To counteract China’s maritime and naval industrial dominance, the U.S. secretary of the navy is considering building commercial ships with Japanese support that would also be suitable for military use in an emergency.

In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Navy Secretary John C. Phelan said he was planning to discuss the idea of "dual-use" shipbuilding with Defense Minister Gen Nakatani during a meeting on Monday in Tokyo.

Phelan, who arrived in Japan on Sunday, was also expected to visit Japan Marine United's Isogo Works shipyard in Yokohama later in the day before flying to South Korea, where he is slated to visit several other shipbuilders as he reportedly seeks to pitch them on investing in U.S. shipyards.

The navy secretary said in the interview that the U.S. must “look at all options" when it comes to faster shipbuilding and deterring China — including building “dual-use” ships.

In a conflict, commercial ships will be required to support combat vessels, as was widely seen in the two world wars, he said, adding, "We need to be thinking along those lines.”

Considering that the U.S. Navy and the Maritime Self-Defense Force often operate jointly, Phelan suggested the two sides "try to build that into both our commercial and our military shipbuilding."

"I would love to understand ways we could incent Japanese companies to come here (the United States) and look at potentially investing," Phelan said.

Japan is the world’s third-largest commercial shipbuilder behind China and South Korea.

It remains unclear whether the proposal is separate from the work of Ship Repair Council Japan — part of a broader effort between the two navies to coordinate ship maintenance and repairs at private Japanese shipyards.

Launched in January 2024, the council — which is linked to the bilateral Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition and Sustainment (DICAS) forum — aims to ease the maintenance backlog at U.S. shipyards, allowing them to focus on building new vessels while enhancing deterrence by keeping forward-deployed U.S. Navy ships in service and in the region for longer periods.

South Korea is already stepping in to support Washington's efforts to expand U.S. shipbuilding capacity while expanding its own footprint in the United States.

For instance, Hanwha Ocean acquired a major U.S. shipyard in Philadelphia for $100 million last year and, more recently, it announced the completion of its first-ever overhaul of a U.S. naval vessel. In addition, South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries and Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest military shipbuilding company in the United States, signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this month designed to explore opportunities to “accelerate ship production in support of defense and commercial shipbuilding projects.”

Washington’s idea appears to be aimed at attracting investment from allies and partners, particularly shipbuilding powerhouses Japan and South Korea, to strengthen the U.S. shipbuilding industry and start closing the gap with Beijing.

China’s ability to convert commercial ships for military use “at least on the surface, appears to be pretty quick,” Phelan said, warning that without the right steps, “it gets very, very hard to catch up.”

In just a few decades China went from 4.7% of global commercial ship completions by gross tonnage in 2000 to 51.9% of open-order gross tonnage in 2023. That same year China beat Greece to become the world’s largest shipowning nation by tonnage.

Last year Chinese shipyards booked 74% of all new-build orders by tonnage, according to the Marine Insight magazine, making it the undisputed leader of the global shipbuilding industry. The United States is currently in sixth place.

China’s shipbuilding capacity and expertise have also transformed the Chinese navy from a modest coastal force into the world’s largest, featuring a vast, modern fleet with global reach that is tilting the regional balance of power in Beijing's favor. This is even more concerning to Washington given that, since 2015, China has also been building certain commercial ships to the technical standards and design specifications of the People’s Liberation Army, ensuring they can be used by the military in a crisis.

Part of China's civil-military fusion drive, the shipbuilding regulations include five categories of vessels: container, roll-on/roll-off, multipurpose, bulk carrier and break bulk ships. Large PLA naval or amphibious exercises now regularly include some type of civilian ship, particularly when training for a potential Taiwan invasion.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company