Beijing’s monster fishing fleet has long since stripped its own waters bare. Now it is aggressively prowling the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans for a catch. And it is coming to Australia.
It grabs as much as it can. As fast as it can. Wherever it can. Not that there is anything entirely unusual about this.
What makes China’s fishing fleet different, however, is that the Communist Party officially sanctions its behaviour. It is organised and overseen by the Communist Party. And it’s used to assert the territorial ambitions of the Communist Party.
It’s also huge.
“Helmsman” Xi Jinping who recently adopted the honorific reserved for founder Mao Zedong has urged his nation to “build bigger ships and venture even farther into the oceans and catch bigger fish”.
That they’ve done.
It’s now the world’s largest fleet. Its operations span the globe. One count places the number of deepwater vessels at its disposal at 12,500.
Beijing claims only 3000 boats operate in international waters.
But the full extent of its operations came to light earlier this year when Global Fishing Watch released a study based on satellite data and tracking analysis.
Whatever the number, the fleet has another use diplomatic bludgeon.
Australia’s rock lobster industry is just one of many targets of Beijing’s punitive economic acts. Now Australia’s fishers are worried Beijing’s fishing fleet may come for them: The site of a proposed new $218 million Chinese port is right in the middle of the Torres Strait rock lobster fishery.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne was quick to reassure that Border Force vessels would monitor the region to enforce territorial boundaries and joint-fishing treaties.
But if China claims the Papua New Guinea port gives it access to Australia’s fisheries, that could cause problems.
Former government foreign policy advisor Philip Citowicki says the proposed port is a demonstration of great-power wedge politics.
“The reality is that it continues to seat PNG at the centre of a tug of war, where the presence of China’s authoritarianism is increasingly imprinting itself on the fledgling democracies of the Pacific,” he writes.
“Rarely driven by altruism or regional responsibility, it places both the resources and security of the region at risk.”
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates 90 per cent of global commercial fish stocks are depleted. Now climate change is destroying environments, and “dead zones” of oxygen-depleted waters are expanding in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal.
Up to one-third of the seafood catch imported into the US has been found to have inadequate documentation indicating it has been illegally caught.
2020 NZME Publishing Limited