China syndromeU.S.-China Fight over Fishing Is Really about World Domination

By Blake Earle

Published 21 September 2020

China’s aggressive, sometimes illegal fishing practices are the latest source of conflict with the United States.

China has the world’s largest fishing fleet. Beijing claims to send around 2,600 vessels out to fish across the globe, but some maritime experts say this distant-water fishing fleet may number nearly 17,000. The United States has fewer than 300 distant-water ships. Governments often use the fishing industry to advance their diplomatic agenda, as my work as a historian of fishing and American foreign relations shows. The United States used fishing, directly and indirectly, to build its international empire from its founding through the 20th century. Now China’s doing it, too.

China’s aggressive, sometimes illegal fishing practices are the latest source of conflict with the United States.

China has the world’s largest fishing fleet. Beijing claims to send around 2,600 vessels out to fish across the globe, but some maritime experts say this distant-water fishing fleet may number nearly 17,000. The United States has fewer than 300 distant-water ships.

According to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, nations control marine resources within a 200-mile “exclusive economic zone”; beyond that are international waters. While the U.S. never signed the treaty, it has declared a 200-mile offshore exclusive economic zone.

Bolstered by generous subsidies and at times protected by armed coast guard cutters, Chinese fishermen have been illegally fishing near the Korean Peninsula and in the South China Sea, a hotly contested area claimed by six countries. By exploiting these waters China has come to dominate the international squid market. Nearly half of this catch is exported to other Asian nations, Europe and the United States.

Chinese ships have even pushed as far as Africa and South America, where fishermen have been known to remove their identifying flags to avoid detection. In 2017 Ecuador caught 20 Chinese fishermen in the environmentally protected Galapagos Marine Reserve and sentenced them to four years in prison for capturing thousands of sharks, the primary ingredient in a Chinese delicacy, shark fin soup.

In August, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized China for “predatory fishing practices” that violate “the sovereign rights and jurisdiction of coastal states.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said Pompeo was just trying “stir up trouble for other countries.”

But Pompeo’s rebuke is about more than fish. Governments often use the fishing industry to advance their diplomatic agenda, as my work as a historian of fishing and American foreign relations shows. The United States used fishing, directly and indirectly, to build its international empire from its founding through the 20th century. Now China’s doing it, too.

Fishing Its Way from Independence to Imperialism
Before the 1800s, when international law began to define maritime rights, restrictions on fishing depended wholly on what a given nation could enforce.