Most African fishermen live on small fishing boats, and their livelihoods and fisheries are in crisis as the massive Chinese offshore fishing industry clamps down on them.
Six months ago, the Chinese investment in the new port of Jamestown began a major construction project, with the demolition of old premises attracting the discontent of residents.
Small shrimp against big whales
China’s ocean-going fleet of about 2,700 fishing vessels accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s high seas catch.
“Africa should be a grand stage for international cooperation, not an arena for great power games.” Earlier this year, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a big speech during his trip to five African countries, which resulted in two new “One Belt, One Road” partners, Congo and Botswana, and so far China has built nearly 20 ports in Africa, and a large number of fisheries bases and seafood processing plants. The blue economy that Africans are hoping for has quietly turned into a red carnage of fishing resources.
Qiu Shaoqi, senior program director at the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) in the UK, points out that “the annual catch of the Chinese fleet in West Africa is about 2.35 million tons, accounting for about half of the catch of Chinese pelagic fishing vessels and worth more than $5 billion.”
The waters off Ghana are a major fishing ground in West Africa, once known as “the world’s last pristine fishing ground”, and then a disaster area for illegal fishing after successive sweeps of plunder by fishing powers. Africans describe the Senegalese as master fishermen: “Wherever the fish go, Senegalese fishermen go.” Today that phrase could be rewritten to “Where there are fish, there are Chinese.”
In 1985, China’s first ocean-going fleet set sail, 13 fishing boats from Fujian Mawei port expedition to West Africa, more than 30 years, the Chinese fleet before and after the Gold, 2017 Chinese fishing boats up to 463, West Africa’s fishing belly and then too big to eat.
The black hand behind Ghana’s fishing boats
China’s trawler catches are so large that they seriously threaten fisheries resources and marine habitats.
“We have observed that Chinese fishing boats have been continuously entering African fishing grounds.” Even though Ghana, for example, has stopped issuing foreign fishing vessel permits, 90 to 95 percent of the industrial trawlers there have links to China.”
Qiu Shaoqi said that these trawlers are destructive fishing practices, catching large amounts of mixed species, resulting in a waste of fishery resources, and some are even super trawlers that can catch twice as much as small African countries, seriously threatening marine ecosystems and habitats.
In 2002, Ghana’s fisheries law stipulated that fishing vessels operating in Ghanaian waters must be operated by local people, but this decree could not stop the black hands of Chinese “multinational enterprises. “Foreign investors set up shell companies to hide beneficiary information and nationality to obtain fishing rights and licenses.” Qiu Shaoqi illustrates how foreign investors “hide” the ocean resources that are reserved for coastal residents, but instead fall into the hands of the ocean powers.
According to an investigative report by the Environmental Justice Foundation, Rongcheng Marine Fishery Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of the Shandong Bordelon Group, began operations in Ghana in 2013 and became the largest Chinese offshore fishing company in Ghana in 2015. The trawler operated by the Ghanaian company, whose name starts with “Lu Rong Yuan Fishing 9”, is presumed to belong to the fleet of Rongcheng Fisheries.
Last month, Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT), a non-profit organization based in Norway, also released a report on illegal fisheries, revealing how illegal fisheries use cover companies and joint ventures to obtain fishing rights under opaque corporate structures. The report points out that the owner behind the Ghanaian flagged vessel “Lu Rong Yuan Fishing 956” is Rongcheng Fishery, which was fined $1 million by the Ghanaian government in 2019 for using illegal fishing gear. The fishing vessel was released from seizure and returned to work at sea, and was caught again for illegal fishing in May 2020.
Chinese fishing boats’ illegal misdeeds
Local fishermen are most aware of the illegal activities of Chinese fishing boats, and Environmental Justice Foundation interviewed fishermen in West Africa who have worked on Chinese fishing boats, and Qiu Shaoqi noted, “According to their testimonies, Chinese fishing boats are involved in a variety of illegal operations, including the use of illegal fishing gear, illegal reproduction, or catching sharks, cutting fins and abandoning them, all of which are common conditions.”
Chinese boat bosses also have their heads in the local fishing boats, “Chinese illegal trawlers will work with a local canoe called Saiko, which carries the catch back to the port.” Qiu Shaoqi mentioned the prevalence of illegal practices at sea by Chinese fishing boats, “This type of illegal trans-shipment is still very common and it makes it more difficult for port inspections to keep track of the amount of fish caught by the operating vessels.”
Most of the Chinese trawlers operating in Ghanaian waters receive fuel subsidies, loans or other forms of funding from the Chinese government. These illegal fisheries investigations come as the World Trade Organization (WTO) had hoped to reach a fisheries subsidies agreement by the end of 2020 to eliminate harmful fisheries subsidies, but the Epidemic has delayed the target date, and the countries will resume negotiations earlier this year.
Difficulties in eliminating harmful fisheries subsidies
Trawlers use Saiko boats to conduct illegal transmissions in the dark waters of Cana.
Assistant Professor of Law at Soochow University in Taiwan, Yuanjun He pointed out that the harmful fisheries subsidies focused on by the World Trade Organization include illegal, unnotified and unregulated (IUU) fisheries subsidies, overfishing subsidies and overcapacity subsidies, and most of China’s fisheries subsidies are of these three types. Once all these subsidies are banned, the impact on China will be considerable, and the capacity of fisheries and the number of exports will inevitably be drastically reduced, so the biggest opposition force is from China.
Chinese offshore fishing has earned a lot of foreign exchange in Africa. According to statistics, one-third of the catches of Chinese fishing vessels in Africa enter the local market, one-third of the catches are sold to Europe, and the remaining one-third enter the Chinese market.
He Wanjun said that with the support of national policies, the strength of China’s offshore fishing industry has been expanding, and the development of offshore fishing is not only for China’s domestic consumption, but actually the main purpose is to export, and the greater the export volume, the greater the economic benefits, which is why countries hope that under the WTO’s international trade mechanism, through the fisheries subsidy negotiations to limit the import and export of offshore fishing countries, but once it is unable to import and export, the economic profit is reduced, it will limit the amount of fishing.
However, this fisheries subsidies agreement keeps hitting the rocks. He Wanjun believes that “the fisheries subsidies negotiations are more complicated than other economic and trade issues, involving issues such as sea area definition and vessel management, plus China has always claimed that it is a developing country, demanding special and differential treatment. The two sides are deadlocked, so the negotiations are stagnant and tug-of-war.”
African fisheries can be decoupled from China?
The WTO fisheries subsidies agreement will be renegotiated this year, and once harmful fisheries subsidies are eliminated, the impact on China’s offshore fisheries will be the greatest.
In recent years, African countries are instead “mending the broken net” to counterattack, Qiu Shaoqi pointed out that, in addition to Ghana, last year the government of Laibiria refused to issue permits for six large Chinese trawlers, Senegal also refused to grant new licenses for 52 large international fishing vessels, the Ivory Coast, the Lion Rock Republic and Tanzania have also been discussing or amending laws to comply with sustainable fisheries standards, such as limiting fishing Time, setting up protected areas, etc. However, the amendment of laws is relatively simple, to implement the regulations, which is the biggest challenge.
Qiu Shaoqi took Ghana as an example, “Foreign investors set up front companies to obtain fishing rights, such companies have a complex structure and mutual shareholding, it is difficult to find out who the ultimate beneficiaries are, even if the local government wants to impose penalties, but also does not have substantive effect, because the penalty can not be the real perpetrators, as long as a change in the director, the person in charge, or change the nationality of the ship, the name, you can continue to carry out This is one of the major obstacles to law enforcement and implementation of law enforcement.”
He Wanjun believes that by investing in other countries’ fisheries and conducting illegal fishing, it is possible to circumvent the WTO’s fisheries subsidies norms, because under the WTO norms, subsidies do not have any fixed requirements and ultimately have to be defined through interpretation.
In the face of international pressure, last November China released a white paper on China’s compliance with its offshore fishing industry, emphasizing that the Chinese fisheries authorities are cracking down on IUU fishing activities through punitive measures such as blacklisting, fines and the elimination of fishing subsidies, with remarkable results in international compliance.
In fact, China’s illegal fishing incidents continue to occur, and in the end China can control its own fleet, are these norms a paper tiger? Qiu Shaoqi said the white paper shows the Chinese government’s determination to implement regulations and policies, however, China’s large ocean-going fleet makes it difficult for the government to effectively control fishing vessels and require compliance with regulations in the absence of digitization and transparency.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), more than 90 percent of the world’s commercial fish stocks have reached the maximum catch limit or are facing the fate of overfishing. He Wanjun said, from the long-term trend, the global consumption of fish catches is rising year by year, but the output of fishery resources is declining year by year, the current harmful fisheries subsidies inevitably cause the depletion of fishery resources, the original intention of the fisheries subsidies agreement is to allow countries to control the amount of fishing and the type of fishing, so that the ocean has the space to rest and recuperate, which is to buy time for the marine environment to return to normal.
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