The quality of smaller boats already on the market from Chinese manufacturers "is still very poor," said Jeffrey Seah, general manager for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Mercury Marine, one of the world's largest boat-engine makers and a division of the Brunswick Corporation of Lake Forest, Ill.
"Chinese technology for boat building is 20 years behind," added Mr. Seah, whose company's China operation sells and distributes engines and operates a marina, hoping to interest more Chinese in leisure boating.
Lau Wai Keung, a marine engine specialist from China Engineers in Hong Kong who is helping Kingship install its Caterpillar engines, said that engines made in China were nowhere close to being competitive for use in yachts. A Chinese boat engine with the same horsepower as an American engine is 40 percent heavier and much bulkier, he said. That would mean a slower boat with a less roomy interior.
Foreign producers' confidence might seem misplaced, given China's growing export success with many other products, including high technology like notebook computers. Yet in the yacht market, Chinese manufacturers will not have the immediate feedback from local customers that their colleagues in other industries get for products with domestic sales.
A market has emerged for smaller vessels and marinas to hold them, and people who like the 40-footers might someday want the yachts being built by Kingship and Cheoy Lee. The China Jin Mao Group, a big property developer, has opened a boat club with a marina on the Huangpu River in Shanghai. The marina has five powerboats, up to 46 feet long and counted as commercial vessels, that can be chartered by the 1,800 club members, said Hu Yubo, the assistant general manager. Waiting lists to use the boats have the club planning to buy more.
The few, determined owners of the country's large powerboats sometimes fly in mechanics from Hong Kong and even Europe. And the mechanics must cope with a shortage of docks where yachts can be lifted out of the water.
Bart J. Kimman, a yacht broker with Simpson Marine, Asia's largest yacht brokerage company, says he discourages mainland Chinese tycoons from buying yachts unless they plan to keep them in Hong Kong, as a few have, even though regulations make it almost impossible to sail Hong Kong boats into mainland China waters.
But Mr. Liang, after more than two decades as a big investor on the mainland, is not entirely sorry that he will have to stick to exports. He would rather not show his yachts to too many mainlanders.
"If you sell something well, someone will copy you," he said. "It happens right away."
