Evolution of China's shipping policies and attention: Evidence from LDA analysis

China's shipping industry has undergone significant changes driven by evolving government policies. While previous research has largely overlooked a comprehensive analysis of China's shipping policies, this paper offers a systematic exploration of industrial policies from 2010 to 2023. Using a comprehensive dataset of central regulations and applying the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model for topic mining, the study provides a detailed examination of key policy trends and the evolving focus of government attention. The findings highlight the increasing emphasis on green and intelligent transformation, alongside the strategic importance of ports as logistics hubs, with a push for modernization and multimodal transportation. The study also notes the government's focus on ship operation management and port facility expansion, supported by tax and financial incentives to enhance international trade. China is transitioning toward a green, intelligent, and efficient development path, aligned with evolving socio-economic conditions. These emerging themes are expected to guide future policy directions. • Construct a dataset of China's shipping industry policies. • LDA method is used to extract topics from the shipping policy corpus. • Reveal the government's focus and shifts in attention on shipping development. • Green and intelligent transformation is the recent core focus of shipping policies. • Government emphasizes port hub development and multi-modal transport growth.