China’s fishing fleet heads to Australia amid trade war

Beijing’s monstrous fishing fleet has long since stripped its own waters. It is now aggressively prowling the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans in search of a catch. And it will come to Australia.

Grab as much as you can. As fast as I can. Wherever I can. Not that there is anything completely unusual about this.

However, what makes China’s fishing fleet different is that the Communist Party officially sanctions its behavior. It is organized and supervised by the Communist Party. And it is used to affirm the territorial ambitions of the Communist Party.

It is also huge.

“Helmsman” Xi Jinping – who recently adopted the honorific reserved for founder Mao Zedong – has urged his nation to “build bigger ships and venture even further into the oceans and catch bigger fish.”

They have done that.

It is now the largest fleet in the world. Its operations span the world. One tally puts the number of deep-sea vessels at your disposal at 12,500.

Beijing claims that only 3,000 ships operate in international waters.

But the full scope of its operations came to light earlier this year when Global Fishing Watch published a study based on satellite data and tracking analysis.

Whatever the number, the fleet has another use: the diplomatic baton.

And Australia is currently Beijing’s number one scapegoat.

Fish fight

Australia’s lobster industry is just one of many targets of Beijing’s punitive economic acts. Now Australia’s fishermen are concerned that the Beijing fishing fleet will come looking for them: The site of a proposed new Chinese port for $ 218 million is right in the middle of the Torres Strait lobster fishery.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne was quick to ensure that Border Force ships would monitor the region to enforce territorial limits and joint fishing treaties.

But if China claims that the Papua New Guinea port gives it access to Australia’s fisheries, that could cause problems.

Former government foreign policy adviser Philip Citowicki says the proposed port is a demonstration of the politics of gaps between the great powers.

“The reality is that it continues to place PNG at the center of a tug of war, where the presence of China’s authoritarianism is increasingly being imprinted in nascent Pacific democracies,” he writes.

“Rarely driven by altruism or regional responsibility, it puts both the resources and the security of the region at risk.”

It is not a new threat.

In 2018, the Lowy Institute predicted that the Beijing fleet “could soon create new security headaches for Australia.”

“The impact of Chinese fishing has important strategic consequences for the Australian region in a number of ways,” David Brewster wrote at the time.

“There is a good chance that fishing will become a key site of disputes and incidents involving China.”

Troubled Waters

The Chilean Navy is on alert. China’s fishing fleet is currently off its shores. Some 400 vessels operate in international waters. The Chilean navy says that so far 11 have crossed into its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

The unfolding drama follows a well-established pattern.

China’s Ecuadorian embassy insists that Beijing has a “zero tolerance” policy towards illegal fishing, yet few complaints are followed up. Still less are maintained.

Indo-Pacific analyst at the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), Blake Herzinger, says international governments are beginning to realize the damage done.

“Globally, economic losses from illegal fishing are difficult to quantify, but there is little disagreement that the overall economic loss amounts to tens of billions of dollars a year, including lost tax revenue. , jobs in the onshore fishing industry and the depletion of food supplies, “he writes. .

The small South American nations of Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are concerned that their fisheries are in the process of being looted.

In November they issued a joint communiqué in which they affirmed that they would combine their limited resources “to jointly prevent, discourage and confront” any illegal fishing operation.

They did not name China. But the presence of so many of China’s large, modern fishing boats off its shores is hard to miss.

And this particular fleet has been the focus of global attention since July when it was captured within the international marine reserve that surrounds the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador.

Ecuador does not have the strength to enforce international law. And his government is heavily in debt to Beijing and struggles to pay back infrastructure loans.

Strategic fishing fleet

Beijing’s fishing fleet is not just a commercial operation. It is a political party.

It is organized like a militia. Key factory ships have Communist Party commissars who watch over the captains and their operations. The selected crews are trained to work in conjunction with the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

In return, Beijing pays its fuel bill, the largest single expense of the fishing fleet. It’s a massive subsidy that allows you to significantly undermine your international competitors.

Some boats do not fish at all. Instead, your job is to monitor the active fleet, intimidate fishermen from other nations, or simply sit provocatively within another nation’s territory.

This makes them a diplomatic weapon, part of Beijing’s determination to wage a “hybrid war” – using all available means except kinetic weaponry – to enforce its will.

Recently, they have been very visible in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Beijing’s fisheries militia also receives unprecedented military support.

Wherever the fleet goes, the armed coast guard ships follow it, no matter how far off the coast of China the fleet is. And the Chinese coast guard is not a civilian police force. It is operated by the People’s Liberation Army. And that dramatically intensifies the implications of any confrontation.

Herzinger says international fishing regulations are being enforced, but only against weaker countries like Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

China escapes criticism because of the power of its potential economic and offshore reaction.

The CIMSEC analyst argues that the best response would be international sanctions:

“Shipbuilders, exporters, fish processors and equipment manufacturers that support China’s distant water fishing fleet should be considered within the scope of sanction,” he writes.

“The prospect of the collapse of a primary protein source for more than 10 percent of the world’s population is worthy of attention.”

The Hunger Games

China’s 1.4 billion people love seafood, each consuming an average of 37.8 kg per year. That’s about 38 percent of the total annual world catch.

But Beijing’s fishing fleet also sells large quantities to markets such as the United States, Europe and Australia.

Exactly how much is extracted from the oceans is unknown. The militia does not report his capture to international authorities. Only the Communist Party obtains these data.

However, it has a history.

China’s coastal waters have been fished to the point of destruction. Studies suggest that only 15% of the region’s fish population prior to the 1980s survives. And yet some 300,000 coastal fishing boats continue to chase them.

And the destruction of crucial spawning grounds in the South China Sea through conversion to artificial island fortresses has not helped the prospects for recovery.

China’s politically controlled fleet is already operational around the world. It can also be found among European and African ships in the Atlantic Ocean off Northwest Africa.

But it is not just China.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 90% of the world’s commercial fish stocks are depleted. Now climate change is destroying the environment and oxygen-depleted water “dead zones” are expanding in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

Up to a third of the seafood catch imported into the US has been found to have inadequate documentation, indicating that it was caught illegally.

“Much of that illegal capture comes from the exclusive economic zones of states like Guinea, the Philippines and North Korea, which are impoverished and cannot exert sufficient control over their maritime areas,” says Herzinger.

Beijing insists its fleets are innocent. And furthermore, their wolf-warrior diplomats declare, the entire international fishing system is chaotic and corrupt. Which means that any attempt to criticize Beijing must have ulterior motives.