bodyType

customContents

entityId

printArticlePageQuery

filter

article

body

urlAlias

articleSectionsContent

articleSeoArticle

articleSourceHeaderArticle

contentSchemaRenderContent

contentSubHeadlineContent

contentHeadlineContent

mainImagePrintArticleArticle

authorBlockPrintArticleArticle

contentSponsorTagContent

articlePianoPaywallContent

scmpYoutubeContent

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

query printArticlePageQuery(
  $entityId: String!
  $customContents: [CustomContentInput]
  $bodyType: BodyFormatTypeEnum
) {
  article(filter: {entityId: $entityId}) {
    entityId
    body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
      json
    }
    urlAlias
    ...articleSectionsContent
    ...articleSeoArticle_3o8td4
    ...articleSourceHeaderArticle
    ...contentSchemaRenderContent
    ...contentSubHeadlineContent
    ...contentHeadlineContent
    ...mainImagePrintArticleArticle
    ...authorBlockPrintArticleArticle
    ...contentSponsorTagContent
    ...articlePianoPaywallContent
    ...scmpYoutubeContent
    ...hooksTrackPageViewArticle
    id
  }
}

fragment articlePianoPaywallContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksPaywallPromiseContent
}

fragment articleSectionsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sections {
    value {
      ...helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection
      ...entityLink
      name
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment articleSeoArticle_3o8td4 on Article {
  ...hooksArticleSeoArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersGetArticleTypeArticle
  entityId
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
  summary {
    text
  }
  subHeadline {
    text
  }
  body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
    text
  }
  keywords
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  topics {
    name
    entityId
    id
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  images {
    style(filter: {style: "768x768"}) {
      url
    }
  }
  readingTime
}

fragment articleSourceHeaderArticle on Article {
  urlAlias
  ...entityLink
}

fragment authorBlockPrintArticleArticle on Article {
  ...defaultArticleDateContent
  ...authorNamesArticle
}

fragment authorNameAuthor on Author {
  ...entityLink
  name
  entityUuid
}

fragment authorNamesArticle on Article {
  authorLocations
  authors {
    entityId
    location
    ...authorNameAuthor
    id
  }
}

fragment blockquoteQuoteContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment contentHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  socialHeadline
  ...contentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
}

fragment contentNewsletterWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
    id
  }
  sections {
    value {
      relatedNewsletters {
        ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
        id
      }
      id
    }
  }
  ... on Article {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment contentSchemaRenderContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...blockquoteQuoteContent
  ...imageContent
  ...inlineWidgetContent
  ...photoGalleryWidgetContent
  ...scmpYoutubeContent
}

fragment contentShareWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  shortUrl
  socialHeadline
  headline
}

fragment contentSponsorTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentSubHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  subHeadline {
    json
  }
  summary {
    json
  }
  ...contentSchemaRenderContent
}

fragment defaultArticleDateContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksArticleDateUtilsContent
}

fragment entityLink on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  __typename
  entityId
  entityUuid
  urlAlias
  urlRedirect {
    toUrl
    id
  }
  application {
    entityId
    id
  }
  ... on Section {
    fullSectionPath {
      entityId
      id
    }
    parentSection
  }
  ...helpersAppBarVariantBase
  ...helpersApplicationBase
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersAppBarVariantBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsLiveArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...helpersSectionContent
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersApplicationBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
}

fragment helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection on Section {
  name
}

fragment helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle on Article {
  entityId
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  disableOffPlatformContent
  sponsorType
  published
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
}

fragment helpersCheckIsLiveArticle on Article {
  flattenTypeIds
  liveArticle {
    status
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    paywallTypes {
      entityUuid
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusPage on Page {
  urlAlias
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle on Article {
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle on Article {
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostiesPage on Page {
  urlAlias
}

fragment helpersCheckIsStyleArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sections {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersGetArticleTypeArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        entityId
        id
      }
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter on Newsletter {
  entityId
  name
  alternativeName
  description {
    text
  }
  summary {
    text
  }
  homepageDescription {
    text
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle on Article {
  authors {
    types
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersStyleSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersUseContentSponsorContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    sponsor {
      ...sponsorTagSponsor
      name
      type
      id
    }
    id
  }
  ... on Article {
    sponsorType
  }
  ...helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent
}

fragment hooksArticleDateUtilsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  createdDate
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
}

fragment hooksArticleSeoArticle on Article {
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle
  entityId
  headline
  socialHeadline
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
  images {
    generic_og: style(filter: {style: "og_image_scmp_generic"}) {
      url
    }
    styles(filter: {styles: ["og_image_posties_article", "og_postmag", "og_image_style", "og_image_scmp_analysis", "og_image_scmp_explainer", "og_image_scmp_editorial", "og_image_scmp_fact_check", "og_image_scmp_debate", "og_image_scmp_live", "og_image_scmp_obituary", "og_image_scmp_opinion", "og_image_scmp_review", "og_image_scmp_series", "og_image_scmp_generic"]}) {
      url
      style
    }
    type
  }
  urlAlias
}

fragment hooksContentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        name
        entityId
        description {
          text
        }
        id
      }
    }
    ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  }
  flag
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  ...hooksContentHelperContent
}

fragment hooksContentHelperContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle
  ...helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle
  ...helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle
  flag
}

fragment hooksPaywallPromiseContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  ...helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle
}

fragment hooksTrackPageViewArticle on Article {
  entityId
  publishedDate
  headline
  sections {
    value {
      name
      id
    }
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  entityUuid
}

fragment imageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  ...checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent
}

fragment inlineWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentNewsletterWidgetContent
}

fragment mainImagePrintArticleArticle on Article {
  images {
    title
    url
    isSlideshow
    size_652x446: style(filter: {style: "652x446"}) {
      url
    }
  }
}

fragment photoGalleryDialogContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment photoGalleryWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...photoGalleryDialogContent
}

fragment scmpYoutubeContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  publishedDate
}

fragment sponsorTagSponsor on Sponsor {
  name
  type
  images {
    url
  }
}


sections

types

disableOffPlatformContent

sponsorType

published

headline

socialHeadline

authors

images

publishedDate

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

keywords

topics

readingTime

authorLocations

entityUuid

David Dodwell

When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping began to seriously set about lifting China’s (then) billion-strong population out of squalor and poverty in the 1980s, with the aim of joining that small and lucky part of the world that lived in material affluence, I wonder if he recognised the problems he would create for the rest of the planet?
For the better part of two centuries, the world had maintained a sort of equilibrium, with a small minority of the population concentrated in Europe and North America living in material comfort, relying on the cheap and steady supply of commodities from a necessarily-poor rest of the world.
They were necessarily poor for two reasons: first, if they were paid more for their foodstuff and raw materials, then the cost of the West’s comforts would rise sharply; and, second, because they would become wealthy enough to consume themselves, creating competition for raw materials and for the luxury consumables that until the middle of the 20th century were the exclusive prerogative of the West.
By striving to transform China into a materially comfortable middle-class consumer economy, Deng must surely have recognised that he would more than double the world’s consumers of cars, washing machines, air conditioners, red wine and Louis Vuitton bags.
But did he anticipate the furore it would create in the privileged West? Or the very real environmental challenges and climate disruption that would arise?


These were my musings as I recently read a fascinating study by Beatrice Crona and a team of academics from the Stockholm Resilience Centre on China’s struggles to produce enough seafood to feed its increasingly affluent population.
They forecast that while China has been able to stay largely self-sufficient in seafood in the past, by 2030, demand will outstrip supply – perhaps by as much as 18 million tonnes a year.
In a world where total global production amounted in 2018 to 179 million tonnes, such a shift by China to becoming a significant net importer “is certain to have implications for seafood availability and markets in the rest of the world”, as the study delicately puts it.
“To meet the seafood gap, China will likely attempt to increase domestic freshwater and offshore aquaculture, increase seafood imports, possibly expand the distant water fishing industry, and invest in seafood production abroad,” the study says.
None of this will happen without international controversy or without creating massive environmental challenges, both within China and internationally.


Back in 1978, most Chinese subsisted on coarse grains, legumes and vegetables. Today they have joined the West, with diets flooded with fat, sugar and animal proteins. Refrigeration, and the explosion of aquaculture, has brought seafood to increasingly urbanised middle-class consumers thousands of miles from the coast.
While China has for years been the world’s biggest producer and trader of fish, its relationship with fish is changing dramatically. Until recently, most of the fish it imported stayed in China only fleetingly. Huge processing plants, many concentrated along Shandong’s coast, would fillet the fish, then re-export it to the affluent West.
In China, eating pufferfish is no longer a dance with death
Inside China, a massive aquaculture sector grew up on inland lakes and waterways, raising mainly carp and tilapia. The carp were consumed locally. The tilapia were filleted for export.
But with rising affluence and urbanisation, lifestyles and food tastes have radically changed. As Crona notes, Chinese consumers’ notions of high-quality and safe seafood now “generally include wild (as opposed to farmed), marine (as opposed to freshwater), and imported (as opposed to domestically produced) seafood, particularly from countries considered to have ‘clean’ waters such as Australia, Norway and North America”.

This shift in Chinese tastes has massive implications for global fisheries, because the “wildcatch” fish now preferred by China’s affluent middle class come mainly from the world’s oceans, in which annual catch rates have been stuck at around 90 million tonnes per year for the past three decades (it rose to 96.4 million tonnes in 2018).
But virtually all additions to world fish supply since the 1980s have come from aquaculture, where Asia – and in particular China – dominate, accounting for about 89 per cent of the 114.5 million tonnes of fish (82 million tonnes), mollusks and seaweed (32.4 million tonnes) farmed in 2018.
China squid trawlers face temporary ban amid overfishing backlash
If demand is increasingly focused on marine wildcatch, but most new supply is coming from aquaculture – where there are anyway rising concerns about environmental damage – then there is a real danger of what Crona inscrutably calls “policy incoherence”, not just for China, but for fisheries globally.
The study points to three future “areas of interest”: first, that the shape of international fisheries trade is likely to shift dramatically. China will continue to be the world’s largest seafood and fishmeal importer, but will keep more imports for domestic consumption.
Build in rising concerns over food security, driven in part by the Covid-19 pandemic’s disruption of global seafood production and supply chain logistics, and there is every prospect of turmoil in seafood trade.

Second, that China may drive a “catch it yourself” strategy, fighting for a bigger share of catch in the high seas, perhaps by adding to its already huge subsidies to its ocean fishing fleets. What does this mean for Chinese ambitions of increasing sea power?
And third, Chinese are likely to invest in fisheries production in other countries, perhaps in marine aquaculture, and take more control of fishmeal supplies. Such investments might mitigate aquaculture damage inside China, and could generate employment in receiving countries, “but the environmental and social impacts of Chinese business practices are poorly documented and remain a topic of intense debate”.
There are doubtless some in the affluent West who quietly wish the Chinese had remained respectfully poor. But they have not, and we have to deal with the consequences. As Crona concluded: “Because of its global impact and its dynamism, China is critical for unlocking the transformative innovation needed to reconfigure patterns of global development.”
China calls this a “marine ecological civilisation building policy”. Let’s hope it mitigates, rather than aggravates, our acute global fisheries challenges.
David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view


As China’s demand for seafood grows, can it navigate a sustainable course?

Fishing boats wait to be dismantled at Hongze Lake in Jiangsu province on November 3. The local authorities announced a ban on fishing in the lake to protect its biological resources. Photo: Zuma Wire/dpa

Workers process tilapia fish fillets at a workshop in Wenchang, Hainan province, China June 20, 2018. Picture taken June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. CHINA OUT.

(201111) -- LIANJIANG, Nov. 11, 2020 (Xinhua) -- Photo taken on Nov. 10, 2020 shows a fishing boat sailing on an aquaculture farming area in Xiaocheng Township, Lianjiang County, southeast China's Fujian Province. (Xinhua/Wei Peiquan)

Opinion

Comment

Business

News

China


A recent study predicts Chinese demand for seafood will outstrip supply by 2030, by as much as 18 million tonnes a year. As a result, the shape of the international fisheries trade is likely to shift dramatically



A recent study predicts Chinese demand for seafood will outstrip supply by 2030, by as much as 18 million tonnes a year. As a result, the shape of the international fisheries trade is likely to shift dramatically.


China economy

China trade

Environment

Conservation

Inside Out & Outside In

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Inside Out