How to Assess the Offshore Wind Supply Chain: China's 2025 Installations, MNR's Deep-Water Siting and Sea-Use Rules, Where the Cost Sits by Component, the Design Standards for Fixed and Floating Turbines, and an Export-Market Price Signal

Short answer. Start with demand and siting, then follow the money by component, then check the design basis. China added 6.59 GW of offshore wind in 2025, bringing grid-connected offshore capacity to 47 GW out of 640 GW of wind. Since December 2024, new Chinese offshore farms must be sited more than 30 km offshore or in water deeper than 30 m, and floating projects are explicitly encouraged. CNWattHub reading: that pushes demand toward deeper-water foundations, longer export cables and floating designs. In NREL's US reference model the turbine accounts for 51.4% of manufactured-component value, monopile and transition piece for 16.0% and 11.9%, and cables and substation for most of the rest. Design requirements come from IEC 61400-3-1 for fixed turbines and IEC 61400-3-2:2025 for floating ones; China's older GB/T 31517-2015 is recorded as replaced. This guide sets out each layer and ends with a checklist.

1. Demand: what China built and generated

In 2025 China added 120 GW of wind capacity, of which 110 GW onshore and 6.59 GW offshore. At the end of 2025 cumulative grid-connected wind capacity was 640 GW, of which 47 GW offshore; wind generated 1.13 trillion kWh and average utilisation was 94%. MNR's 2025 marine-economy bulletin reports offshore wind generation of 109.27 billion kWh (+3.3%) and value added of RMB 54.1 billion for the marine power industry (+4.4%).

CNWattHub arithmetic: offshore was about 7.3% of cumulative wind capacity (47 / 640) and about 9.7% of wind generation (109.27 / 1,130 billion kWh), and 2025 offshore additions were about 5.5% of all wind additions (6.59 / 120). NEA and MNR are different statistical sources, so treat the generation share as approximate.

The same bulletin reports value added of RMB 185.8 billion (+10.2%) for marine engineering equipment manufacturing, described as a market recovering faster, and RMB 181.1 billion (+25.1%) for marine shipbuilding. These are sector aggregates; they do not separate wind-installation vessels, foundations or cables, and no source read for this guide gives Chinese manufacturing capacity or market shares for offshore components.

2. Siting and sea-use rules that shape the supply chain

MNR's notice of 30 December 2024 sets the spatial rules.

• Deep water, far from shore. New projects must be more than 30 km offshore or in water deeper than 30 m; where nearshore water exceeds 30 m the farm must still be at least 10 km out, and where tidal flats exceed 30 km the water depth in the farm must be at least 10 m. Distance is the nearest distance from the farm's outer envelope to the mainland coastline, which here includes Hainan Island and islands hosting county-level or higher government seats; depth is the shallowest point in the farm on the latest chart.
• Zoning. Farms may sit only in renewable-energy sea-use zones or zones compatible with wind; central Bohai and other heavy-traffic waters are strictly limited; ecological red lines, protected areas, important shipping routes, anchorages, important fishery waters and other important, sensitive and fragile ecological areas are excluded; concentrated, clustered development is encouraged.
• Approval. Projects using 700 hectares or more, or lying outside or across provincial waters, need State Council approval, with MNR pre-review before project approval; smaller projects in provincial waters are approved locally. Sea-use rights are to be transferred by market methods coordinated with competitive allocation of projects, with 'clean-sea transfer' (surveys, assessment and pricing completed before transfer) encouraged.
• Floating, composite use, upgrades and removal. Floating projects are encouraged; their anchor-chain area is open-type sea use bounded by the anchor-point polygon, excluding the confirmed turbine area. 'Wind-plus' uses such as aquaculture, offshore PV, hydrogen and storage are encouraged. Existing farms may upgrade (capacity expansion, turbine upgrades or layout optimisation) where the overall farm area is unchanged and the sea-use plan is demonstrated feasible, with sea-use change procedures completed; turbines, piles, anchor chains and cables must be removed when rights expire without renewal. The notice covers internal waters and the territorial sea and lets already-accepted applications continue under the old rules.

CNWattHub reading: the 30 km / 30 m rule, the State Council threshold and the decommissioning duty all change what a developer will buy — deeper-water foundations or floaters and moorings, longer export cables, and a removal plan priced into the contract. The notice's attachment with sea-use intensity indicators was not retrieved, so no per-MW area limit is quoted here.

3. Where the cost sits: component shares and CapEx

The only component-level cost breakdown in the sources read is NREL's, for US reference projects in 2023 dollars; use it to see where value sits, not as a Chinese price.

For the fixed-bottom reference project in the US North Atlantic, CapEx is 5,411 USD/kW: turbine 1,770, balance of system 2,629 (substructure 764, installation 830, array 251, export 227, substation 243, among others) and soft costs 1,012. For the floating reference project off the US Pacific coast, in 739 m of water against 34 m for fixed-bottom, CapEx is 7,349 USD/kW, with the substructure at 1,541, mooring at 651 and installation at 1,058.

CNWattHub arithmetic: the turbine is about 33% of fixed-bottom CapEx (1,770 / 5,411) and about 24% of floating CapEx (1,770 / 7,349); substructure plus installation is about 29% of fixed-bottom CapEx ((764 + 830) / 5,411) and, with mooring, about 44% of floating CapEx ((1,541 + 651 + 1,058) / 7,349). For a supply-chain review this means the foundation, installation and mooring links carry a large share of the cost and deserve the same supplier scrutiny as the turbine.

4. Design basis and certification

• Fixed turbines. IEC 61400-3-1:2019 outlines the minimum design requirements for fixed offshore turbines, is not a complete design specification, and leaves the division of responsibility among designers, manufacturers and installers to contract.
• Floating turbines. IEC 61400-3-2:2025 (published 22 January 2025, 345 pages) specifies site-condition assessment and design requirements for floating turbines; it replaces the 2019 technical specification and absorbs the relevant parts of 61400-3-1 so that it stands alone.
• China. GB/T 31517-2015 海上风力发电机组 设计要求 is recorded as replaced, with an abolition date of 12 October 2022; its own scope summary says its requirements cannot fully ensure the integrity of floating turbines. The retrieved record does not name the replacing standard.
• Certification. One Chinese certification body's turbine rule (CGC-R46001, 2026 revision) includes offshore as a certification category, requires offshore turbines to have facilities for a week's emergency refuge and special safety equipment, and extends optional foundation design evaluation to the substructure. It is one body's rule, not a government requirement.

CNWattHub reading: a supplier quoting a design to GB/T 31517-2015 alone is citing a document recorded as replaced; ask which current standard and which edition of IEC 61400-3-1 or 61400-3-2 the design and certificate follow.

5. An export-market price signal

In the UK's Allocation Round 7 (results published 14 January 2026), 6,865 MW of offshore wind cleared at £65.45/MWh in 2012 prices (£91.20 in 2024 prices), 1,380 MW of 'Offshore Wind – Scotland' at £64.23 (£89.49), and 192.50 MW of floating wind at £155.37 (£216.49). CNWattHub reading: these are CfD strike prices for generation projects in one export market — a demand-side price signal, not an equipment budget; they are not Chinese prices and say nothing about local-content rules, which this guide did not read.

Reading table

Checklist

CNWattHub editorial method, not a sourced rule:

1. Map the project against MNR's distance and depth rules and its approval tier before shortlisting foundation and cable suppliers.
2. Split the bill of materials using the component shares above and identify a qualified second source for the turbine nacelle, blades, monopile or floater, transition piece, export cable and substation.
3. Ask each supplier for the design standard and edition (IEC 61400-3-1:2019, IEC 61400-3-2:2025 or the current Chinese standard) and for the certificate category covering offshore use.
4. Confirm installation-vessel availability and port capacity in writing; the official sources here give no vessel statistics.
5. Price the decommissioning duty (removal of turbines, piles, chains and cables) into the contract.
6. For export projects, compare the target market's auction price with the supplier's delivered cost, and read that market's local-content rules separately.

Scope limits

NEA and MNR statistics, one MNR notice (via the MOFCOM regulations database), IEC and Chinese standards catalogue pages, one certification body's rule, NREL's US cost review and one UK auction result only. No Chinese component manufacturing capacity, market share, tender price or vessel data is quoted; EU subsidy and wind-package documents were not retrievable. Not engineering, procurement or investment advice.