With the annual meeting of China’s parliament due next week, one of its delegates is talking up his company's distant-water fisheries plans.
Lan Ping Zhong, chairman of Fuzhou Hong Dong Yuan Yang Fishing Co, a seafood firm known for its fishing base in Mauritania, said he wants to invest further in fisheries across West Africa and Latin America.
Hong Dong operates what it claims is China’s largest overseas fishery base – the Mauritanian port and fishmeal plant is shipping 2,500 tons per week to European and U.S. customers. A third phase of our Mauritanian project was completed in 2019, and Lan said, based off the project’s success, he’d be telling the parliament to further increase supports to the distant-water fishing industry. Lan credited China’s Belt and Road initiative with guiding his firm and giving it the confidence to expand internationally and said he wants to see more Chinese fishing firms to follow suit.
Hong Dong is using its Mauritanian model to build ports and processing plants in Suriname and Guinea and these are near completion, Lan told Xinhua TV, in a special program focusing on the upcoming National People’s Congress (NPC), which was postponed from its original date in March.
“The coastal countries on the One Belt, One Road have really abundant fishing resources and want to cooperate with China,” Lan said.
Cod, ribbonfish, and porgy is all being shipped from the company’s Mauritanian base to its cold chain warehouse in Fuzhou, which has a 10,000-metric-ton capacity, Lan told Xinhua. Boxes marked “frozen Patagonian toothfish” with the name of Chile-based Pesquera Frisko Seafood SPA were also shown on camera during a tour of Hong Dong’s warehouse. Additional boxes marked “cuttlefish from the Indian Ocean” were also visible.
Lan said in addition to its expansion into new fisheries in Latin America and Africa, he wants Hong Dong to co-invest in aquaculture ventures in both regions. Lan said he’ll also use the NPC meeting in Beijing to drum up support for a Distant Water Fishing Park being developed by his firm in Fuzhou. He also said he plans to raise the issue of vessels fishing without transponders and will call for greater cooperation between Chinese fisheries regulators and international counterparts.
Hong Dong and other Chinese distant-water firms are clearly well-connected politically – last year, Hong Dong Vice President Lin Lanying was part of a provincial delegation from Fujian Province that met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the week-long sitting of the NPC. Lin credited Xi for internationalizing fishing companies like Hong Dong when he served as the Communist Party boss of Fuzhou earlier in his political career.
Outside of China, Hong Dong has been criticized for the terms of its deal with Mauritania. Mauritania’s parliament this spring set up a committee to investigate deals signed by former President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz, including a 2010 agreement with the company, which is also known as Poly Hong Dong.
Photo courtesy of Fuzhou Hong Dong Yuan Yang Fishing Co.
