Evolution of marine fisheries management in China from 1949 to 2019: How did China get here and where does China go next?

Abstract

China is the world’s biggest fishing nation and a major player in the global seafood trade. Its fisheries development can decisively influence the global seafood trade, food security and marine conservation. In recent years, significant changes have taken place in China’s fisheries management priorities, policies and regulations. In this paper, we review the evolving fisheries management practices in China to delineate changes in the management policies, methods and their performances from 1949 to 2019. We determined that the following issues impede the development, implementation and enforcement of fisheries policies and regulations, namely the large size of the fishing fleet, large and poorly organized fisheries population, the “hidden” fishing capacity, uniform management approaches that sometimes fail to account for local conditions, lack of clearly defined and allocated fishing rights, limited data quality and availability, insufficient fisheries monitoring programmes, absence of a robust scientific input framework and insufficient stakeholder involvement. Combining those problems with China’s current management initiatives, we propose recommendations for China’s future fisheries reforms. We hope this paper can inform China’s marine fisheries policies and provide valuable references for further researches related to China’s sustainable fisheries management.

Aquaculture Impacts on China’s Marine Wild Fisheries Over the Past 30 Years

“…After 13FYP proposed the updated double-control targets and the first total yield limit, the Ministry of Agriculture issued the Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Domestic Fishing Vessels and Implementing the System for Managing Total Marine Fisheries Resources in February 2017, which outlined China's central agenda for fisheries reforms. To meet these targets, the Chinese government has invested extensive efforts into reviewing and reforming its legislation, institutional arrangements, and governance of marine capture fisheries (Su et al, 2020). These measures have resulted in a sustained and substantial decline in total domestic fishing production from 2017 to 2018 (Figure 3).…”

Effects of Microplastics on Immune Responses of the Yellow Catfish Pelteobagrus fulvidraco Under Hypoxia

“…With the increasing discoveries of MPs in rivers and lakes, MPs have been increasingly viewed as a serious health concern to freshwater ecosystems (Shang et al, 2020 ). China is a major country in traditional aquaculture (Su et al, 2020 ), and freshwater aquaculture products account for more than half of the total production in 2020 (Fisheries Administration Ministry of Agriculture Rural Affairs, 2021 ). In recent years, MPs have been found in major rivers and lakes in China such as Yangtze River, Yellow River, Pearl River, Poyang Lake, Dongting Lake, and Taihu Lake (Fu and Wang, 2019 ).…”

Evaluating Impacts of Trophic Interactions on the Effectiveness of Single-Species Fisheries Management

“…Such "fishing down the food webs" phenomena indicate the unsustainable exploitation (Pauly et al, 1998). Fisheries management agencies in China have installed a series of management measures to mitigate the impact of overfishing (Su et al, 2020). However, fishermen may change harvest strategies to catch non-target species as a way to offset the loss of landings from their primary managed stocks.…”