Terra Firma: An Engine of Slavery, Ecocide and Empire
China's Distant Water Fishing Fleet.
Imagine this.
Two enormous tracked vehicles crash through the Amazon or the Californian Redwoods. Strung between them is a chain festooned with buzzing blades that churn through ancient hardwood and undergrowth alike. Animals flee before it; those that are caught are either diced by the blades or trapped in the net behind.
The destruction is so vast, so total, that it can be seen from space.
These machines are not content to stay on the land of their own nation. They encroach onto others, destroying woodland, wetland and farmland alike, ruining the livelihoods of people who happen to live nearby.
The owners of these machines pay off local politicians to suppress the voices of those who speak out. Repression grows. Authoritarianism follows and with it, disappearances, state violence, death. The workers on them face brutal conditions, human rights abuses and modern slavery.
The object? The machines are harvesting a single type of nut that plays a small role in adding extra fibre to dog food. Three-quarters of the animals and plant life they harvest is burned or thrown away.
Now, imagine that there are thousands of such machines, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
This is not dystopian fantasy. This is reality.
The only difference is: it happens not on land but in the deep ocean.
Bottom trawling is an enormously destructive, wasteful method of fishing that has a terrible impact on the oceans. It destroys the seabed through the same method described above: an enormous chain with a net behind.
The video below shows the process. It is from Sir David Attenborough’s Ocean (available on Disney+ or… buy the book).
China’s Distant-Water Fishing (DWF) Fleet
China’s Distant-Water Fishing (DWF) Fleet is the largest fishing armada in the world by an impressive distance.
China is, as a report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) states:
(My wonderful paid subscribers get full access now but, fear not! it will open next Saturday and you shall be told! I am experimenting with incentives.)
“A fisheries superpower. It has the largest fishing fleet and the largest DWF fleet in the world. In 2016, China captured 15.2 million tonnes of fish – around 20% of the global total – and consumed 38% of total global fish production. China’s DWF caught two million tonnes, although China provided details of species and fishing area for only those catches marketed in China, representing 24% of the DWF catch (FAO, 2018a). In the same year, China exported fish and fish products worth $20.1 billion – around 14% of the total global trade (FAO, 2018a).”
We are not even sure how large China’s DWF fleet is, as many vessels are flagged to other countries and there is significant obfuscation and opacity surrounding the makeup of the fleet.
Some figures on vessel numbers were:
• 2,460 vessels in 2016 (Greenpeace)
• 3,432 in 2014
• 1,600 in 2016 (European Commission)
These reports are likely underestimating the scale. A 2020 report by ODI found that China’s DWF is around five to eight times larger than previously estimated. It states:
“We identified 16,966 vessels in the Krakken® database as members of China’s DWF fleet. This is 5–8 times larger than the estimates of 1,989 vessels provided by Mallory (2013), 3,432 vessels by Pauly et al. (2014), or 2,460 vessels by Greenpeace (2016b).”
Nearly 17,000 ships. Even cutting the number by half or two-thirds, it is still enormous and many times larger than the nearest competitor. According to data from Dialogue Earth, the EU’s DWF fleet shrank from 718 ships to 289 between 2008 and 2014. The US fleet is even smaller with just 225 large DWF ships in 2015.
Fishing vessels moored in the port of Zhangzhou, Fujian, China. Source: Wen Wenyu / Greenpeace
Part of the reason we are not sure how large China’s DWF fleet is comes back to the aforementioned obfuscation. As the conservation organisation Oceana says:
“(They) operate largely without access agreements or under access agreements that are secret, thus we don’t even know if their catch is legal or not … There are good reasons to think that China’s distant water fleets, legally or not, catch well above the surplus in the countries where they operate. Chinese authorities are not publishing catch statistics or evaluations of the stocks exploited by their fleets.”
The growth of this fleet from a mere 13 in 1985 to the armada we see today is because of the collapse of fisheries within Chinese waters. ODI says:
“By 2012, 30% of fisheries in China had collapsed, and 20% were considered over-exploited (European Parliament, 2012). Like those of other countries, China’s push to expand its DWF fleet has been fuelled by tax exemptions and subsidies for fuel and ship construction.”
Of the nearly 17,000 vessels, trawlers are by far the most common. From a sample of 4,789 Chinese distant-water fishing vessels, ODI found that nearly 1,821 (38%) were trawlers.
The Wanton Destruction of Trawling
You have seen the video above, but let us delve into what that chaos results in.
Bottom trawling releases around 1 gigatonne of carbon every year. The carbon is released when the chains scrape the sediment, releasing clouds of CO₂ into the ocean which can increase ocean acidification. A report by Nature estimated that between 600 million and 1,500 million tonnes of CO₂ were released annually by trawling. In comparison, global aviation released 918 million tonnes in 2019.
Not only does trawling release enormous amounts of CO₂, but it also destroys seagrass meadows which provide a vital CO₂ capture system. Seagrass meadows absorb carbon 35 times faster than tropical rainforests.
Trawling is also completely indiscriminate in what species it catches. A trawl to catch, say, scallops can bring in hundreds of other species such as sharks, dolphins, turtles, rays and fish. When landed, most of these animals are dead and simply swept into the sea. ClientEarth estimates that between 40 and 60% of a trawler’s total catch can be thrown away in this manner.
Beyond the moral outrage of such enormous waste, there is a knock-on effect on fish stocks as vital links in the food chain are cut. Remove large predators and prey populations explode, eating their way through the base of the food chain until that too becomes barren.
There is also the collapse of the landscape itself. Lissette Victorero and Dr Deng Palomares, writing in a study published in Frontiers in Marine Science in 2018, said:
“Much more biomass of fish and habitat-forming species has been removed from the deep-sea than we thought. This has altered the ecosystem in ways that we have yet to understand.”
Trawling is done by nearly all fishing nations. The UK does it. France does it. The US does it. There are strong movements in these democratic nations to ban or restrict the practice — from grassroots organisations, journalists, scientists and pressure groups.
The CCP allows no such interference.
The Ruination of Local Livelihoods and Breaches of National Sovereignty
Above: An Argentine P-3C "Orion" flies Chinese fishing vessels Source: Argentine Military
This is imperialistic behaviour. It is aggressive behaviour. The Chinese DWF is notorious for encroaching on the waters of other nations.
Outlaw Ocean reports a 2016 encounter between the Chinese squid vessel Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 and the Argentine coastguard in Argentinian waters. It resulted in the Chinese vessel trying to ram the coastguard cutter and getting promptly sunk for their troubles. Chinese vessels regularly turn off their transponders (illegal under international law) and sneak into the waters of other nations.
The Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was owned by the enormous state-run China National Fisheries Corporation (CNFC). As a state-run company in the PRC, it is effectively an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
Bizarrely, the CNFC was given some access to Argentine waters. This is a method called “flagging in” where a company like CNFC gains access to national waters by operating through a front company flagged to that nation. According to Outlaw Ocean, PRC companies now control at least 62 industrial fishing ships that are flagged to Argentina, including most of Argentina’s squid fishing fleet.
It is worse in Africa. Around 70 Ghanaian-flagged Chinese fishing ships operate in Ghanaian waters. Environmental Justice Foundation found that in 2018 around 95% of Ghana’s industrial trawling fleet fell under Chinese control in some way.
On the other side of Africa, China’s displacement of local fishermen had a direct security blowback. Somaliland, the democratic and successful country that broke from Somalia following the latter’s decline into autocracy, has grave concerns after Somalia allowed Chinese vessels along coastline claimed by Somaliland.
Overfishing by industrial concerns has pushed local fishermen out across Africa. In 2019 Somaliland’s then Foreign Minister Yasin Hagi Mohamoud said:
“Across Africa, this disparity [between Chinese and local vessels] drains economies of billions of dollars, driving local fishermen into crime, terrorism and piracy.”
Slave Ships
When I was researching this piece, I was reminded of one of the plotlines from Ray Nayler’s excellent speculative fiction work The Mountain in the Sea:
“I was a nautical engineer, before all of this. This—” He gestured around them, to the darkened, sweat-stinking barracks lurching in the storm. “This world didn’t exist. It was a story in the news. A story I clicked past without reading. Autotrawlers crewed by slave crews. Another world, a degraded shadow of our own. How was I to know there was a hole in the world that I could fall through, like falling through an open manhole? That I could fall right through that story in the news, and end up on the other side, on a planet I don’t even recognise? And become a person I don’t recognise.”
Excepting the AI captain and mercenary guards (give it a few years) this description isn’t far from the reality for many of the crews on the PRC’s fishing armada or further up the supply chain in factories on the mainland. The Outlaw Ocean Project is dedicated to tracking and reporting on China’s enormous fishing fleet. It tracked the journey of a young Indonesian man: Daniel Aritonang.
Above: Daniel Aritonang aboard the Zhen Fa 7. Source: Ferdi Arnando/The Outlaw Ocean Project
Coming from an area of Indonesia with 16% youth unemployment, his prospects were slim. A friend persuaded him that work at sea may be a route to a good wage and a future.
Outlaw Ocean tracks his journey from his recruitment to work aboard fishing vessels through a shadowy (and according to the investigation, unlicensed) crewing company to his entrapment aboard the Chinese squid fishing ship the Zhen Fa 7. The piece describes how Aritonang and other Indonesians aboard were treated as slaves. They were not allowed to call home, their passports and travel documents were taken from them, they were fed only on rice, fish and instant noodles and suffered beatings and abuse if they spoke out or asked to leave the ship.
Aritonang managed to scrounge $13 to call home by selling cigarettes and snacks to other deckhands. His work bought him a five-minute conversation with his mother. He asked to speak to his father. His mother didn’t have the heart to tell him that he had died while Aritonang was at sea.
In January 2021, Aritonang contracted Beriberi. A condition not dissimilar to scurvy caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1. It is rare because it is so easily reversible and preventable with a good diet. When symptoms arise, an intravenous drip of vitamin B1 usually cures it within 24 hours.
Aritonang started to show symptoms in the middle of an operation. The captain refused to stop. In February the ship docked in Mauritius, but the captain refused to send Aritonang ashore.
Only when faced with a near mutiny from the rest of the Indonesian crew did the captain relent and send Aritonang onto a fuel tanker to take a circuitous route to hospital in Uruguay.
When he arrived at hospital, an interpreter, Julien Reyes, described that his whole body was swollen, there were bruises around his eyes and neck. He claimed he had been tied around the neck.
Despite the best efforts of doctors, Aritonang died.
He is one of many. The investigation describes how between 2013 and 2021 fishing ships (most Chinese) dropped a dead body in Montevideo approximately every month and a half.
This is a pattern. It is not unreasonable to say that the Chinese DWF is crewed by slaves.
Recruiters target the desperate. One advert in inland China said:
“If you are in debt, your family has shunned you, you don’t want to be looked down on, turn off your phone and stay far away from land.”
The Environmental Justice Foundation interviewed more than a hundred Indonesian crew members for a report in 2022. It found that roughly 97% experienced modern slavery.
In 2014, twenty-eight African workers disembarked from a Chinese squidding ship called the Jia De 1 in Montevideo. A number had shackle marks on their ankles and complained of beatings aboard.
Between 2018 and 2022, the Outlaw Ocean team found that China gave more than $17 million in subsidies to companies where at least 50 vessels are alleged to have engaged in fishing crimes or had deaths aboard.
Not only, therefore, is the Chinese DWF an engine of imperialism and environmental destruction. It is run on exploitation and misery.
Why Is the CCP Particularly Bad?
China is not alone in trawling or operating a DWF. Where China stands out, though, is the enormous scale and the wanton disregard for national sovereignty, environmental impact, climate change and human rights.
Given their current trajectory, the Chinese fishing fleet exerts such enormous pressure on the ocean’s livelihood that it bears significant responsibility for the collapse of fisheries around the world.
This is not because the Chinese market is particularly greedy or demanding for seafood. It is primarily because of the CCP’s obsession with control and influence and their fear of transparency.
The CCP sees control of global fishing stocks as a tool which it can use to exert influence. It sees overseas fishing bases as a way to leverage presence in disputed waters, particularly in the Pacific or South China Sea. To pursue this, China pays enormous subsidies to its fishing armada. The ODI report states:
“China subsidises fishing through tax exemptions, particularly on fuel, to the value of $16.5 billion per year, or 47% of total global fishing subsidies.”
Chinese fishing vessels are also much more polluting, operating with weaker environmental and health safeguards causing higher levels of waste, oil spills, pollution and deaths. Additionally, according to independent monitors the Chinese fleet’s rate of IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing is significantly higher than other nations.
The ODI report states:
“In total, we identified 183 Chinese vessels in Krakken® that were either suspected or confirmed to be involved with IUU fishing. To give some context, the largest list of global IUU vessels – aggregated from RFMOs [Regional Fisheries Management Organisations] and INTERPOL – lists a total of 311 vessels.”
China’s fleet do all this because it faces much less pressure at home than a democracy would. Independent media, watchdogs and NGOs are restricted or controlled. Scientists are censored. This means that environmental and human rights abuses go unreported or understated and whistleblowers risk lethal reprisals. Because of this there is little incentive for the CCP to act multilaterally or limit the harmful subsidies and it can ignore or subvert global norms or international agreements much more easily than the liberal democracies.
What Is to Be Done?
The ODI recommends a number of approaches.
Firstly, the PRC must be pressured to bring its DWF in compliance with environmental and human rights norms. Their behaviour is typical authoritarian short-sightedness, but it can be mitigated against through self-interest. There is little point in having a DWF if there is nothing to fish.
Enforce regulations on bottom trawling. It is an unnecessarily harmful and wasteful method full of inefficiencies. As with many other nations, the PRC should stop subsidising its trawling fleet.
Coastal nations should be encouraged and subsidised to enforce their regulations and not allow ‘flagging in’ by any nation.
Global governance around DWF and IUU activities needs to be more effective and given some real teeth. Vessels found to be engaged in IUU should be seized or sunk.
Our oceans need some teeth if we are going to protect them effectively.
What do you think should be done? What can we do to bring China to the table?
Tell me in the comments!