China’s distant-water fishing fleet is engine of environmental destruction, labour exploitation: Report

Colombo: China’s distant-water fishing fleet is an engine of environmental destruction and labour exploitation, which, if continued, will keep on destroying ecosystems, undermining food security and violating human rights, a report has said.

A report in Sri Lanka-based Daily Mirror has stated that the dominance of China, which operates the world’s largest distant-water fishing (DWF) fleet, in global fisheries has come at an “increasingly unsustainable cost”.

“With more than 16,000 active vessels — far exceeding the government’s official cap of 3,000 — China’s DWF footprint is massive, spanning virtually every oceanic region (Overseas Development Institute, 2020). These fleets are not merely fishing further afield; they are operating with poor transparency, inadequate oversight, and growing evidence of systemic labour and environmental abuses,” the report reads.

Daily Mirror also cited a 2025 report by Oceana, which revealed that Chinese-flagged vessels carried out 44 per cent of all visible global industrial fishing activity between 2022 and 2024, with over 110 million hours at sea.

The effort of this majorly focuses on resource-rich but ecologically sensitive areas in the Pacific Islands, West Africa and Latin America regions, already facing pressure due to climate change and local overfishing.

“China’s extensive use of bottom trawlers, which rake the ocean floor and destroy entire ecosystems, has drawn international condemnation. These trawlers — many of which operate under foreign flags to evade regulation — are responsible for long-term habitat destruction, coral reef collapse, and unsustainable bycatch rates,” the report said.

In addition to human rights issues and biodiversity decline, the report said, China’s DWF model threatens global food security.

Chinese vessels in many coastal African and Pacific nations extract fish, which would have otherwise fed local residents. Local artisanal fishers have seen a reduction in catch and income as overfishing by foreign fleets, especially Chinese, reduces coastal stocks, the report said, citing SciDev.not.

The report in the Daily Mirror further mentioned, “Despite claims from Chinese authorities that their fleet operates under ‘strict regulation,’ the reality is a web of subsidies, loopholes, and weak enforcement. Fuel subsidies and generous vessel financing allow Chinese operators to profit even from unviable fisheries.”

It added that the regulatory bodies like the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs “consistently underreport fleet size and omit human rights violations from public disclosures (ODI, 2020)”.

“Beijing has stated it will reduce illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, but its words are not matched by robust domestic reforms or international cooperation,” the report mentioned.

In order to counter this model, according to the Daily Mirror report, global institutions must implement stronger port-state measures, demand transparency in vessel ownership, and impose conditions for market access on verified labour and sustainability standards.

It added that the nations that import Chinese-caught seafood, particularly the US and those in the European Union, must implement diligence rules that hold importers accountable for forced labour and IUU fishing.

“The evidence is overwhelming: China’s distant-water fishing fleet is an engine of environmental destruction and labour exploitation. It is not merely a matter of poor oversight; the system is structurally flawed, fuelled by subsidies and legitimised by weak governance,” the report said.

“As long as the fleet operates under these conditions, it will continue to devastate ecosystems, undermine food security, and trample human rights. If Beijing is serious about becoming a responsible maritime power, then it must radically reform its fishing policies — not just on paper, but in practice,” it added.

IANS