The AP and Univision took an 18-day voyage to observe up close the Chinese distant water fishing fleet on the high seas off South America. Of the ships surveyed, many had been flagged for labor abuses or showed signs of violating maritime law.
almost a year ago said that it had $280 million in outstanding loans from the China Development Bank and other state lenders. One of the country’s biggest state investment funds owns an 8% stake in one of its subsidiaries. Meanwhile, Chinese state subsidies to Pingtan for the building of vessels totaled $29 million in the first nine months of last year — about a third of all its purchases of property and equipment.
An entity majority-owned by Zhou’s wife also operates the Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999, which was caught in 2017 transiting through the Galapagos Marine Reserve with more than 6,000 dead sharks on board.arrested by South Africa in 2016 As scandal has followed Pingtan and its affiliates around the world, investors have dumped the company’s stock.
“I used to go to conference and officials would be in just complete denial,” said Tabitha Mallory, a China scholar at the University of Washington who specializes in the country’s fishing policies. “At least now, they’re acknowledging that their fishing is unsustainable, even if it’s just to counter all the negative pushback they’re getting around the world.”
Researcher Pauly believes that much of the criticism of the Chinese fleet’s fishing around the Galapagos is attributed to growing anti-China sentiment in the U.S. and sensitivities about Beijing’s growing presence in what has traditionally been considered Washington’s backyard. “Right now, it’s the perfect situation” for would-be violators, said Alfonso Miranda, executive director of, a group made up of squid industry representatives from Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. “You can do whatever you want, even forced labor, nobody says anything, and you still have a market for your product.”
Case and point: the Hua Li 8, which was greenlighted by China to fish in the south Pacific in 2018 — two years after it was the target of an international manhunt when it fled warning shots fired by an Argentine naval vessel that had caught it fishing illegally. Four of the Hua Li 8’s crew members were treated like “slaves,” Indonesian officials said at the time of the ship’s arrest pursuant to an Interpol “Purple Notice.
Ideas included banning transshipments at sea, allowing countries to board other member states’ vessels on the high seas, and creating a buffer zone so coastal states are automatically alerted whenever a foreign vessel comes within 12 nautical miles of its territorial waters.“China doesn’t really seem interested in expanding protection,” said Mallory. “They follow the letter of the law but not the spirit.
But the mood quickly turns when one man, who the AP isn’t identifying by name out of concern for his safety, shouts above the engine that his boss is “not nice” and asks, with only the foggiest of comprehension, whether the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged the world has arrived in the U.S.
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