China Dominates 44% of Visible Fishing Activity Worldwide

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

Isn't it normal for countries to fish in seas that aren't remotely close to them?

Is there a single country in Asia that doesn't practice distant water fishing?

I think the main concern is over IUU fishing, and China's fleet has been linked to that.

They export tens of billions of dollars in seafood every year, why does it matter where they're fishing if they're selling it worldwide?

It's very hard to take your comment in good faith.

Societal expectations were very different back then. Should we also slam those trying to end modern slavery by mentioning slavers of the past?

Exactly

Who makes the profit? Duh.

Nuance is required. Would you impose a 2 Sea Bass over 42cm limit per person on the residents of North Sentinel Island?

It’s all a spectrum. One nation cannot leapfrog the rest in its advancements then demand the rest follow its new norms, unless they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.

You might be right, but it's certainly not a "duh". Consumer surplus exists in addition to producer surplus.

How convenient. Getting on top of the mountain and pulling the ladder behind you. If rich countries were willing to really help those less fortunate (especially counties that they themselves looted in the past), this argument would have a lot more weight.

Is the rest of the world supposed to stay poor and desperate forever? Especially considering that rich countries still suck massive amounts of resources (and turn a blind eye to local corruption), and provide popular emigration destination for talented people who leave their homeland instead of helping develop it?

Externalities also exist-- funny how the dead seafloor and collapsing local fisheries don’t show up in the export statistics.

The article only talks about visible fishing activity. But China operates many “dark fleets” where many unregistered boats sail along registered boats. They are fishing way more than the 44% that is being reported. These fleets will no doubt destroy ecosystems beyond repair.

https://news.mongabay.com/2020/10/new-evidence-suggests-chin...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-19/how-china-is-plunderi...

https://time.com/6328528/investigation-chinese-fishing-fleet...

China is no longer a "poor country". And overfishing is harmful especially for poorer people who will be deprived of a relatively cheap source of food and export. Especially the smaller fishers. Somalia is probably the best example of this.

But no, the West has often been imperfect, no doubt about that, which is why these sort of restrictions and limitations were set up: to prevent repeating the mistakes of the past which hurt everyone. And yes, we probably should recognise more that the West got ahead partly in ways that harmed everyone. But none of that justifies what China is doing.

There’s zero nuance required for China, it’s a modern economy and should definitely be held to modern standards.

Thankfully with satellites and machine learning nothing is dark these days.

That is not true at all. A very small percentage of our oceans are comprehensively monitored. There is a reason why MH370 could not be located via satellite imaging. Tracking fleets of boats all over the planet is going to be very tricky.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/08/how-data-can-heal-ou...

> why does it matter where they're fishing if they're selling it worldwide?

Regulation. Chinese boats fish in ways we block our own boats from. Those exports thus represent a regulatory workaround, victim the oceans, and a tool with which buyers can demand reciprocal regulation.

I would agree, but that's beside the point I was making.

How does the worldwide sales address the damage they cause to marine ecosystems? That too when many countries regulate their own fisheries industry to avoid the same issue? This is like strip mining public property or someone else's private property without any authorization. Essentially, China makes money at everybody's expense.

There’s more to a peoples than the economy

Not in this context.

The US has around 300 vessels for distant-water fishing.

Five years ago, China was assessed to have 17,000.

It's still very patchy, and likely will be for another decade of growth. Earth has 500 million km^2 of surface area. A 24-bit, 10 meter resolution recording of Earth's surface (a shoebox sized satellite in LEO can do this) at 1 image per minute, plus a 1 meter resolution recording at 1 image per hour, would make tracking relatively easy (modulo weather), and necessitate 36 uncompressed petabytes per day of data handling, probably more like 360 uncompressed petabytes when you factor in overlaps of satellite planes and imaging areas.

We can do this for, say, all the airfields in Russia, today. But the world is a much bigger place.

As laser communications equipment becomes more standardized and the LEO comms and LEO remote sensing constellations continue to grow, this will slowly expand in scope. But tracking and deconfliction of moving objects is just an inherently difficult thing to do with any confidence; It wouldn't be feasible at all without various AI algorithms. There are far lower hanging fruit as yet unpicked.