June 10, 2015 — HONG KONG — China’s fishing fleet is rapidly expanding as the country emphasizes policies aimed at shoring up food supplies. But as the fleet ranges all over the globe, it is getting criticized for overfishing and coming into confrontation with other countries’ vessels in contested areas such as the South China Sea.
China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of fish with around half its seafood production being exported to developed countries; it is also the largest consumer of seafood.
Duncan Ledbetter, a director of the fisheries and natural resource consulting company, Fish Matter, said a race for diminishing resources is driving China’s search for fish around the world, with fish habitats near China’s coast having succumbed to pollution and overfishing.
“Well you’ve got two things happening. One is overfishing. The second, which is sort of widespread, is north and south and close in shore to out to the end of the continental shelf, but then you also, particularly inshore have all sorts of pollution problems and habitat loss problems,” he said.
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