SOURCE: LIGNET
South Korean coast guard officers escort Chinese fishermen to shore in October after their boat was seized for illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea. Two Chinese fishing boats were seized by Argentina last week after they were caught fishing off Patagonia. (DONG-A ILBO/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
Argentina’s capture of two Chinese ships last week that were fishing the waters off Patagonia highlights China’s expanding and illegal hunt for fish far from its shores in waters clearly belonging to other countries. The Chinese government likely had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the boats because it doesn’t track fishing vessels. But it could, and chooses not to, likely because the growing aggression of Chinese fishermen is in line with China’s growing aggression that includes a refusal to recognize maritime boundaries.
China operates more than 2,000 fishing vessels outside of its territorial waters. Many of them routinely fish in waters that are within the 200-mile exclusive economic zones of other countries. China routinely underreports the activities of this distant water fishing fleet to the UN, and is contributing to worldwide depletion of fish stocks. While other responsible nations are managing their fisheries and their fishing fleets in compliance with a 2001 UN Agreement, China’s fishing activities around the world are part of its strategic plan to assert its dominance.
Background
On December 24, Argentina’s Coast Guard detained two Chinese fishing vessels that had been caught fishing inside the nation’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). They were found to be carrying 10 metric tons of squid and fish. Recent estimates say that Chinese fishing boats catch close to 200,000 tons of fish each year while operating within the EEZs of South and Central American nations.
The two ships detained by Argentina are part of China’s distant water fishing fleet. This fleet comprises more than 2000 vessels known to operate in the EEZs of 79 countries. The only regions they do not operate in are the waters off North America and Europe, and in the Arctic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
According to a July 2012 study commissioned by the European Parliament, Chinese fishing vessels operating in EEZs off the coast of Africa catch more than 3 million tons of fish per year. That is approximately two-thirds of China’s estimated distant fleet catch. Some experts estimate that at any given time, there are at least 300 Chinese fishing vessels operating within the EEZs of African nations.
While some of these vessels operate under agreements with African countries, without marine patrols, most of these countries have no way to effectively police the number of vessels, or the type and amount of fish caught.
Some analysts have attributed the existence of maritime piracy off the coast of East Africa to the endemic overfishing of the waters by other countries, like China. They assert that the depletion of fish stocks in that region spurred local fishermen to resort to other, less pacific, means to earn a living.
China must resort to fishing waters outside of its own EEZ because it has already depleted the stocks in the Yellow Sea and South and East China Seas. In 2006, a study published by the University of British Columbia found that 30 percent of the fish stocks in China’s EEZ were “collapsed” with an additional 20 percent “overexploited.”
In the 1980s, China recognized the problem with its overfishing, and established a fleet of vessels to start fishing foreign waters. Over time, the Chinese government provided subsidies to its fishermen if they operate outside of China’s EEZ, encouraging them to go farther afield.
China is known to over-report its domestic marine catches to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and severely underreport the activities of its distant water fleet. On average, between 2000 and 2011, China only reported 50 percent of its distant water fleet catch.
This misreporting is exacerbated by a couple of factors. First, the over-reporting of the domestic catch was found, by the EU study, to be a result of internal Chinese politics. Chinese political officials are rewarded when their regions meet established, centralized economic goals. Therefore, it is in their best interests to do so. Unfortunately it only further masks the actual state of fishing stocks in China’s EEZ, making it appear as if the stocks are not as depleted as they actually are.
The distant water fleet numbers are severely underreported due to a complete lack of transparency in China’s fishing fleet activities.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization compiles annual data on worldwide fishing activities. However, the information on fishing industry and annual catches is provided by each member nation. This self-reporting allows China to give whatever numbers it pleases, because there is no international regulatory oversight of the process.
Analysis
China’s total lack of transparency in the operations of its distant water fishing fleet means that even Beijing has no way of actually knowing what was caught, how much was caught, and who caught it. The only national entity that has any connection with the fishing industry is the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, which falls under the Ministry of Agriculture. However, it has limited funding and its main purpose is to escort Chinese fishing vessels in domestic waters.
While U.S. fishermen, for example, are subject to national monitoring of their vessels and registration of all catches, China has no such management system. However, it really is not in China’s national interests to monitor its distant water fishing fleet.
China contributes approximately one-fifth of the world’s population, but consumes 25 percent of the world’s documented fish catches. Over the past twenty years, the per capita consumption of fish in China has doubled. As the nation continues to grow, and the economy continues to expand, China’s consumption of fish will continue to grow as well.
As a result, feeding this growing nation is actually a matter of Chinese national security, and one of sovereignty. While it is exercising a modicum of moral imperative on the fishing within its own physically sovereign areas; it is not beholden to regulating its activities outside of its immediate territory.
China refuses to ratify a 2001 UN agreement that is aimed at long-term conservation of migratory fish stocks. And it certainly does not abide by it in principal. China’s distant water fishing fleet is slowly depleting the oceans of the world. China is severely underreporting its global fishing catches, which will have severe implications for global fishing stocks.
While developed nations have coast guards to monitor unregulated fishing activities in their own EEZs, countless nations worldwide have no capacity to assert their territorial claims. This can already be seen at the regional level in the South China Sea. China has de facto sovereignty of many disputed areas because nations such as the Philippines and Vietnam do not have maritime patrols that could remove Chinese fishing vessels from their territorial waters.
Conclusion
Throughout 2012, China has more aggressively asserted its physical sovereignty over disputed regions throughout the South and East China Seas. Predominantly it has used its fishing fleet (with armed escort ships) to assert its territorial claims. However, it may be quietly asserting it dominance around the world in a similar manner. While China may not dispute the physical “sovereignty” of maritime nations in Africa, South and Central America, and their maritime domains; much like the Philippines and Vietnam, China is establishing de facto sovereignty in many regions of the world to pursue its own national security agenda.
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