China plans to cut its domestic wild-catch fishing haul by 3.09 million tons from its 2015 total, down to 10 million in 2020.
In a press conference last week in the run up Chinese New Year, the country’s top fisheries official said the country would also cut the number of trawlers by 20,000 through demolition of older vessels.
Vice Minister for Agriculture Yu Kangzhen, who is responsible for fisheries, pointed to the “increasing role” of imports in supplying the country’s seafood needs.
Yu didn’t, however, mention how many of the country’s trawlers would be diverted and modernized to increase China’s catch from international waters.
Meanwhile, China will also bring in a new fishing moratorium on all four of its territorial waters, referred to as seas in China, for all of May, according to Yu.
Last November, the vice minister told a group of China-based diplomats that Western governments were unfairly criticizing Chinese vessels’ expansion into international waters.
