January 4, 2019 — There’s a lot of data being quoted recently by China’s government to show that these are prosperous times for China’s fishermen and fish farmers.
A perusal of several past editions of the Fisheries Yearbook, an annual overview of the state of the industry produced by the Ministry of Agriculture, shows there has been a 41 percent increase in the average earnings of workers in the sector over four years.
But incomes remain low by comparison to industrial wages. Average annual incomes rose from CNY 13,039 (USD 1,900, EUR 1,675) in 2013 to CNY 18,453 (USD 2,670, EUR 2,370) in 2017, but this looks low when taking into account the fact that the minimum wage in Guangzhou is CNY 3,500 (USD 510, EUR 450) per month.
It’s thus not surprising that there has been an exodus of workers from the industry, with numbers falling from 20.65 million in 2013 to 19.31 million in 2017.
Yet productivity looks high given the scale of the increase in the value of output over the same period. Total output from fisheries went from CNY 193 billion (USD 28.1 billion, EUR 24.8 billion) in 2013 to CNY 247 billion (USD 36 billion, EUR 31.7 billion) in 2017, an increase of 27.9 percent – even though the labor force in the sector fell 6.4 percent in that period.
Taking that figure apart reveals that the bulk of the growth is coming from what the Chinese statisticians categorize as “catering, logistics, and other services” related to fisheries and seafood. This category grew 43 percent in value terms between 2013 and 2017 to CNY 678 billion (USD 98.8 billion, EUR 87.1 billion). This could reveal how the industry is shifting to less labor-intensive activities.