China has increased fishery subsidies | Hacker News Reader

China has increased fishery subsidies

nationalgeographic.com

> an exhaustive survey of 152 countries...That’s a 6 percent rise since 2009

>China, which operates the world’s largest overseas fishing fleet, has increased harmful subsidies by 105 percent over the past decade

china's 105% rise contributed to 6% rise which includes all sea-faring nations. does that mean their subsidies were considerably less than the rest of the world and they are playing catchup?

If they have the largest fleet surely a 105% rise would lead to >6% globally seeing as they have the largest fleet and assuming they were on par with rest of world's subsidies?

They are now also fishing in non-Chinese waters of their neighbors...

Too much power ... :)

Should start sinking their fishing ships like Iceland was doing

Not only their neighbors, they will go all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Last year, a Chinese tuna fishing vessel rammed and tried to sink a Brazilian one in Brazilian waters.[1] They ignore the law knowing Beijing will throw its weight around if they get caught by local authorities.

[1] https://maritimebulletin.net/2018/11/25/fishing-wars-in-sout...

Someone else commented on the fact that China steals others' fish, and he's right. China used up all her own fish [0], and so is stealing those of South America [1] and Africa [2]. This is especially un-ethical in light of the fact that there are parts of these continents where food is not always plentiful for everyone. And of course, she continues to steal parts of the South Not-China Sea.

[0]: https://qz.com/948980/china-has-fished-itself-out-of-its-own...

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-warns-chinas-aggressive-f...

[2]: https://stopillegalfishing.com/press-links/chinas-fishing-fl...

"South Not-China Sea"

Some countries in the region call it the Eastern Sea if you're looking for a replacement.

The text of the article mentions that the new study uses a different (improved) methodology from the 2009 study and discourages direct comparisons between the two sets of results.

> China, which operates the world’s largest overseas fishing fleet...

Is that why we keep hearing about the Japanese whaling industry in the news? To deflect ire from China?

China also uses civilian fishing ships as a paramilitary force pressuring neighbours. [1]

[1]: https://warisboring.com/chinas-fishing-militia-is-a-military...

it's a clever tactic and a great reason for paying them extra.

88% of stocks could be overfished and well below their target biomass in 2050: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/18/4895

I thought this answer was quite fascinating...

https://www.quora.com/How-is-China-able-to-provide-enough-fo...

I'd rather not be one of those "why is this on Hacker News" people but it seems anything remotely negative about China gets an instant bump to the front page these days regardless of relevance. China seems to have become something of an obsession.

Geopolitics, sustainability, and environmental issues are on topic I believe.

Why china in particular? It doesn't seem to me that most people here are from china. So why are chinese threads submitted/upvoted more often?

Because despite this...

>It doesn't seem to me that most people here are from china.

... they are having an outsized impact on US culture and politics right now. That may change, but not any time soon.

Surely it would be as upvoted if it were the USA or the EU? I'd be just as interested in the EU fishing policies going in entirely the wrong direction.

China in particular because they are large. The policy therefore has outsize effect. Particularly when there have been endless stories of over-fishing and concerns about stocks around the world, on a planet that seems to be creaking under the load.

> Why china in particular?

Because of their size and audaciousness they have a large presence in almost every issue that needs to be tackled.

but the Chinese also farm fish...

I think this was on HN a few weeks ago: https://interestingengineering.com/these-massive-floating-fi...

They need their fisher fleet to feed the sea farms. Aquaculture in China has skyrocketed in the last two decades

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