FWIW, China also produces enormous (enormous) quantities of seafood from caged underwater oceanic farms. It's the future of fishing IMHO.

The rich, everywhere in the world, will continue to seek wild-caught though. (While they publicly rail against the poor eating wild-caught. Such is how the wheels turn.).

And it does so on seas that aren't even remotely close to China. They're looting the entire Pacific Ocean.

The fact that so many people rely on eating other animals is ruining the planet.

Bottom trawling in particular seems horrendous. Here is Attenborough narrating about the horrors of it and how it affects the ocean floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXp3jo_uGOQ

I wonder about engineering yourself a productive fishery instead of exploiting wild stocks.

Most of the ocean is practically a desert. The only productive places are near land, where deep water up wells and returns sunken nutrients back to the surface.

I'm sure we could study and engineer some sort of nutrient dumping and cycling scheme. I bet you could make vastly more food while leaving a lot of ocean alone.

The scale of Chinese fishing is massive, along with the labor needs to process what is caught.

There was a story [0] that ran in the New Yorker a year ago that detailed how North Koreans are sent to Chinese seafood plants in forced labor.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39504981

I find it interesting how China is so keen to develop EVs as a way to get away from oil dependency, yet other areas of their economy aren't treated with the same urgency.

The 44% mentioned in the data is actually composed of a large number of small family-run fishing boats, whose actual catch volumes are very low.In fact, China’s offshore catch (2.3 million tons in 2023, accounting for only ~10% of the global total and declining for three consecutive years) is far lower than its domestic aquaculture output (58.1 million tons).

Another year another DC China IUU "the worst" propaganda piece, except this time more stupid - already inflated esimate of PRC DWF fleet last year was 18000... now 32000 kek. It's hilarious to see PRC DWF inflation from 3000 in 2020 to 6000 to 18000 and now 32000 in 5 years. PRC ship building is incredible, but damn /s. PRC wild catch was like 12m in 2020... and 15m in 2024... but somehow catching that extra 3m required DWF to grow from 3000 to 32000. 950% / 29000 new boats to DWF fleet to catch... 25% / 3m tons more fish in 5 years. Truely lie flat behaviour from PRC fishermen. First, something like 70-80% of PRC fish production is via domestic aquaculture.

Can clearly see from empty perimeter in the heat map PRC fishing largely stays clear of SKR, JP EEZ. Reason DC thinktank "report" try to play up 12m hours in SKR is likely that hotspot just south of SKR peninsula, aka disputed Socotra rock EEZ. And I surmise majority of JP 1.5m "hours" are over disputed Senkaku EEZ. 4.5m TW hours, obviously PRC considers TW waters part of her territorial/EEZ waters. About another 1m hours from SCS EEZ disputes. AKA 18/21m hours are basically DC think tank doing customary China bad funny stats from disputed maritime delimitations. Incidentally using said delimitations to extrapolate 3000k PRC distant fishing fleet into 30k+ in 5 years... somehow.

PRC has largest absolute DWF fleet size, but per capita she's underfishing, especially relative to TW, SKR, JP, who're at only 30-50% aquaculture. Spain and Russia also up there. Also fraction of SKR/TW subsidies per capita, about on par with JP. Of course you don't see DC thinktanks hitpieces telling these actors to kill their DWF fishing industries. For PRC's DWF fleet to match other top DWF fleet's capita fishing efforts, she would have to fish something like 3-9x+ more. Unless one thinks PRC fishermen and citizens shouldn't have the same opportunities or access to seafood. Ecuador & Peru, two countries with ~1/30th population of China, together captures about about ~1/2 of China, who also has 1/2 the EEZ of these countries, which incidentally means China has to fish more in international waters.

The only reason PRC IUU fishing got media play / propaganda push in the last few years is US wanted to beef up influence of pacific nations playing up PRC IUU fishing so they can drive the issue to forward deploy coast guard and build influence. It's geopolitical lawfare, and it's unlikely to do anything substantive because any agreement by PRC on curtailing distant fishing would be on per capita basis which would first involve everyone else (JP,SKR,TW etc) to essentially kill their entire DWF industry before PRC would even need to make any cuts.

Again, let's stress how absolutely batshit stupid these new numbers are:

SKR, ~500-700 DWF fleet, 300-400k metric tons per year.

JP ~1200-1500 DWF fleet, 600-900k metric tons per year.

TW ~1000 DWF fleet, 400-600k metric tons per year.

AVG 400-800 tons per ship.

PRC... 32000 DWF fleet, 3000k metric tons per year.

AVG 90 tons per ship.

Or... avg 400-800 tons per ship

PRC ~3750-7500 DWF fleet

PRC official report is like ~2700 in ~2020, add 25% for 25% by 2025 increase catch and you get ~3400. It's underestimation (and while PRC wanted to cap to 3000 in last 5 year plan), but it's underestimate by 100s, not over estimation by 10000s. Like tag on highest maritime militia estimates of ~10k, and it's still almost ~20k over.

E: or just look at estimates of global seafood market growth... ~5% CAGR, ~+50B over past 5 years. Like 35B of that from PRC aquaculture growth. What's the 29000 new DWF doing? Global DWF size for major fishing nations is like 6000... so PRC adds... 500% that and somehow global fishing market grows by... 30%. US thinktank innumeracy.