It may seem like a long shot, but the company, with annual turnover of about $700 million (536 million euros), is betting its future on the country's low engineering costs with a new research and development building staffed by about 800 researchers and engineers that is due to open shortly.
"Rapidly rising labor costs may end China's days as the low-end manufacturer to the world," Gao says. "But the upgrade of China to become a high-end manufacturer is about to take off, thanks to the country's low-cost researchers and engineers."
In developed Asian countries such as Japan, the lowest annual salary of an engineer can be as high as $50,000, but in the company's headquarters in Yantai, an engineer is paid less than $20,000, he says.
"That is China's biggest advantage in offshore rig building. I can't see why it can't overtake Singapore to become the world No 1."
However, even with its advantages of low costs and increasing orders resulting from robust offshore oil activity, the company has been losing money.
The company registered a loss of 1.1 billion yuan ($176 million; 135 million euros) in 2011, according to its financial report. Gao says it lost a lot less last year, but would provide no more detail.
The company has delivered all kinds of giant rigs since late 2010, from semi-submersible drilling platforms, pipe-laying vessels, to self-elevating drilling units, and, recently, a semi-submersible accommodation vessel as big as a football field for more than 500 people, but how to deliver those rigs on time to avoid financial losses has been a big challenge, Gao says.
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