China: Seafood Superpower

An exploration of the motivations and methods behind China’s growth and control over fishing across most of the high seas.

Our latest investigation focused on China because it has by far the largest high-seas fishing fleet and processes much of the world’s catch. China estimates that it has twenty-seven hundred distant-water fishing ships, though this figure does not include vessels in contested waters; public records and satellite imaging suggest that the fleet may be closer to sixty-five hundred ships. (The U.S. and the E.U., by contrast, have fewer than three hundred distant-water fishing vessels each.)

Much of our reporting focuses on labor abuses in the Chinese fleet. But Americans who eat seafood may also be implicated. More than 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported. Much of that seafood has either been caught by Chinese ships or processed in China before it arrives in the U.S.

Here is an explanatory video that tells the story of China’s growth as a seafood superpower: