How China bought its way into national fishing grounds around the world

[video at link]

The Prefecto Derbes, an Argentine coast guard vessel, shot at the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 when it attempted to evade arrest for illegal fishing. (Argentine coast guard)

By Ian Urbina, Pete McKenzie and Milko Schvartzman
Aug. 4, 2024 2 AM PT

On March 14, 2016, in the squid grounds off the coast of Patagonia, a rusty Chinese vessel called the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was fishing illegally, several miles inside Argentine waters. Spotted by an Argentine coast guard patrol and ordered over the radio to halt, the ship fled the scene. The Argentinians gave chase and fired warning shots. Then the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 tried to ram the coast guard cutter, prompting it to open fire and sink the Chinese ship.

Although the violent encounter at sea that day was unusual, the incursion into Argentine waters by a Chinese fishing vessel was not. Owned by a state-run behemoth called the China National Fisheries Corp., the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10 was one of several hundred Chinese jiggers — as squid ships are known — that routinely visit the fishing grounds that lie beyond Argentina’s territorial waters. Many of these ships turn off their locational transponders and cross secretly into Argentine waters. Since 2010, according to the Argentine government, the navy has chased at least 11 Chinese jiggers out of its waters.

A year after the sinking of the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 10, Argentina’s Federal Fisheries Council issued a little-noticed announcement: It was granting fishing licenses to two foreign vessels that would allow them to operate within Argentine waters. Both would sail under the Argentine flag through a local front company, but their true owner was the China National Fisheries Corp.

The move by local authorities has become an increasingly common one in Argentina and around the world in recent years. From South America to Africa to the far Pacific, China has been securing access to restricted national fishing grounds by using business partnerships to register its ships under foreign flags — a process known as “flagging in.”

[...]