China has the world's largest distant water fishing fleet. After decades of overfishing close to home, thousands of Chinese ships have pushed into the high seas off South America, stirring concerns about exhausting fish stocks and illegal fishing.
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.”
The ship again was involved in suspicious fishing activity in 2019, this time in the western hemisphere, when it went dark for 80 hours as it was fishing along the edge of Peru’s exclusive economic zone. At the same time as the ship was offline, vessel movements were detected inside Peru’s waters, nighttime satellite data analyzed by Global Fishing Watch shows.
Moreover, once the catch is landed in China — or a warehouse anywhere — it’s impossible to discern between legal and illegally caught fish.
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