percentage points higher than the growth rate of the national economy, showing a strong recovery trend. Gross marine product accounted for 7.9% of GDP, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the previous year.

  Cui Xiaojian, deputy director of the National Marine Information Center, analyzed that three major demands drove the marine economy to rise in quantity and quality.

  First, consumption in the marine sector continues to recover and improve. With the expansion of domestic demand and the promotion of consumption policies and measures have landed, the residents' consumption demand has accelerated the release of the marine tourism consumption market is obviously warming up, driving the rapid recovery of service consumption in the coastal areas such as lodging, food and beverage, transportation, etc. The volume of marine passenger traffic and passenger turnover increased by 122.3% and 125.4% year-on-year respectively in 2023.The tourism revenue of Jiangsu and Hainan increased by 45.7% year-on-year respectively in 2023, 71.9%, which has exceeded the level of 2019.

  The data show that the consumption of marine tourism in 2023 tends to be diversified, and the integration of business forms continues to emerge. "Performing arts + marine tourism", "museums + marine tourism" and so on have become new hot spots. Residents' diet gradually upgraded to quality, marine aquatic products consumption market supply and demand. 2023 national aquatic products imports increased by 4.7% year-on-year, marine aquatic products prices rose by 3.9% year-on-year.

  Secondly, marine fixed asset investment is increasing well. In terms of port construction, from January to November 2023, fixed asset investment in coastal ports completed 83.5 billion yuan, up 16.8% year-on-year, the growth rate accelerated by 10.5 percentage points compared with the same period of the previous year, and the level of port greening and intelligence was further improved. The construction of cross-sea high-speed railroad and submarine tunnel continued to advance, and the construction of Fuxia high-speed railroad, Dalian Bay submarine tunnel and extension project were completed and put into use.

  Thirdly, the quantity and quality of marine foreign trade is stable and rising.2023, in the face of international demand downturn and international geopolitical uncertainty and other multiple risks and challenges, China's marine shipbuilding industry's three major indicators of marine ship completion, newly received marine ship orders, and hand-held marine ship orders are leading in the world, and ships were exported to 191 countries and regions, with the export value increasing by 35.4% year-on-year. With China's new energy automobile export scale grows sharply, the new orders for car carriers accounted for 82.7% of the global total. 2023, China's coastal ports international routes container throughput growth of more than 4% year-on-year, coastal ports completed foreign trade cargo throughput growth of nearly 10% year-on-year.

  It is worth noting that China's marine manufacturing industry growth rate is higher than the national. Data show that in 2023, the value added of the marine manufacturing industry 298.61 billion yuan, an increase of 7.0% over the previous year, higher than the national growth rate of the manufacturing industry by 2 percentage points.

  Among them, the added value of the marine ship industry was 115 billion yuan, an increase of 17.6% over the previous year. Marine engineering equipment manufacturing industry is developing well, the annual added value of 87.2 billion yuan, an increase of 5.9% over the previous year. Domestic and foreign market demand for China's chemical products, production and sales increased, marine chemical industry added value of 434.3 billion yuan, an increase of 10% over the previous year.

  Meanwhile, the marine service industry boosted the growth of the national economy. in 2023, the added value of the marine service industry was 5,896.8 billion yuan, accounting for 4.7% of the GDP, and pulling the growth of the national economy by 0.3 percentage points.

  In addition, China's marine energy supply capacity has steadily improved. The output of marine crude oil and natural gas increased by 5.8% and 9.1% year-on-year respectively, and the increase in the output of marine crude oil accounted for more than 60% of the country's total increase in crude oil for four consecutive years. Offshore wind power generation increased by more than 17% year-on-year.