On September 17, the 2026 "Chasing the Chinese Dream, Discovering Liaoning" overseas Chinese-language media delegation visited Dalian Shipbuilding Offshore Engineering Co., Ltd. ("DSIC Offshore"), a company that has risen from the brink of a debt crisis to become one of the world's leading offshore engineering builders. Originally the offshore engineering division of Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. (DSIC), the company has taken part in building China's first generation of offshore oil drilling platforms since the 1970s; after relocating to its current Dalian Bay site in 2006, it has delivered more than 30 offshore engineering projects for domestic and overseas clients, and in 2015 became one of the first shipyards certified under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "whitelist" for offshore engineering equipment.

After the global oil and gas market peaked in 2013 and began a structural decline the following year, a wave of shipowners defaulted on or abandoned their orders, plunging DSIC Offshore into a severe debt crisis. In January 2019, the Dalian Intermediate People's Court accepted the company's bankruptcy reorganization case, with Shanghai's Fangda Partners appointed as administrator; as potential investors withdrew one after another, the company came close to liquidation.

At that critical juncture, the Liaoning provincial government, the Dalian municipal government and Party committee, the Dalian court and other authorities stepped in. The administrator and management team used a 1.782 billion yuan insurance payout from Sinosure for shipowner defaults as the funding source for reorganization, converted ordinary creditor claims into equity, kept the existing management team in place, and devised an innovative "self-rescue" restructuring plan that won broad support from creditors, former controlling shareholder DSIC Group and the entire workforce. The Dalian court approved the reorganization plan in June 2021; that November, Sinosure's Liaoning branch paid out the 1.782 billion yuan — the largest single payout Sinosure has made in the offshore engineering sector to date. Under the plan, 94 financial and operational creditors converted their claims into equity in Dalian Lingang Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co., Ltd., with seven financial institutions holding 82.06% of DSIC Offshore through a partnership vehicle (SPD Bank 23.7%, Eximbank 22%, Bank of China AMC 13.7%, China Citic AMC 13.7%, ICBC AMC 11.5%, China Merchants Bank 9.3%, China Construction Bank 6.1%). Hejun Capital serves alongside management as co-general-partner of the holding platform on behalf of the financial institutions — the first case of its kind in China of unlisted-company creditors carrying out a "self-rescue" restructuring.

The new DSIC Offshore was formally established on September 15, 2023, as a mixed-ownership enterprise controlled by central financial institutions, with a modern corporate governance structure built around its shareholders' meeting, board and supervisory board. The company now runs three complementary, cyclically-rotating business lines — carbon-neutral shipping, offshore engineering and commercial vessels — spanning a full range of CO2 carriers, small and mid-sized gas carriers, offshore support vessels, modules, offshore wind components, and small and mid-sized tankers and chemical carriers.

Since the restructuring, DSIC Offshore's performance has grown by leaps and bounds, with every key metric at a record high. In 2022–2023, the company sold five idle jack-up drilling platforms to Sinopec Shanghai Offshore Oil & Gas Exploration Bureau and China Oilfield Services Limited (COSL) for domestic offshore oilfield development, generating over 3 billion yuan in net cash inflow while supporting national energy security — turning a profit in 2022 and paying its first shareholder dividend in 2023, an unprecedented feat for a company in its first year after reorganization. In parallel, the company shifted toward carbon-neutral clean energy, winning contracts for the world's first four CO2 carriers ever built; two had been delivered by the end of 2024, with the remaining two due for delivery by late 2025, making DSIC Offshore the only shipyard in the world with hands-on experience building this class of vessel.

As payments from the sold platforms came in, the company's financial position improved markedly in the first half of 2024, and new orders quickly followed: a 2+2 tanker/chemical carrier order from a well-known British shipowner took effect in October 2024, a Norwegian BOA semi-submersible barge was signed that December, a 20,000-cubic-metre LNG bunkering vessel in July 2025, an 18,000-DWT multipurpose heavy-lift vessel on January 19, 2026, and a 12,000-cubic-metre CO2 carrier on January 29, 2026. The company is also in talks with neighboring Dalian COSCO Heavy Industry, in the same Dalian Bay port area, on stable mid-to-long-term production cooperation, having already launched four pilot projects — a 1,700-tonne floating dock section, 1,700- and 1,400-tonne pulp-carrier sections, and a GDM FPSO block — with both sides expected to jointly build at least two vessels a year (20,000–30,000 tonnes of steel input) from 2028 onward.

According to the company, DSIC Offshore is now pursuing a long-term strategy drawn up with professional advisers retained by its seven shareholders, focusing on CO2 carriers, small and mid-sized gas carriers, and small and mid-sized offshore commercial vessels — niches it describes as "too small for the big yards, too big for the small ones." Potential orders currently being tracked are worth an estimated $2–3 billion, and the company has drawn attention from outlets including Financial Insurance News, Xinhua, Liaoning TV, Norway's Upstream and China Ship Survey. With several projects due to launch or deliver in 2025, new-build output is projected to hold above 2 billion yuan a year in 2026–2027 and exceed 3 billion yuan a year from 2028 onward.