Communist China seems increasingly to be depleting the world’s oceans of marine life. The country has by far the world’s largest fishing fleet of anywhere between 200,000 to 800,000 fishing boats — accounting for nearly half of the world’s fishing activity — approximately 17,000 of which belong to its distant-water fishing fleet. The growth has been made possible by enormous state subsidies. In 2012, for instance, the Chinese state poured $3.2 billion in subsidies into its fishing sector, most of it for fuel. However, according to a report from 2012, “government support for the fishing and aquaculture sector could be as much as CNY 500 billion (USD 80.2 billion, EUR 61.7 billion) when regional and national subsidies for rural-based fish farmers are taken into account.”
