Income growth for China’s fishermen appears to be dramatic judging by data on the sector released by China’s agriculture ministry this week.
It shows average fishing incomes went from CNY 8,962.81 (USD1,344.42) in 2010 to CNY 15,594.83 (USD2,339.22) in 2015. That represents an increase of 57 percent.
The number of people working in fisheries went from to 20.16 million in 2015, down 180,800 year-on-year. The number of people employed in fisheries processing (including general operatives in fish farming) totalled 14.14 million, down 140,170 on 2014. But the number of what’s classed as “general employees” in the industry has fluctuated in the past decade, rising from 13.9 million in 2010.
Meanwhile, the area available to aquaculture continues to grow, albeit very slowly. China’s aquaculture area of 8.465 million hectares represented an increase over 2014 of 78,640 hectares. The freshwater aquaculture area of 6.14 million hectares - representing 72.62 percent of the total aquaculture area - last year increased by 1.09 percent. The mariculture area of 2.31 million hectares, which accounted for 27.38 percent of the total aquaculture area, rose 0.53 percent.
Freshwater aquaculture pond area of 2,701.22 thousand hectares, an increase over last year 39.32 thousand hectares, up 1.48 percent.
