According to the 13th Five-Year Plan for the National Fishing Industry http://www.moa.gov.cn/nybgb/2017/derq/201712/t20171227_6131208.htm http://www.moa.gov.cn/

According to the 13th Five-Year Plan for the National Fishing Industry http://www.moa.gov.cn/nybgb/2017/derq/201712/t20171227_6131208.htm http://www.moa.gov.cn/nybgb/2017/derq/201712/t20171227_61312... China had 65398 sea-going fishing boats with a length of at least 12 meters in 2015 and planned to reduce that number to 57095 in 2020. The number of distant-water fishing vessels is given as 2512 in 2015, but I can't find anything to substantiate the claim that it's supposed to be limited to at most 3000 by 2021 (though I didn't read the whole plan, so maybe I missed it). EDIT: Turns out I should have looked at the five-year plan for distant-water fishing specifically, which does say that the number of vessels should be stabilized below 3000 by 2020 and also mentions that at the end of 2016, there were close to 2900 either already deployed or under construction http://www.moa.gov.cn/gk/ghjh_1/201712/t20171227_6128624.htm http://www.moa.gov.cn/gk/ghjh_1/201712/t20171227_6128624.htm Those 17000 vessels estimated by the ODI are likely not ships whose existence the Chinese government denies, but instead ships that are not classified as part of the distant-water fishing fleet even though they do venture far off the coast.