The wanton destruction of natural resources, whether that be fish, animals, vegetation, air or water is a tragedy.

My 'homeland' is still the per capita pollution champion of the world, so I find myself unable to enthusiastically criticize a nation that is scouring the planet to feed its population (20% of the world's people) when U.S. (5%) corporations are fouling the air for profit.

Perhaps aboriginal peoples (.01%) have a more lofty position to voice righteous outrage.

As I've said before the Chinese government and Chinese people are self-serving. They lack empathy and consideration for others. It is easy to observe this behavior when living in China.

When I first lived in China 10 years ago I developed pneumonia, which I had 11 years earlier also ( 1996 ) Nobody at the school was the least bit concerned even though I was seriously ill.
I had to help myself, much harder then because I could not speak Chinese at the time. Nobody wanted to help me so a booked a flight from Wuhan to Hong Kong and then Cathy Pacific back to Australia and just left.

I know another guy who had cancer, nobody cared either, just wanted to know if he would keep doing classes. In the whole time I was in China I only really met five people who ever expressed concern for my welfare,
four of them women, three of them GF's.

The Chinese really have a "blame the victim" mentality and if something bad happens to you it's always your fault. In regard to fishing, I think it is a "right to take" mentality like the Japanese had in WW2.

"We are Chinese, we are superior". This is the thinking.

In regard to fishing and oceans, it is not just industrialized fishing that is a problem. There is a lot more crap in the oceans than most people realize, micro-plastics, industrial toxins. A favorite fishing spot of mine in Brisbane, Pinkenba, was ruined recently due to a toxic chemical spill by Qantas at their mega hanger at Brisbane Airport. Tens of thousands of litres of a toxic fire retardant material spilled out into a creek and then into the river and most likely into the bay. Sad to see all the pics of dead fish on TV.

The chemical does not break down easily, similar to DDT. So now people are scared to eat fish and prawns and crabs from the mouth of the river or in Moreton Bay. It has been big news here. I have been using Qantas as my preferred airline over the past three years, I won't be using them any more. The scary thing is that this spill was not reported for several days, so many people would have eaten seafood from the area unaware of the contamination.

Because for decades since the opening of China, they have been overfishing their (already big) EEC without regard for sustainability.

China is literally raking the ocean bottom with large nets destroying everything down there be it fish related or not, and therefore preventing marine life from reproducing in its natural environment that doesn't exist anymore. No other country is doing that, most use large nets but don't go all the way down where most ecosystems exist, they usually stop the net several hundred meters above the bottom.

There is no more fishes around China's EEC, including the South China sea, it's all been depleted by the Chinese themselves. So China is desperately entering other countries EECs to steal their fishes. Chinese fishing fleets have been caught around Africa, all the way to South America, in waters that belong to other countries according to the UNCLOS convention.

Countries that have the means are fighting back. The Chinese don't dare going to Japan's waters anymore because their fishermen get caught most of the time there, and then their fishing boats get shot down by coast guards, each sunken boat is a lot of money lost for the Chinese. Same thing with Korea, Western nations and countries with more aggressive policies such as India, Brazil or Indonesia.

But African countries and most of South America don't have the means to catch and stop Chinese fishing fleets, well except Somali pirates. In most cases the Chinese come and go unchallenged, taking as much fish they can and depleting resources for the local fishermen who manages to sustain the supply for centuries. It sucks but it's just the old story of the strong taking from the weak, the same old story.

Ouch!

Of all the stresses that humans have inflicted on the world’s oceans, including pollution and global warming, industrial fishing ranks high. For years, trawlers capable of scouring the ocean floor, and factory ships trailing driftnets and longlines baited with thousands of hooks, have damaged once-abundant fisheries to the point where, the United Nations says, 90 percent of them are now fully exploited or facing collapse.
The damage is not just to the fish and the ecosystem but also to people who depend on them for food and income. This is particularly true in Africa.

With its own waters heavily overfished, and being forced to forage elsewhere to feed its people, the Chinese government commands a fleet of nearly 2,600 vessels, 10 times larger than the United States fleet, all heavily subsidized. As Zhang Hongzhou of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University observes, “For China’s leaders, ensuring a steady supply of aquatic products is not just about good economics but social stability and political legitimacy.”

The result: The Chinese government is basically snatching fish out of the nets of poor fishermen in Africa in order to keep fish on plates in China. A new study published by the journal Frontiers in Marine Science says that most Chinese ships are so large that they scoop up as many fish in a week as Senegalese boats catch in a year, costing West African economies some $2 billion.