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From South America to Africa to the far Pacific, China has been securing access to restricted national fishing grounds by using business partnerships to register its ships under foreign flags — a process known as “flagging in.”
Of the 80 industrial squid-fishing vessels that fly the Argentine flag, 62 are controlled by Chinese companies. In all, China operates at least 249 flagged-in vessels, including ones that fish off the coasts of Micronesia, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco and Iran.
Even before China began putting the flags of other countries on its boats, it reigned supreme in global fishing. It achieved its dominance on the high seas — beyond any country’s jurisdiction — with more than 6,000 distant-water ships, more than triple the size of the next largest national fleet.
The Chinese fleet has a well-documented reputation for violating international laws and standards against overfishing and abusing its crews in the drive to satisfy a growing and unsustainable global appetite for seafood. Amid continuing depletion of the world’s fish stocks, workers on Chinese boats on the high seas have been kept against their will and allowed to die of malnutrition.
The practice of flagging in threatens to make these problems local. In many of the countries China has targeted, governments lack the finances, the coast guard vessels or the political will to board and spot-check fishing ships and enforce the law.
And because seafood is an essential source of protein and fishing provides an important source of employment, experts say the encroachment into national waters by Chinese ships is compromising local food security and jeopardizing local livelihoods.
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China has also displaced fishing vessels from the European Union in the waters of Morocco. In the recent past, dozens of vessels, most of them from Spain, fished with the permission of the Moroccan government. The agreement lapsed in 2023, however, and China now operates at least six flagged-in vessels in Moroccan waters.
And in the Pacific Ocean, Chinese ships comb the waters of Fiji, the Solomon Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, having flagged in or signed access agreements with those countries, according to a 2022 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service. “Chinese fleets are active in waters far from China’s shores,” the report warned, “and the growth in their harvests threatens to worsen the already dire depletion in global fisheries.”
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When Chinese fishing companies buy their way into the national waters of other countries, they are not doing it simply to increase their catch.
China has been expanding its influence in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific — and filling a void left by shrinking U.S. and European investment — through a global development program known as the Belt and Road Initiative. In exchange for well over $100 billion in loans to Latin American governments over the last two decades, China has at times received exclusive access to a wide range of resources including oil fields and lithium mines.
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In May 2021, Sierra Leone signed an agreement with China to build a new fishing harbor and fishmeal processing factory on a beach near a national park. Local organizations pushed for more transparency on the deal, which they said would harm the area’s biodiversity, according to a report by the Stimson Center, a foreign affairs think tank. In April 2022, Sierra Leone began purchasing land to build the harbor, despite opposition from locals.
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In Argentina, China has provided billions of dollars in currency swaps over the last decade, providing a crucial lifeline amid skyrocketing domestic inflation and growing hesitancy from other international investors or lenders. China has also made or promised billion-dollar investments in Argentina’s railway system, hydroelectric dams, lithium mines and solar and wind power plants.
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With this investment [from the Belt and Road Initiative] came political influence ...