Did you know that there’s a country sneakily taking most of the food sources from the

sea illegally? Before we get into this argument I want to give a brief summary about China’s past
with fishing and laws. China’s livelihood was often credited to fishing, with silk lines and bamboo
rods so anybody could just go to a body of water and catch fish to eat. Chinese law was
influenced by Confucianism which is variability in moral conduct according to status and
circumstances. It was also influenced by Legalism which stressed reliance on uniform objective
standards. Their law was ultimately run by an emperor who had considerable responsibility to
heaven for any disturbance in the whole world; whenever a disturbance occurred, punishment
was taken as means to restore the cosmic equilibrium. Obviously things have changed a bit
nowadays compared to their royal and uneasy past. But back to my point, China's illegal fishing
in international waters has created many issues in maritime safety, and as a result other
countries are mainly looking to resolve this issue by increasing global fishing surveillance with
uniting forces. Some other alternative solutions would be by creating less profitable seafood
sales in the market with them and closing ports from foreign vessels to enter.
One solution that the US is coming up with to fix this issue is increasing surveillance of
where these Chinese fleets are fishing. They are doing this by building a network of counter IUU
allies with other countries. This method is advised specifically for stopping Chinese fleets at a
halt from getting away with illegal fishing. With this being said they still want to abide by
principles of carrying out this action. As said by Commander Jennifer Runion (2023) the first
principle is, “that most states in the region do not wish to be forced to choose sides in a great
power conflict” (para.10). What they mean by this is, they don’t want this action to seem like a
setup for the Chinese government and don’t want it to be seen as a sign of war and intimidation.
The other principle that’s also mentioned by Commander Jennifer Runion (2023) is “that these
nations, many of whom were the victims of colonization or imperialism in the recent past, prefer
to take the lead in defending their own sovereignty” (para.10).What is meant by this is that the
US doesn’t want to seem controlling so it is free reign to however these countries want to
handle this conflict. Thus, as long as they handle it with precaution and not an overly aggressive
solution, it’ll do the job.
These are not the only ways the US is going to try and increase global surveillance on
these fleets though as they have more solutions to provide in mind. What Commander Jennifer
was trying to get across was, the other solution being creating new bilateral agreements and
expanding shiprider programs to partnering nations. The US is also encouraging other countries
like Australia; India; Japan; Vietnam; Indonesia; Taiwan; Singapore; France and the UK to build
similar programs and to share intellect & satellite data to prevent harmful fishing practices. The
purpose of the shiprider programs is to turn countries with lacking assets to a force multiplier.
However, stated by Commander Jennifer Runion (2023), this will only work if “The agreement
empowers officials from states with limited assets to benefit from allies’ capacity to enforce
domestic laws” (para.12). On the other hand, bilateral agreements could be a valued way to
combat IUU fishing by enforcing officials from opposing countries to access each other’s EEZ to
forbid vessels that meet predetermined criteria. What was again brought up by Commander
Jennifer Runion (2023) was, “a bilateral agreement would necessitate the presence of foreign
law enforcement officials, and essentially “deputize” them to enforce another state’s laws in its
EEZ” (para.13). The purpose of this would be to extinguish most or all of the invisible border,
giving anyone doing illegal things, less places to hide from surveillance. This is just another way
of how we can seize this problem.
Biden has also realized this problem that’s going worldwide, and he’s come up with
some ways we could increase surveillance on China. He’s focusing on the smaller nations
connected to the Pacific ocean, due to the fact that they’re vulnerable and most of the Chinese
fleets stay in those waters to illegally fish. Biden wants to send reinforcements from the US
Coast Guard to help out these countries. As said in the nytimes news (2023), “The United
States, too, has pledged to assist smaller nations to counter China’s illegal or unregulated
fishing practices. The U.S Coast Guard, which now calls the practice one of the greatest
security threats in the oceans, has dispatched patrol ships to the South Pacific” (para.28).
Although Biden is helping them with their territorial waters, it doesn’t help to stop Chinese fleets
at open sea. The Chinese actually saw this as a way to be less restricted in open waters as if
they’re not really being paid attention to. In nytimes news (2023) it mentions, “Such efforts may
help in territorial waters, but they do little to restrict China’s fleet on the open seas. The
consumption of fish worldwide continues to rise, reaching a record high in 2019” (para.30). If the
Chinese keep illegally fishing the way they are, it could be crucially fatal to the future of the
world and the last thing we need right now is scarce oceanic resources.
Even though surveillance is the main solution that the world is considering to impose on
China, it’s not the only thought given worldwide. The other idea that I read up on was about
decreasing the reduction in catch and reduction in profit. The country that originally imposed this
aggressive yet effective idea was Indonesia. As said in Nature Ecology & Evolution (2018), “We
show that Indonesia’s policies have reduced total fishing effort by at least 25%, illustrating with
empirical evidence the possibility of achieving fishery reform without short-term losses to the
local fishery economy. Compared with using typical management reforms that would require a
15% reduction in catch and 16% reduction in profit, the approach of curtailing IUU has the
potential to generate a 14% increase in catch and a 12% increase in profit” (para.1).This’ll give
fleets that are illegally fishing outside their countries borders less motivation to constantly
commit this crime of IUU. On another note it shows that sometimes extremely bold and risky
measures to this problem can lead to some success in the long run.
The last solution I found to this problem is also taking a more straightforward and bold
route in this situation the world is in. It is to simply create an agreement to close off ports from
receiving these vessels to dock at foreign countries if they aren’t verified. As mentioned by Todd
Woody (2019), “That’s the idea behind the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), which
came into effect in June 2016 and requires participating nations to restrict entry of foreign fishing
vessels to designated ports.” (para.2). With this system it’ll be more sufficient and secure due to
the fact that they can’t create sales with the country unless they’re verified. The guy at the docks
will inspect the boat to ensure that it hasn’t been catching fish illegally before the vessel is
allowed to pass. Let’s say the foreign vessel is caught in the process and was illegally fishing,
then what happens to them? Then Todd Woody (2019) said, “If a port state denies a ship entry
because of suspected illegal fishing, it must notify the flag state – the country where the vessel
is registered. If the flag state is a party to the PSMA, that country then has the duty to
investigate the vessel and, if it finds evidence of illicit fishing, take action to penalize the ship,
such as by levying fines or revoking its registration.” (para.7). I believe this would be a very
dependable system for this problem, it just goes to show that communication is key and that
there’s hope of cooperation.
As you can tell by now, China's illegal fishing in international waters has created many
issues in maritime safety, and you’ve observed some solutions that other countries are
considering to resolve this issue. The point I was getting across is that China has been doing
this like they don’t care about anything that’s opposed to them. As if they seem comfortable
doing it and that we need to bring this problem to a halt by coming up with better surveillance
and security around the world. Personally, I think that we absolutely have to do something about
this problem quickly and effectively. Since this is tied in with my major, I think it is not right for
these Chinese fishing fleets to extract all of our ocean’s resources. I feel as if they know this is
wrong but do it anyway just because there’s no secure method of how to deal with these
criminals. Would you want this problem to keep going on or should we try to do something and
stand against it?