>hundreds of illegal Citation needed. Basically all of these articles tries to spin Chinese distance fishing fleets operating largely in international waters,

>hundreds of illegal Citation needed. Basically all of these articles tries to spin Chinese distance fishing fleets operating largely in international waters, at the edge of respective country EEZs, legally as... illegal. This article specifically: >nothing blatantly illegal to report to the Ecuadorian navy, the Coast Guard was relegated to watching, There is nothing to stop enforcement of isolated illegal behaviour, which actual analysis of transponder behaviour shows, is limited to handful of boats and such behaviour is consistent among other distant fishing fleet. CCP doesn't give a shit when other countries enforce on Chinese distant fishing vessels unless behavior overlaps with disputed maritime areas. Plenty of Chinese ships detained or even sunk by foreign coast guards, central government just shrugs and say tough shit. Though it's a sufficiently annoying diplomatic issue that China is trying to reduce it's DWF size in the next few years. > devastate local fish populations At the end of the day, China _UNDER_ fishes per capita, including the Galapagos drama. Ecuador & Peru, two countries with 1/28th population of China, captures about about 1/4 of China, who also has 1/2 the EEZ of these countries, which incidentally means China has to fish more in international waters. In fact Ecuador & Peru catches as much fish annually as US with 1/10 the population... so if anything these two countries need to fish less and China needs to fish more. BTW top 5 DWF fleets by size: China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Spain. Adjusted per capita China would rank behind Taiwan, Korea. In terms of transshipped fishing (offloading catch to support vessels) which allows fishing fleets to fish longer with less traceability, China ranks behind South Korea, Japan, Taiwan.