Welcome to The World in 10.
In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security.
I'm Laura Cook with Alex Dibble.
China is building warships faster than the United States.
But the rate at which China is outpacing America in this critical area is both astonishing and concerning US officials.
And it's put Donald Trump on the back foot as he tries to win the global superpower struggle.
Our guest today is William Hennigan,
an expert on US industrial policy and a former director for international economics on the National Security Council.
William, just put the rate of building into a bit of context for us.
It's about six to 1.8 to the US.
So that's six Chinese warships built for every 1.8 US warships.
That doesn't sound like a huge gap, but it's really,
really crazy when you think about the fact that the US has a $32.5 billion annual US naval shipbuilding budget,
which is 40% of the global military shipbuilding market.
And we're still sort of... a third behind the Chinese by comparison.
And then if you rebound that over into the commercial market,
which has plenty of dual-use assets when you think about how you're moving supply,
materiel, and men into a particular theater of conflict.
Chinese shipyards booked three quarters of new commercial orders last year,
which means that if we kept on this growth trajectory,