A senior researcher at China’s Ministry of Agriculture recently gave an upbeat assessment on the country’s seafood import market, signaling that although the nation remains a powerhouse in domestic seafood production, it will maintain its newfound status as a net importer for the foreseeable future.
“The potential for seafood imports will be fully unleashed soon,” Xie Zhongmin, the deputy head of research at the Agriculture Trade Promotion Center within the ministry, said. Xie said a “structural gap” in supply and demand, as well as lower tariffs, is driving China’s demand for imported seafood.
Speaking at a conference co-organized by the ministry and the Chinese office of the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA), Xie said demand was outweighing local supply and China was losing competitiveness in the export market, citing lower-cost producers in Thailand and Vietnam, in particular, as sources of stiff competition and reasons why the country has turned to imported products.
“Southeast Asian exporters have lower costs of production … and have low tariff access to the U.S. market, while China’s tilapia exports pay a 25 percent tariff to enter the U.S. market,” Xie explained.
Indonesia is one such country on the rise and competing directly with China; its tilapia-farming output is set to soon match China’s in volume terms, according to data presented at the conference by GSM Market Development Head Steve Hart. Hart projected that Indonesian tilapia output will rise 3.7 percent in 2024, compared to a 1.3 percent rise in Chinese output. This year, Indonesia has expanded tilapia production by 5 percent, while output in China grew by a lower 3.5 percent. At these growth levels, Indonesia will produce 1.6 million metric tons (MT) of tilapia next year, nearing China’s estimated output level of 1.7 million MT.
Tilapia production is growing faster in Africa than in any other region globally, according to Hart, and another key source of production growth, Brazil, is estimated to lift its tilapia output by 5 percent in 2023 compared to last year’s levels.
Responding to the rise in global competitiveness, Chinese imports of seafood, including shrimp and cod, have surged. Itshrimp imports rose by 55 percent in 2022 by reaching USD 6.2 billion (EUR 5.8 billion) and constituted the single largest seafood import category for China last year, comprising 26.4 percent of overall imports, while imports of cod jumped 54 percent in value to USD 1.9 billion (EUR 1.8 billion), accounting for 8.3 percent of the seafood import market.
China’s salmon imports climbed 25 percent, but at USD 700 million (EUR 658 million), it remained a minor import category compared to shrimp. Similarly, catfish imports leapt 114 percent, but the category was worth a smaller, yet still lucrative, USD 600 million (EUR 564 million) in 2022.
China has amassed a diverse portfolio of suppliers by signing recent free-trade agreements and trading partnerships with Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and other nations. This has dramatically changed the position of the U.S. as a dominant supplier over the past five years. The U.S. supplied USD 1.3 billion (EUR 1.2 billion) worth of seafood to China in 2018, compared to the USD 490 million (EUR 460 million) shipped by Ecuador in the same year. American shipments amounted to USD 1.1 billion (EUR 1 billion) in 2022, but Ecuadorian seafood exports to China have increased ten times over in the period from 2018 to 2022.
Though China has largely turned to imports, it remains a production giant, despite the nature of China’s exports changing dramatically.
Cuttlefish and squid comprised the largest category of Chinese seafood exports in 2022, accounting for USD 4.5 billion (EUR 4.2 billion) in exports – a year-over-year rise of 12.2 percent. Shipments of cod rose by 37.9 percent, totaling USD 1.9 billion (EUR 1.8 billion).
Tilapia shipments, meanwhile, fell by 8.7 percent, dropping to USD 1.4 billion (EUR 1.3 billion). Shrimp exports from China were down by 8.5 percent, slipping to USD 2 billion (EUR 1.8 billion) in 2022, while shipments of eels dropped 8 percent year over year to USD 1.2 billion (EUR 1.1 billion), according to data presented by Xie.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a key trade partner for China, buying USD 5.4 billion worth of Chinese seafood in 2022, up 14.6 percent. That placed the bloc as the top destination for exports, purchasing 23.9 percent of overall Chinese exports.
Japan, the U.S., the E.U., and Russia all remain reliable purchasers of Chinese exports, but crackdowns in some of these markets on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing could alter purchasing habits in the near future.
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