386 28 JANUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6579 science.org SCIENCEBy Frank Asche1,2, Bixuan Yang^3 ,
Jessica A. Gephart^4 , Martin D. Smith^5 ,
James L. Anderson^3 , Edward V. Camp^1 , Ta r y n
M. Garlock^1 , David C. Love^6 , Atle Oglend^2 ,
Hans-Martin Straume^7G
lobal trade in seafood is tightly cou-
pled with environmental, economic,
and social sustainability ( 1 – 3 ). Yet,
two features of global seafood trade
hamper efforts to promote sustain-
ability. First, the recent practice of
importing seafood, processing it, and then
exporting it (“reexporting”) at a large scale
complicates tracing seafood from the water
to the plate and enables mislabeling ( 4 ).
Second, reexports can exacerbate problems
stemming from distant-water fishing (DWF),
i.e., fish caught in international waters and
other countries’ economic zones. DWF ob-
scures the distinction between domestic
and imported seafood and is implicated in
illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU)
fishing and other unsustainable practices
( 5 ). Both features highlight the critical role
of China ( 5 , 6 ), the world’s largest DWF
nation and largest seafood producer, con-
sumer, exporter, and importer (by volume).
Contradicting the narrative that Chinese
domestic demand is driving imports, we
estimate that 74.9% of imports to China are
processed and reexported.
Nearly all these imports are from fisheries
rather than aquaculture, and for some spe-
cies, exports are substantially higher than
imports plus Chinese production, suggesting
mislabeling [see supplementary materials
(SM) for all data, methods, and code]. For in-
stance, China is a leading exporter of species
like cod for which it does not have domestic
catches. Instead, China relies on imported
raw materials from multiple species and
origins, such as Russian Alaska pollock and
Norwegian cod (see SM). Hence, since 2000,
China has increasingly become the world’s
fish processor.Traditionally, the majority of seafood,
which is the most traded food commodity,
was harvested from wild fish populations,
processed near fishing grounds, and traded
to large population centers. Globally, this
structure created an important role for
coastal communities where fish were pro-
cessed and preserved before continuing
their journey toward the final consumers,
often far away. From the turn of the cen-
tury, improved preservation technologies,
combined with low transportation costs,
have increasingly challenged this model:
Relatively unprocessed seafood such as
whole frozen fish can be shipped over long
distances before secondary processing such
as filleting is undertaken, and finished
products may travel long distances again
before reaching final markets ( 7 ).
Low wages and an undervalued currency
explain the improved competitiveness of
Chinese manufacturing in general ( 8 ), and
because seafood processing is labor-inten-
sive, these factors make China highly com-
petitive in seafood processing. Low trans-
portation costs for frozen seafood augment
China’s competitive edge in seafood process-
ing over other coastal nations. T he new struc-
ture of processing for reexport severs the
link between fish stocks and coastal commu-
nities and inflates the share of seafood that is
traded internationally. With 74.9% of China’s
imports being reexported, 11.3% of the global
seafood trade is counted first as imports to
China and then as imports to the final des-
tination market (see SM). Reexporting can
also increase revenue from the same supply
of raw product because labor-intensive man-
ual processing gives higher yields than ma-
chine processing ( 9 ). Secondary processing
reinforces competitiveness of the new struc-
ture by allowing processing plants to obtain
inputs year-round and thus increase capacity
utilization relative to processors dependent
on local fishery landings in compressed sea-
sons ( 10 ). Low wages and the requisite tech-nologies are not specific to China, suggesting
that other countries could adopt the Chinese
reexport model and further transform global
seafood markets. But at present, most of the
world’s largest importers, such as the US and
Japan, are primarily consuming seafood and
not processing for reexport.
Although high-quality data exist at differ-
ent levels in the supply chain, data are col-
lected for various purposes, and it is, to our
knowledge, never the purpose to compare
quantities at different stages in the supply
chain. The member countries of the World
Trade Organization collect trade data, and
they also collect production data, but that
is normally done by different organizations.
This makes it difficult to reconcile seafood
production and trade data because of mis-
matches in species- versus product-level
reporting and weight losses during process-
ing ( 4 ). Consequently, species-level data on
imports, country of origin, processing, and
reexports are scarce. To gain insights about
China’s role in the global seafood industry,
we convert quantities of different product
forms in imports and exports by species
group with the same approach used to esti-
mate apparent consumption ( 4 ). Conversion
factors make the weights of different prod-
uct forms at different stages in the supply
chain comparable (see SM).
The top 15 imported species groups ac-
count for 76.5.% of China’s total seafood
imports and 89.2% of the imports of identi-
fied species. Alaska pollock, primarily from
Russia, accounts for over 21% of imports
(see the table). Cuttlefish and squid, salmon,
whitefish (cod, blue whiting, haddock, and
hake), and pelagic species (mackerel, her-
ring, and tuna) are also important species
groups. Of the top 15 species groups, five
are almost exclusively for reexport (reexport
share>75%), and six appear to be primarily
imported for domestic consumption. Only
three of the species groups—Atlantic salmon,
catfish, and shrimp—are primarily produced
by aquaculture ( 11 ), and these all have small
reexport shares. Among all finfish imported
into China, 91% are whole frozen fish (see
SM), a product category that typically is fur-
ther processed before the final point of sale.
For six species groups, the whitefish, and
salmon species, China has no domestic land-
ings. This confirms that exports of these spe-
cies rely entirely on imports. There are three
species groups for which the exports exceed
imports plus production. This situation
could reflect imprecise conversion factors,
short-weighting, and reporting error, includ-INSIGHTSSUSTAINABILITYChina’s seafood imports—
Not for domestic consumption?
An estimated 74.9% of China’s seafood imports are reexported
(^1) School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences and Food Systems Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA. (^2) Department of Safety, Economics and Planning, University of
Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway.^3 Food and Resource Economics Department and Food Systems Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.^4 Department of Environmental Science,
American University, Washington, DC, USA.^5 Nicholas School of the Environment and Department of Economics, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.^6 Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
and Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.^7 Department of Economics, BI Norwegian
Business School, Bergen, Norway. Email: [email protected]
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