China food security: offshore fish farming turns idle waters into ‘marine breadbasket’
- As China pursues self-sufficiency in food, fish farming offers abundant resources within national control
- Restrictions, protections announced to maintain red lines on aquaculture practices, environmental preservation
China has revealed plans to develop massive offshore aquaculture facilities and widen its fishing territories to build a “marine breadbasket”, with food security remaining at the top of the government’s agenda as the new year gets under way.
In a set of guidelines issued on Monday, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Natural Resources pledged to strictly zone marine farming areas in a similar manner as previously adopted for arable land.
“Turning to the ocean for calories and protein is an important way to secure the food supply,” the ministries said in a separate document.
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The announcement came as Beijing has made food security an issue of paramount importance to counter uncertainties such as global climate change, geopolitics and trade tensions with the West. The push for food self-sufficiency lines up with adjacent efforts in other sectors like minerals, energy and industrial products.
President Xi Jinping said in April that China should “ask not only the land but also the ocean for food”. He again emphasised the importance of developing the ocean economy and ensuring national food security at December’s central economic work conference.
As the world’s largest exporter of aquatic animal products, China now has around 2.1 million hectares dedicated to mariculture. Its marine gross domestic product (GDP) is 9.46 trillion yuan (US$1.3 trillion), accounting for about 8 per cent of national GDP.
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The two ministries also vowed to speed up the construction and application of mobile farm floats and nets in support of deep-sea farming and ranching, in which juvenile fish are released into the ocean for harvesting as adults – the same way livestock is raised on land.
Conson 1, a home-made offshore aquaculture facility, was deployed in May 2022. It is capable of producing 3,700 tonnes of fish each year, an output nearly equivalent to that of Lake Chagan, one of China’s largest freshwater lakes. Two bigger farming facilities were put into service last year, and their operator has plans for an even larger vessel in the future.
On Monday, the Communist Party theoretical journal Qiushi said China should strictly manage the use of uninhabited islands and enhance the protection of coastlines, with a phased withdrawal of buildings along the coast.
The government needs to take a fine-tuned approach to ocean management, it said, including more scientific zoning of marine resources and a gradual exit from traditional, inefficient methods of fishing.
Although China has levied tough regulations on traditional mariculture since 2017 to minimise environmental damage, the recent guideline stipulated certain areas be set aside for traditional fishermen to preserve their livelihoods.
“We need to progress the farming zoning gradually, without adopting a sweeping ‘campaign style’ approach,” the guideline read. “If zoning threatens social stability, we need to conduct risk assessment.”
