The reform of Chinese state-owned ship crewing agencies and implications for China’s seafaring labour export

China’s economy has experienced dramatic growth in the last 30 years. Since the 1990s, Chinese seafarers were expected to sweep the world’s seafarers’ labour market. Although China’s seafarer labour export has been growing since the 1990s, it is still lower than the expectation of the international shipping industry and some academics (BIMCO/ISF 1995; Li and Wonham 1999; Sharma 2002; Wu 2004; Wu, Shen, and Li 2007). This article aims to explain the overestimates of the likely progress of China’s seafarer export by illustrating the extent of the reform and market orientation of China’s state-owned crewing agencies (SCAs). It draws on fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2013 in two SCAs, which have reformed to different degrees and represent the largest examples of two types of Chinese crewing agencies that dominate the seafarer labour export in China. It systematically examines the employment and labour supply strategies of the agencies and the consequences for seafarers and seafarer labour export. It raises the questions of the government and the higher institutions’ interventions in the SCAs and the extent of their reforms in affecting the seafarers and the seafarer labour export.