Yu Kangzhen, China’s vice minister for agriculture with responsibility for fisheries, has been encouraging China’s distant-water fishing companies to increase their efforts, while promoting large infrastructure projects at home to handle the growing volume of total catch.
Yu recently visited and inspected plans for the Zhoushan National Distant-Water Fishery Base, a 6.2 square-kilometer site that local officials and industry representatives want to turn into a giant industrial park to handle a huge increase in distant-water catches.
China has been working hard to secure overseas fishery resources, using trade agreements and infrastructure investments – including massive fishing bases – to secure fishing rights abroad.
Several large port development projects similar to the one in Zhoushan have already been built. Those have the added benefit of boosting the economies and tax revenues for local governments in China.
