Author: Gengzhi Ge
Recently, a well-known Hollywood actor in the United States and the winner of the Best Actor in the 2016 Academy Awards, and Leonardo DiCaprio , who is known as the " Little Little Little " in China, suddenly posted on his social account to attack China's fishery, saying that after China's large number of deep-sea fishing boats caught all the fish in their own waters, they began to go to other places for deep-sea fishing, which sounded the alarm for the economy and sustainable development of other countries.
This post quickly caused a lot of dissatisfaction in China. Some netizens said that DiCaprio was quite ignorant of China's fishery situation, so he made such remarks that attacked the Chinese eating too much fish. Some people believe that although he posted this post to show his "care" for the marine ecology, his remarks about the Chinese who randomly put map cannons are not only arrogant, but also suspected to be racist.
However, after investigating and interviewing the origin of DiCaprio's remarks, Gentleman found that this matter is far more complicated than "Little Little Little Don't Let Chinese Eat Fish". DiCaprio's post is actually just a superficial link.
is the rhythm of " New York Times "
First of all, judging by DiCaprio's post, his attack on Chinese fisheries, especially deep-sea and ocean fisheries, mainly originated from two related articles published by the New York Times on September 26 and 27 local time, especially the article on the 26th titled "How China aims the target at global fishery supply."
The first author of this article is Steven Lee Myers, a former China correspondent of the New York Times. But this person has a very biased view of China. He not only likes to take things out of context, distort and distorted reports on China, but also often makes up for it regardless of the facts.
For example, at the National Day parade for the 70th anniversary of the New China 3 years ago, although the sky in Beijing was very clear at that time, a large number of peace doves were released on Tiananmen Square to show that China's rise is a peaceful rise, but this Miles opened his eyes and told lies in the report that Beijing's military parade "no pigeons" and also accompanied by a very dim "picture".
Now in the article he led to attack China's ocean fishery, he smeared the increasingly standardized, responsible and focused on green and sustainable development of China's fishery, especially the ocean fishery, into a "bully" who ignores eating habits, robs other countries' resources and destroys the environment by distorting the concepts and distorting the facts.
For example, at the beginning of the report, he claimed that Chinese fishing boats had caught all the fish in the Chinese waters, so he began to fish in the world such as the Indian Ocean, the South Pacific, Africa and South America, and the scale was terrifyingly large. This was obviously an attempt to portray Chinese fishermen as "locusts".
Not only that, he claimed that a large number of Chinese fishing boats have been "sticking" to South America's "exclusive economic zones" in "Ecuador and Argentina " for many years, and have support for supply ships and transshipment ships, which has prevented local fishermen from catching fish and destroying the environment. They also labeled China as "even if it is legal, it is not compliant."
He even exaggerated the illegal behavior of individual fishing boats in the huge China's far-sea fishery to the "taste" of the entire China's far-sea fishery and even the Chinese people. For example, the case of "Fuyuan Yu Leng 999" being illegally transported by Ecuadorian officials was found to have illegally transported sharks by Chinese fishing boats that were widely reported by domestic and foreign media in 2017, which he even claimed that this was because shark fins were "a delicious food in China."
An expert who understands the situation in China's fishery told Geng Zhige that the situation described by Myers and the New York Times is completely inconsistent with the facts.
First of all, China not only implements a three-month or even four-and-a-half-month fishing moratorium in the four waters in front of its own home, which has greatly restored the fishing resources in its surrounding waters. In recent years, China has been vigorously promoting green, high-quality and sustainable ocean fishery, not only actively implementing fishing moratorium measures in the high seas, but also canceling fuel subsidies that may "overfish".
What the expert said is not false. According to Chinese media People's Daily , from July 1 to September 30 last year, China officially implemented independent fishing moratorium measures in some high seas in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean and the Eastern Pacific. During the independent fishing moratorium, all Chinese squid fishing boats stopped fishing operations to protect the squid resources of the high seas. Moreover, according to the China Ocean Fisheries Association, Shanghai Ocean University and other units, experts were organized to analyze and demonstrate the 2020 fishing moratorium effect. In the southwestern Atlantic and southeastern Pacific fishing moratorium, the cumulative squid production from January to April 2021 increased overall year-on-year, the resource situation improved, and the results of the fishing moratorium were initially revealed.
The "China Ocean Fisheries Compliance White Paper" released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in November 2020 also shows that China Ocean Fisheries has always adhered to the path of green and sustainable development, is committed to scientific conservation and sustainable utilization of fishery resources, and promote the sustainable development of global fisheries. By strictly controlling the scale of the fleet, strengthening standardized management, cracking down on illegal fishing, improving quality and efficiency, and striving to build a remote fishery industry with reasonable layout, excellent equipment, complete supporting facilities, standardized management, responsible and sustainable development.
Secondly, the expert said that China's fishing boats do not "stick" in other countries' exclusive economic zones to catch fish, and they all maintain a certain distance. Moreover, although Chinese fishing boats fish in the high seas, they are also subject to regional fishery organizations in relevant regions. In addition, China also has fishery cooperative relations with neighboring countries, including a benefit sharing mechanism and a violation of the law.
Moreover, the expert also revealed that the product destinations of China's far-sea fishery are also diverse, not only for the domestic market, but also for Europe, the United States, Japan and Africa. Among them, a considerable proportion of the fish caught by China and Africa in distant sea fisheries flows to local Africa.
Again, on the issue of sharks, public information shows that the sharks on the "Fuyuan Yu Leng 999" ship were not fished in the waters of Ecuador, but were obtained from two other Taiwanese fishing boats about 1,000 kilometers outside the waters of Ecuador.
More importantly, the above-mentioned fishery expert told Geng Zhige that although China has been cracking down on shark trade in recent years and has been strictly managed, the international shark trade has not been reduced due to China's severe crackdown.
However, there is no such situation in Myers' report.
But Myers is not the only Western media to discredit China on the far-sea fisheries. Two years ago, Bloomberg and other media in the United States also launched a wave of smear on China's distant sea fishing industry, saying that Chinese distant sea fishing boats that went to fish for squid near the South Atlantic Ocean were fishing for sharks. However, because these reports are too ridiculous, even some professional marine ecological NGO organizations can't stand it. Marine environmental protection organization Oceans Asia wrote an article at the time pointing out that there were serious deviations in the reports of these media and suspected that some "geopolitical" elements in the United States might be involved.
The "scheming" of the United States
In fact, the "scheming" of the United States is probably the source of the "geopolitical" that has caused China's ocean fishery to be smeared by overseas public opinion again.
In fact, Myers has "showed" it in the last part of his article, saying that the United States is "helping" small countries to "fight" China's "illegal" fishing on fisheries issues, and US Coast Guard also called the "illegal" activities of Chinese far-sea fishing boats "the biggest security threat to the ocean." Among the countries that the United States wants to "help", in addition to some South American countries with good friendship with China, it also includes the South Pacific countries that the United States is trying to win over and have been invited by the United States to discuss cooperation in the past two days.
The previous Chinese fishery expert revealed more clearly what the United States' "scheming" is. He said that the reason why the United States is so concerned about international far-sea fisheries, especially constantly fanning the flames between China and other countries, is likely because the United States wants to act as a world policeman in this matter, and ultimately uses its huge naval power and legal long arm to govern , and expand its power to the high seas and even the near seas of various countries.
The fishery expert also said that although the United States wants to maintain its maritime hegemony by seizing the moral commanding heights of combating illegal fishing, China, as a major country in distant sea fishery, has actually been calling on joint law enforcement with neighboring countries in relevant regions to jointly crack down on illegal fishing. After all, illegal fishing is an objective global problem, and it is not enough to rely on the law enforcement power of a country alone. Relevant countries should actively respond to China's call and resolve this issue equally and professionally.
Finally, Brother Gengzhi didn't know the reason why DiCaprio was involved in this matter. But we found that in his article Miles of the New York Times mentioned a artificial intelligence big data platform that he used to track the trends of China's far-sea fishing boats, which has a lot of connection with DiCaprio.
The platform is called "Global Fishing Watch". It was jointly established by Google, marine environmental protection organization Oceana and a technology company called SkyTruth. Its main business is to monitor fishing boats on the ocean through satellite positioning data. However, although the platform claims to be an "independent non-profit organization", some reports from US media show that the platform was unveiled and launched on September 15, 2016 at a conference hosted by US State Department .
, and DiCaprio was not only an important guest who unveiled the platform at the conference at that time, but Canadian media reported that he was also one of the funders of the platform.
