Fishing in China mostly comes from aquaculture — farming fish in pens rather than catching them wild. Credit: Jan Christian-Teller, Creative Commons
Everywhere you look in the world of seafood, there’s China. It produces more than a third of the world’s seafood each year. It’s been the world’s largest exporter of seafood since 2002. And it’s also the largest consumer of seafood.
China's fishing industry is massive, and highly regulated. An estimated 14 million people work for its fisheries. Regulation of the seafood industry kicked off in 1986 with a law that concentrated much of the industry’s power into local governments. The government incentivizes fishing with subsidies for things like fuel. In 2018, China distributed $7.2 billion in fishing subsidies — more than any other country, and a fifth of all such subsidies globally.
But with the rapid expansion of fishing came controversy. After decades of overfishing, large Chinese trawlers now go beyond the country’s waters to look for seafood in open and sometimes contested waters, which creates conflicts with neighboring countries. And the fuel su
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