What growth opportunities are hidden beneath the wave of the blue economy?

Contributor of HBR China, Partner of Dacheng Law Offices, Zhou Hua

Over the past decade or so, a large amount of industrial investment and financing and corporate advisory work has revolved around "whether the industry has future growth potential". Whether the industrial chain can expand, whether policies support it, whether capital is willing to invest, and the recognition of new marine productive forces by the capital market are all important references for judging the potential of an industry. In the process of sorting out long - term policies and industrial evolution, the value of the marine economy has become prominent.

Three Directions for Marine Economic Growth

To truly promote the development of the marine economy, infrastructure capabilities must come first. Its core can be summarized into three aspects, which are also the key points for marine economic growth in the future:

The first is marine engineering capabilities. The biggest difference between maritime economic activities and land - based economic activities lies in the reliability of physical space. The construction of projects such as sea bridges, undersea tunnels, offshore platforms, and drilling facilities is the physical space prerequisite for all maritime economic activities. Without engineering capabilities, the marine space cannot become a sustainably utilized production space.

The second is the marine equipment system. It includes ships, offshore engineering equipment, undersea robots, offshore wind power equipment, deep - sea mining equipment, unmanned boats, etc. These equipment determine the scope, depth, and efficiency of operations in the marine space, and are also the key to whether the industry can be established and the industrial chain can be extended.

The third is new marine infrastructure. Submarine cables, marine monitoring networks, intelligent sensing systems, marine data collection and transmission capabilities, and professional large - scale models trained based on massive data are gradually enabling the ocean to move from being "difficult to observe and calculate" to being "analyzable, predictable, and utilizable". For example, the emergence of the "Haiwu" large - scale model marks that marine data resources are entering the stage of large - scale application.

These three aspects together form the underlying support for carrying out marine economic activities. Only when the basic capabilities are mature can the marine space meet the conditions for hosting a more complete industrial system.

Three New Trends in Marine Economic Growth

In recent years, the development speed of the marine economy has significantly accelerated, and the industrial chain is moving from traditional industries to a diversified and structured system.

On the one hand, the industrial map continues to expand.

From in - shore fisheries and port shipping to offshore wind power, marine ranches, offshore photovoltaics, marine biotechnology, and seabed resource development, multiple emerging industries have begun to take shape. Some coastal provinces have combined the marine economy with "new productive forces" to promote innovative exploration in equipment manufacturing, resource utilization, and industrial integration.

On the other hand, the power of technology - driven development is rapidly increasing.

Intelligent monitoring equipment, unmanned equipment, marine big - data platforms, and professional large - scale models are improving the long - standing limitation of scarce marine data, enabling the marine space to have digital management capabilities. For the first time, the marine economy has the possibility of advancing into the deep sea, developing on a large scale, and evolving into a "computable space".

In addition, sustainable development has become an inevitable requirement for the marine industry.

Practices such as the ecological construction of marine ranches, the integration model of wind power and fisheries, and the resource utilization of marine garbage show that on the premise of protective development, industrial upgrading and ecological balance can be balanced, which is also more in line with future international trends.

Overall, the marine economy is undergoing a structural transformation from resource - dependence to technology - driven development and from single - point industries to diversified integration, which is also one of the reasons why the blue economy is receiving more and more attention.

Three Pillars for Long - term Marine Economic Growth

Looking back at the industrial changes over the years, the long - term value of the marine economy mainly comes from three logics.

First, the ocean is a new incremental space. Land resources are relatively scarce, and the industrial development space is limited, while the ocean provides new physical and economic space for industrial expansion.

Second, key technological capabilities are maturing. The bottlenecks that have restricted the marine economy in the past - engineering capabilities, equipment capabilities, data capabilities, and service capabilities - are being gradually broken through. Once these basic capabilities are in place, industrial expansion is a natural process.

Third, the national strategic direction is clear and continuous. From the construction of a maritime power to the development of the blue economy, from policy planning to regional demonstrations, the marine economy is not a short - term issue but a long - term structural and new growth direction.

For enterprises, this is an opportunity for new scenarios, new businesses, and new industrial chains; for capital, it is an industrial group with a long cycle, heavy infrastructure requirements, heavy investment, and stable returns; for industrial research and policy - making, it means the future development direction and important industrial layout.

Written by Zhou Hua

Zhou Hua is a partner at Dacheng Law Offices. He has long been focused on the marine economy and investment and financing in the marine industry. He has continuously visited relevant enterprises and incubated relevant projects to promote practical exploration in the coordination of law, capital, and the industry in the marine economy. In recent years, Lawyer Zhou Hua's team has proposed the "Ten - Thousand - Thousand - Hundred - Ten - Hundred - Million Project", which means tracking ten thousand marine - related enterprises, visiting one thousand marine - related professionals, collecting one hundred marine - related industrial policy documents, investing in ten marine - related projects, and reaching an investment amount of one hundred million yuan by 2030.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Harvard Business Review" (ID: hbrchinese). Author: Zhou Hua. Republished by 36Kr with permission.