China Post is to issue a set of four special stamps entitled China Shipbuilding Industry (Series 2) on April 23, 2024. The stamp designs are respectively named Aircraft Carrier—CNS Shandong, Type 055 Destroyer, China’s FirstDomestically-built Large Cruise Ship, and World’s First 23,000 TEU Dual-Fuel Container Ship. The denomination of the whole set is 4.8 yuan. The planned circulation is 7.4 million sets, and 900,000 sheets for layout 2.

After the reform and opening-up, shipbuilding is the first industry in China to go global and engage in international competition. Today, China has become a major country whose shipbuilding industry has world influence, with its product range covering all types of ships in the market, and the development, design, technology and management increasingly improving. After more than 70 years of arduous efforts, China’s shipbuilding industry has made important contributions to the development of national defense and national economy, and its brilliant achievements have attracted worldwide attention.

On December 17, 2019, the first domestically-built aircraft carrier, CNS Shandong, was officially delivered in Hainan, marking that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy officially ushered in the era of domestic aircraft carriers. The CNS Nanchang, commissioned in the PLA Navy in January 2020, is the first Type 055 destroyer independently developed by China, and typically represents the new quality combat capabilities of the PLA Navy. The delivery of China’s first domestically-made large cruise ship, Adora Magic City, indicates that China has become a country that can build aircraft carriers, large liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and large cruise ships at the same time. The world’s first 23,000 TEU dual-fuel container ship was officially delivered in September 2020. Its dual-fuel power system is the first of its kind that uses LNG as the main fuel on ultra-large container ships in the world, and its greatest advantage is that it conforms to the world’s most stringent emission standard and can greatly reduce environmental pollution compared with traditional fuel container ships.

The stamps showcase the brilliant achievements China has made in the field of shipbuilding from the aspects of maritime defense, ocean tourism and ocean transportation. As the four hulls are quite different in their actual sizes, they are aligned on the stamps from particular perspectives and directions so as to become adaptable to the pictures. The vessels are framed against different styles of marine landscapes, which makes the color of the stamps fresh and rich, and highlights the distinctive visual feature of each vessel.

The set of stamps is designed by Shen Jiahong and printed by Beijing Stamp Printing House Company Limited via offset technology.

This set of stamps will be available for 6 months at designated postal outlets nationwide, online mall of China Philately (https://jiyou.11185.cn), the mobile app of China Post, the WeChat Mall for philatelic products in the official WeChat account and the WeChat mini program of China Post Group. To present more information about the stamps, China Post will release their digital contents through the WeChat mini program “Encyclopedia of China Philately and Stamps”, where philatelists can learn more about the stamps via its AR function.