The southern Chinese city of Shenzhen is offering generous subsidies for tuna-vessel purchases and catch returns.
The city will reimburse local fishing companies up to 30 percent of the cost of a new fishing vessel, and provide up to CNY 17,600 (USD 2,472, EUR 2,531) of tuna air-freighted and CNY 1,300 (USD 183, EUR 187) for other seafood shipped back to Shenzen, under its recently published Shenzhen Municipal Fishery Modernization Assistance Funds guidance. Local subsidies are also available for the construction of cold chain logistics facilities by Shenzhen-based enterprises and reimbursement for the cost of building pelagic fishery bases “at home and abroad.”
The new measures allow for payments of up to CNY 200 million (USD 28.1 million, EUR 28 million) to each local fishing vessel. The subsidy has already been used to help pay for the construction of an Antarctic krill catcher-processor, according to a government document announcing the subsidies.
Coastal Chinese cities have entered into a fierce competition to attract more economic activity from the fishing and seafood industries to their municipalities, with a focus on seafood processors and distant-water firms. Zhangzhou, Xiamen, and Fuzhou each offer generous subsidies to local distant-water fishing companies, and in 2020, the southern city of Xiamen published a subsidy package titled “Measures to Accelerate the Development of a Modern Fishery City” that would allow Xiamen-based distant-water fishing firms to land their catches tax-free, while also subsidizing the costs of bringing the catches back to Xiamen.
Home to the world’s largest fishing fleet, China has faced numerous accusations of overfishing.
Photo courtesy of Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Planning and Natural Resources
