The world’s largest fishing fleet is about to get a little bit smaller. Chinese officials say they will reduce the number of fishing boats sent out to coastal waters to help restore fish stocks. But environmental groups say that’s just part of the story. HPR’s Bill Dorman has more in today’s Asia Minute.
China’s Agriculture Minister says the country needs to cut the size of its fishing fleet saying there are “practically no fish” in the coastal East China Sea and many other coastal waters are also depleted. The South China Morning Post reports the minister made the comments this weekend to China National Radio. The Chinese government-run Global Times followed up Monday with an article that detailed a “severe amount of overfishing” and what it called “weak government supervision on excessive and illegal fishing.”
China’s government may be starting to catch up with criticism from elsewhere. Most headlines about last month’s international court ruling on the South China Sea focused on the tribunal’s position against China’s territorial claims….but it also criticized Chinese overfishing in the area. Earlier this month, Greenpeace blasted China’s long-distance fishing industry---saying that its growth is “endangering” the supply of fish in oceans around the world.
Greenpeace says Chinese government subsidies to the fishing industry are making the situation worse….adding that fuel subsidies in particular have allowed the long-distance Chinese fishing fleet to grow to ten times the size of its US counterpart. The World Bank says demand for seafood in China will increase by nearly a third by the year 2030.
