Greening China's Fish And Fish Products Market Supply Chains: Summary report

China is now the world's largest producer, consumer and exporter of seafood.

Its role in market supply chains is especially important. There is worldwide interest in the greening of these supply chains, taking into account sustainability impacts on species and stocks, as well as ecosystems within China and elsewhere in the supply chains. International certification processes such as those of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and various seafood consumptions guides are examples of how this international interest is shifting global production, processing, trade and consumption patterns. This is a summary of a larger report (Greening China's Fish and Fish Products Market Supply Chains) that examined these patterns in detail.

China's fishery and aquaculture sector leads the world. Whatever the directions of China's future expansion of production, import and export, and domestic consumption, it will profoundly affect the sustainable use and regeneration of global aquatic resources. The great range of products, the success with aquaculture (which now exceeds fisheries in scale), and the ability to create a great variety of market supply chains in an adaptive fashion are positive signals of a dynamic development capacity in China's aquatic resource exploitation. The fundamental question is whether the exponential growth can continue, or if China is already experiencing limits as to what it might expect to harvest from the seas, lakes and rivers, and from the flooded lands and other areas where aquaculture takes place.