Comment by tw04

High seas is global commons. Any meaningful regulation / quota for potential enforcement is going to be on per capita basis (like emissions), in which case PRC significantly _underfishes_ relative to other top IUU violators. PRC would need to have distant fishing fleet of 60,000-120,000, or 20-40x times larger than current (3000-6000) to match per capita fleet of Taiwan (2000). Even if you take high end estimate of PRC DWF at 16000 that motivated actors use to bundle PRC fishing in their near shores (east/south seas, most of which are maritime militia that doesn't actually fish), they would still be "entitled" to 4x current fleet size. The reality is PRC has 20% of worlds population and limited EEZs so they're going to have to fish more in high seas / international waters for consumption and commerce. Unless one thinks PRC citizens aren't entitled to seafood or PRC fishers aren't entitled to a living.

Top fishing countries aren't going to agree to that (most of whom are US allies that media doesn't report on despite having comparable suspicious activities in same distant regions PRC operates in). The only reason PRC fishing got media play / propaganda push in the last few years is US wanted to beef up influence of pacific nations playing up PRC fishing so they can drive the issue to forward deploy coast guard and build influence. It's geopolitical lawfare, and it's unlikely to do anything substantive because any agreement by PRC on curtailing distant fishing would be on per capita basis which would first involve everyone else (JP,SKR,TW etc) to essentially kill their entire fishing industry before PRC would even need to make any cuts. Someone else pointed out the SUV analogy when it comes to global warmning which is apt.

E: some embarassing math mistakes

My recollection of how this works in the Pacific is that you won’t be eligible to buy fishing days in an EEZ if you do this.

They are #3 and #6 on the IUU list.

https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IUU-...

#1 China - 3.86 #2 Russia - 3.04 #3 South Korea - 2.91 #4 Somalia - 2.90 #5 Yemen - 2.89 #6 Taiwan - 2.88

Neck and neck with two states undergoing decades of civil war, and one that's a bit of an international pariah at the moment. A truly glowing endorsement.

> Taiwan's impact is a tiny fraction of China's.

Do you have any citation for this? The reports you cited do not give any numbers, and only put blame on both countries for use of forced labour, and for catching sharks (on the basis that both violate a US shark fishing ban, that was only passed by Congress in 2021[1]).

Taiwan also received a positive citation for closing some loopholes in its laws (With no evaluation for whether it enforces them.)

[1] Which is a good thing, but it is not an international shark fin ban. It's not entirely clear to me why either Taiwan or China have to follow domestic American law...

The IUU report[0] gives such a ranking in Table 4. Ten worst-performing countries.

for IUU fishing scores by type, for all types of state responsibilty:

China, Russia, South Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Taiwan, Ukraine, Eritrea, Egypt, Libya.

[0] https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IUU-...

How could Japan be having its jellyfish problem, stemming from overfishing allegedly, if the rules were actually enforced?

I doubt it's perfectly enforced though, another problem is that Japan's legal fishing regulation is poor.

It's global market data, not political propaganda. If people get these numbers wildly wrong, they lose money. The "Chinese numbers can never be trusted" canard can only be stretched so far when it comes to global economic data that is materially validated on a daily basis by countless non-Chinese stakeholders.