China's efforts to reel in overfishing

China's enormous fishing fleet is often accused of overfishing far beyond the country's territorial waters. With the increasing geopolitical tension between the United States and China, greater attention is being paid to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by Chinese fishing vessels in the Asia Pacific. From the mid-1990s, China introduced various and a fishing license system to reduce the size of its fishing fleet. The combination of depleted Chinese fishing stock and the increased number of fishing vessels built encouraged Chinese fishery operations to expand outwards. China also aims to stabilise its total output from distant water fishing at 2.3 million tonnes while strictly controlling the size of its distant water fishing fleet. In 2022, China ended its fishing fuel subsidies and established fishery stewardship subsidies. China has recently relaxed its control over fishery imports and is inward fish flows are growing.