August 12, 2013 — China's economic expansion over the past three decades has transformed the once-impoverished country, lifting millions of people out of poverty. Newly wealthy Chinese eager to display their prosperity — and those who aspire to be wealthy — have fueled an explosion in demand for luxury goods, which are now available even in third- and fourth-tier cities. Vanity? Perhaps. But high-end cars, clothing and accessories are often genuinely useful in gaining an edge in business and social relationships.
Unsurprisingly, China's embrace of conspicuous consumption has also manifested itself at the dinner table. At weddings and business dinners, opulent dishes abound. One item, more than any other, has possessed the power to confer face and status upon the host: shark fin soup.
For more than a decade, shark fin soup has served as a de rigueur component of any meal intending to highlight the host's wealth, resulting in the consumption of hundreds of millions of shark fins. According to the Hurun Report, China now has 2.8 million millionaires — that's in U.S. dollars — and there are many millions more below them who can afford shark fin soup, which can cost up to $100 per bowl.
The massive increase in China's consumption of pigs, chicken and cattle has had major environmental repercussions both within China and beyond, but shark fin consumption is different in several ways. Sharks cannot be farmed economically, have a much longer reproductive cycle, and many species are predators at the top of the food chain.
U.S.-based conservation organization WildAid estimates that up to 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins. As a result of years of large-scale fin harvesting, one third of the world's nearly 500 shark species are facing extinction. Unlike farmed animals that are slaughtered for their meat, most of these sharks are killed by a process known as "finning", in which fins are hacked off and the animal is thrown back into the sea to drown or bleed to death. Afterward, the fins are usually transported by ship or plane to the main hub of the global fin trade: Hong Kong.
Read the full story at The Atlantic