Chinese President Xi Jinping claims that China seeks only “win-win cooperation” with the rest of the world. The weight of his global action proves the grievous lie of his rhetoric.
Still, one lesser-known example of Xi’s dishonesty comes from the havoc that China’s fishing flotillas are wreaking. These fishing fleets are depleting vulnerable fishing stocks, destroying the lives of impoverished local fishermen, and gutting international maritime law. Their actions represent a modern version of piracy. They require forceful riposte.
CHINA’S ILLEGAL FISHING HORDES FACE A NEW CHALLENGE: SEABIRDS
Indeed, they’re asking for it.
Take what’s happening in international waters off Ecuador, near the Galapagos Islands wildlife sanctuary. The AP reports how, when the U.S. Coast Guard legally attempted to search Chinese vessels this summer, those vessels illegally fled the area. But one vessel did something else. It turned toward a Coast Guard cutter, threatening to ram it. The cutter had to take evasive action. That action underlines just how bold China’s fishing piracy has become. Chinese fishing fleets, often hundreds in strength, know how to play the game. They regularly deactivate their location transponders while engaged in their illegal fishing. The Chinese government then shamelessly screeches that any criticism is unjust. A foreign ministry spokesperson told the AP that “The behavior of the United States is unsafe, opaque and unprofessional. We demand that the U.S. side stop its dangerous and erroneous inspection activities.”
A similar story prevails 6,000 miles east.
The BBC reported on Tuesday how Ghanaian fishermen employed by Chinese fishing companies are treated. Alongside an August NGO report, the BBC tells of fishermen who died after their Chinese employers refused to provide medical care following illnesses or injuries at sea. China’s abuses, human and ecological, are then excused by rampant corruption across the Ghanaian government. Or by other means. The BBC notes how an honest fisheries observer appears to have been thrown overboard and killed by a Chinese crew belonging to the Mengxin Ocean Fishery Company. The BBC says Mengxin “could not be reached for comment.”
This situation is intolerable. Or at least it should be.
The U.S. Agency for International Development lists its priorities in Ghana as including anti-corruption efforts and “working to protect Ghana’s marine fisheries to prevent the depletion of fish stocks in coastal areas.” But unless there are more teeth to efforts to confront China, Beijing will simply keep doing what it is doing. After all, that’s exactly how Beijing shapes its responses to other controversies. Whether it’s Chinese intellectual property theft online, territorial imperialism in the South China Sea, or genocide in Xinjiang, where the Communist Party senses international hesitation, it steams full speed ahead.
A new approach is needed.
For a start, the U.S. should encourage international partners to join the U.S. Coast Guard’s illegal fishing enforcement efforts. Harnessing the Coast Guard’s command, control, and intelligence resources, even small maritime patrol commitments by other nations could provide outsize benefit to enforcement efforts. Where possible, the Navy should also use joint training operations with foreign counterparts to include more search and seizure operations. This would allow for better utilization of existing resources in support of both military training and the illegal fishing effort.
The U.S. should also push leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz, who talk a great deal about environmental issues, to put their navies where their mouths are. The obvious moral and ecological import of countering illegal fishing makes this a key test as to whether those and other Western leaders are willing to draw any red lines in their dealings with Beijing.
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Third, fine-tuning geographic enforcement strategies to what each contributing nation is comfortable with, the U.S. should push for more forceful responses. The vast scale of China’s fishing fleets means that relying only on search and seizures won’t turn the tide. Punitive deterrence must also be part of the solution. Following Malaysia’s example, we need to see the detention of crews, the criminal charging of captains, and the sanctioning of companies involved in illegal fishing. To be blunt, we also need to see illegal fishing vessels sunk at sea once their crews have been detained. While Beijing will wail at such action, it will not be able to win the ensuing public relations battle. What China’s fishing fleets are doing is plainly illegal and obviously bad for the oceans, fish, environment, and everyone outside of China.
The international community has effectively confronted Somali pirates in recognition of their threat. Chinese pirates shouldn’t get a free pass simply because their masters are more powerful.
