China’s vast commercial fishing fleet
Plunders the oceans
And wrecks local economies
And it’s all part of the plan
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by MOVA Globes.
These are really amazing globes that spin on their own—without cords or batteries.
And whether you get this Black and Silver model...
...or one of the other great world map designs—you can appreciate the beauty of continents and
the vastness of the oceans.
Ocean life is essential to the ecology of the planet.
Unfortunately, humanity has been destroying the oceans—and one of the big culprits is
overfishing from commercial vessels.
No country understands this better than China.
China has fishing vessels spread across the world.
Not just in the South China Sea, but also in Africa and South America.
And China is truly number one…
...on the index of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated fishing.
This is from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
China is also number one in that its distant-water fishing fleet is by far the largest in the
world—with an estimated 17,000 vessels, according to the British Overseas Development
Institute.
And at least 183 vessels in China’s fleet are suspected of involvement in Illegal, Unreported,
and Unregulated fishing.
And that’s just the ones we know about.
It’s extremely hard to track and monitor what China’s fishing fleet is doing globally.
They often turn off transponders.
They don’t fill out mandated log records.
They create fake joint ventures with local boats.
. Or they fly another country’s flag—called a “flag of convenience”.
What I’m saying is that the Chinese Communist Party has Fish Pirates.
No, not like that.
Actually, in some ways, it’s more like a fish mafia.
Because China’s commercial fishing in a lot of parts of the world amounts to organized
crime.
It dominates fishing off the coast of many developing countries, stripping locals of
their economic livelihood.
The trail of environmental destrustruction in its wake...is just a bonus.
Here are just a few examples.
In the African country of Mozambique,
locals have relied on fishing to survive for centuries.
But now, Chinese commercial boats are dominating.
In 2017, the Chinese effectively took over a major port, doubling its capacity so it
could accommodate over 100 trawlers.
You might think, great, Chinese investment is expanding local fishing capacity!
But they’re not doing it for the locals.
Since 2017, Chinese trawlers have caught more than 60,000 tons of fish a year in the area.
This extreme overfishing depletes the adult fish, so there aren’t as many fish born
the next season.
On top of that, trawlers wreck the sea bed, making it harder to support the ecosystem
that fish need.
Chinese boats in Mozambique have simply pillaged the waters.
Local fisherman are seeing their fish stocks dwindle.
Why is the leadership of Mozambique allowing Chinese ships to do this?
It’s hard to say.
In unrelated news, Mozambique's president has been caught up in a massive corruption
scandal—involving 2 billion dollars that was supposed to pay for a coastal-protection
system and a local fishing fleet.
More after the break.
Welcome back.
Let’s move on to The Gambia.
That’s right, it’s called THE Gambia.
Ian Urbina , director of The Outlaw Ocean Project , joined a team that was inspecting
potential illegal fishing off the Gambian coast.
They boarded this Chinese trawler.
It had 7 Chinese officers on board, plus a crew of 39—all Africans, most of them below
deck on a dirty, cramped production line.
The Gambian Navy lieutenant he was with discovered the Chinese ship’s fishing log book was
blank.
All captains are required to keep records of where they go, how long they work, what
gear they use, and what they catch.
Not having those records makes it harder for scientists to survey fish stocks.
Also in the Gambia, a microbiologist found in 2017 that Golden Lead, a Chinese-owned
fishmeal plant, was dumping waste into this local lagoon.
Which, by the way, is not supposed to be this color.
“The water [in the lagoon] contained double the amount of arsenic and 40 times the amount
of phosphates and nitrates deemed safe.”
Similar problems are happening in neighboring Senegal.
The state-owned China National Fisheries Company “jointly” owns 12 Senegalese-flagged vessels
but in fact owns 100% of the shares.
That suggests China takes home the majority of the profits.
But it’s not just about sucking out profit.
It’s about illegal activities depleting fish stocks.
And “failing to hold true owners to account prevents the dismantling of networks behind
illegal fishing operations.”
Over in Ghana…
Chinese companies have manipulated records by using local front companies to get fishing
licenses.
“Ghanaian law requires that all trawlers operating in its waters are owned by Ghanaians,
but right now there are more than 100 Chinese trawlers plundering waters normally fished
by local boats.”
Each Chinese trawler can catch up to 26 tons of fish in a day.
That’s 400 times more than a local boat can bring in.
According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, at least 90% of the trawler fleet in Ghana’s
waters is actually Chinese-owned.
This is despite the fact that Ghana forbids foreign ownership of trawlers.
Surely local officials know what’s going on.
So why aren’t they stopping it?
It’s hard to say.
In unrelated news, Ghana loses 3 billion dollars to corruption each year.
Over in Latin America, it’s not much better.
China is rapidly expanding its maritime presence there.
Back in 2001, there were only 22 Chinese squid fishing vessels in the region.
By 2019 there were more than 500.
You’d be surprised at how many people really want to eat squid.
China’s South Atlantic fishing fleet is based in Montevideo, the capital and main
port of Uruguay.
According to Milko Schvartzman of Greenpeace , “absolutely no real controls are made
of any foreign fishing boat” there.
And “[China] effectively created a... pirate port in Montevideo.”
Again, they’re not the fun kind of pirates.
They’re the kind that destroys local fish habitats and sometimes enslaves their crew.
To get more squid.
Now let’s look at Peru.
The president of the Humboldt Squid Committee of the South Pacific estimates “that the
Chinese fleet may be illegally fishing 50,000 tonnes of [squid] in Peruvian waters every
year.”
This represents 85 million US dollars a year.
Of squid.
People really love squid.
But just wait till we get to Chinese fishing in the Galápagos Islands.
More after the break.
Welcome back.
Off the coast of Ecuador lie the Galápagos Islands—famously visited by Charles Darwin
nearly 200 years ago.
The area is home to rich and unique sea life.
That’s why Ecuador designated the area a protected marine reserve in 1998.
But to unscrupulous Chinese fishing companies, it’s a bonanza!
Last year, an armada of more than 300 Chinese vessels was caught plundering the waters around
the Galápagos.
Ecuador said that almost half of the vessels turned off their transponders.
What were they fishing?
You guessed it.
Squid.
Chinese fishermen also love catching sharks—just for the fins that get used in soup.
Back in 2017, the Ecuadorian Navy stopped a Chinese ship carrying more than 5,000 sharks,
including newborns and endangered species.
In 2020, authorities in Hong Kong seized 26 tons of shark fins from Ecuador, equivalent
to thirty-eight and a half thousand sharks.
Now that all sounds pretty bad.
But don’t worry, because according to Reuters, “China has promised a ‘zero tolerance’
policy toward illegal fishing.”
Which sounds good.
Because around the world, “China’s fishing fleet appears engaged, often illegally, in
the effort to haul in as much seafood as it can, as fast as it can, in as many places
as it can—with little regard for how its practices affect malnourished people or diminish
the stocks of their fish.”
But the Chinese government’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy is actually a lie.
What a surprise.
In fact, it’s a worse lie than you think it is.
Because all this global illegal fishing is not simply the Chinese government’s negligence,
or refusing to crack down on it.
No, the Chinese government is specifically backing it.
“It is government policy, because most vessels are in effect paid to fish by the Chinese
government, which covers the fleet’s main operating expense: fuel.”
China spends 5.9 billion dollars each year subsidizing fuel.
“That’s about 347,000 dollars per vessel per year, far more than any other major fishing
country.”
To put that into perspective, “European Union vessels, also considered highly subsidized,
receive only about 23,000 dollars a year.”
So why is the Chinese government subsidizing all of this illegal and environmentally destructive
fishing?
Is it because Xi Jinping is auditioning for the role of evil villian in the next Captain
Planet reboot?
Maybe.
But there are other—more likely—reasons, too.
One is, China needs seafood.
China already consumes more seafood than any other country, and it’s on track to consume
38% of all global fish by 2030.
China’s own coastal waters were once the richest in the world.
Now, they’ve been depleted by more than 85% after decades of overfishing.
But the Chinese Communist Party also has a political reason for these distant-water fishing
fleets: to establish its maritime claims.
Especially in the South China Sea.
For the Chinese fishing vessels in those disputed waters, some of them are normal, subsidized
fishermen.
But others are part of China’s maritime militia, “which means they never fish—they
just use fishing boats to monitor other fleets, run supplies, or ram other boats.”
That’s certainly what’s happening in places like the Spratly Islands.
We covered that in this recent episode of China Uncensored.
Chinese fishing boats there are just occupying territory until the military can build another
island.
Is that what’s happening in other parts of the world?
No.
Or at least...not yet.
For now, they’re just depleting fish populations, impoverishing local economies, and destroying
ecosystems for decades to come.
China is certainly not the only country involved in damaging and illegal commercial fishing.
But it’s by far the biggest, with the most wide-ranging economic and environmental impact.
Like I said, China number one.
So as you celebrate Earth Day this week, let people know what the Chinese Communist Party
is doing—so we can protect our oceans.
And speaking of protecting the oceans, this episode has been sponsored by MOVA Globes.
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Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.