"Little Plum" actually doesn't let Chinese people eat fish? The truth is more complicated

Author: Geng Zhi brother

Recently, Leonardo DiCaprio , known as " little plum " in China, a well-known Hollywood actor and winner of the 2016 Academy Award for Best Actor, suddenly suddenly On his social account, he attacked China's fishing industry, saying that after a large number of deep-sea fishing boats in China had caught all the fish in their own waters, they began to go to other places for deep-sea fishing, which would contribute to the economy and the economy of other countries. Sustainability sounded the alarm. The post

quickly caused a lot of dissatisfaction in China. Some netizens said that DiCaprio was quite ignorant about China's fishing situation, so he made such remarks attacking Chinese people for eating too much fish. Others thought that although he made this post to show his "care for marine ecology" ", but his remarks about the Chinese people's arrogance of map cannons are not only arrogant, but also suspected of being racist.

However, Brother Geng Zhi, after conducting some investigations and interviews on the origin of DiCaprio's remarks, found that this matter is far more complicated than "Little Plum doesn't let the Chinese eat fish". Posts are really just a part of the story.

is again the rhythm of " The New York Times "

First of all, judging from DiCaprio's posts, his attack on China's fishery, especially deep-sea pelagic fishery, mainly originated from the New York Times in the United States. Two related articles published in succession on September 26 and 27 local time, especially the article on the 26 titled “How China Targets Global Fishery Supply”. The lead author of this article is Steven Lee Myers, a former China correspondent for The New York Times. But this person has a very biased view of China. Not only does he like to take out-of-context, shoddy and distorted reports about China, but he also often makes up stories regardless of the facts.

For example, at the National Day military parade of the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China three years ago, although the sky in Beijing was very clear at that time, a large number of peace doves were also released on Tiananmen Square to show that China's rise is a peaceful rise, but this Meier However, Si opened his eyes and lied, claiming in the report that there were "no pigeons" in the military parade in Beijing, and accompanied by a very dim "picture".


And in the article he led and wrote to attack China's distant-water fishery, he secretly changed concepts and distorted the facts, so that the increasingly standardized, responsible and green and sustainable development of China's fishery - especially the distant-water fishery, Smearing has become a "bully" who ignores his appearance, robs other countries' resources and destroys the environment.

For example, he declared at the beginning of the report that Chinese fishing boats have already caught all the fish in Chinese waters, so he started to go fishing in the world's waters such as the Indian Ocean, South Pacific, Africa and South America, and the scale is terrifying. Obviously an attempt to portray Chinese fishermen as "locusts".


Not only that, he claimed that a large number of Chinese fishing boats "stick" to the "exclusive economic zones" of South American countries such as Ecuador, Argentina and other countries for non-stop fishing, and they are supported by supply ships and transfer ships. Fishermen fail to catch fish, damage the environment, and give China the label of "even if it's legal, it's not compliant".

He even outlines the illegal behavior of individual fishing boats in the huge Chinese high-sea fishery to the "taste" of the entire Chinese high-sea fishery and even the Chinese people. For example, in 2017, he gave China Oceanic Fisheries a case that the Chinese fishing boat (actually transporting refrigerated ship ) "Fuyuan Yu Leng 999" was found by Ecuadorian officials to illegally transport sharks, which was widely reported by domestic and foreign media. As a whole, it is a big hat for fishing protected fish and violating other countries' sovereign waters - even claimingThis is because shark fins "are a delicacy in China".

An expert who knows China's fishing situation told Geng Zhige that the situation described by Miles and the New York Times is completely inconsistent with the reality.

First of all, China has not only implemented a fishing moratorium of three months or even four and a half months in the four sea areas in front of its own home, which has restored the fishery resources in its surrounding waters, and China has been vigorously promoting the fishing industry in recent years. Promoting green, high-quality and sustainable pelagic fisheries, not only actively implements fishing moratoriums on the high seas, but also removes fuel subsidies that may “overfish”.

This expert is right. According to a report by the Chinese media People's Daily Online , from July 1 to September 30 last year, China officially implemented the high seas independent fishing moratorium in some high seas areas of the Southwest Atlantic and East Pacific. During the voluntary fishing moratorium, all Chinese squid fishing boats will stop fishing operations in order to conserve squid resources in the high seas - and, according to China Oceanographic Fisheries Association , Shanghai Ocean University and other units to organize experts to analyze and demonstrate the effect of the fishing suspension in 2020. In the high seas of the southwestern Atlantic and the southeastern Pacific, the cumulative output of squid from January to April 2021 will increase year-on-year as a whole, the resource situation has improved, and the effect of the fishing moratorium has initially appeared.

The "White Paper on China's Oceanic Fisheries Implementation" released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China in November 2020 also shows that China Oceanic Fisheries has always adhered to the path of green and sustainable development, committed to scientific conservation and sustainable use of fishery resources, and promoted the development of global fisheries. sustainable development. By strictly controlling the size of the fleet, strengthening standardized management, cracking down on illegal fishing, and improving quality and efficiency, efforts are made to build a distant-water fishery industry with reasonable layout, excellent equipment, complete supporting facilities, standardized management, responsible and sustainable.

Secondly, the expert said that Chinese fishing boats do not "stick" to other countries' exclusive economic zones to fish, they all maintain a certain distance. In addition, although Chinese fishing boats fish in the high seas, they are also subject to the management of regional fishery organizations in relevant regions. Moreover, China also has cooperative relations with neighboring countries in fishery, including benefit-sharing mechanisms and illegal punishment mechanisms.

Moreover, the expert also revealed that the products of China's offshore fishery are also very diverse, not only for the domestic market, but also for Europe, the United States, Japan and Africa. Among them, a large proportion of the fish jointly caught by China and Africa in the high-sea fishery goes to Africa.

Once again, on the issue of sharks, public information shows that the sharks on the "Fuyuan Yu Leng 999" were not caught in the waters of Ecuador, but the ship was about 1,000 kilometers away from the waters of Ecuador. Obtained from two other Taiwanese fishing boats.

More importantly, the above-mentioned fishery experts told Geng Zhige that although China has been severely cracking down on the shark trade in recent years, the international shark trade has not been reduced because of China's crackdown.

However, nowhere in Myers' report mentions any of these situations.

But Miles isn't the only Western media outlet to smear China on its far-sea fishing. Two years ago, Bloomberg and other media in the United States also launched a wave of smears against China's high-sea fisheries, describing the Chinese high-sea fishing boats that went to fish for squid near the South Atlantic as sharks. However, because these reports are too absurd, even some professional marine ecological NGOs can't stand it. Oceans Asia, a marine environmental protection organization, pointed out serious deviations in the reports of these media at the time, and suspected that some US "geopolitical" elements might be involved behind such deviations.

The "scheming" of the United States

In fact, the "scheme" in the "geopolitical" of the United States may be the source of China's ocean fisheries being smeared by foreign public opinion.

Actually, Miles has already "specified" in the last part of his article, saying that the United States is "helping" smallChina "confronts" China's "illegal" fishing on the issue of fisheries, and the U.S. Coast Guard even calls the "illegal" activities of Chinese distant-water fishing vessels "the greatest security threat to the ocean." Among the countries that the United States wants to "help", in addition to some South American countries that have good relations with China, there are also South Pacific countries that the United States is courting and that the United States has specially invited to Washington, the capital, for cooperation in the past two days. The Chinese fishery expert in front of

explained more clearly what American "scheming" really is. He said that the reason why the United States is so concerned about the international high-sea fishery, especially the constant fanning of the flames between China and other countries, is probably because the United States wants to act as the world police in this matter, and finally use its huge naval power and legal The long arm governs , and expands its power to the high seas and even the offshore waters 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 the far-sea fishing industry, has been calling for joint law enforcement with neighboring countries in relevant areas to jointly combat illegal fishing. the act of fishing. After all, illegal fishing is an objectively existing worldwide problem, and the law enforcement power of one country alone is not enough. Relevant countries should actively respond to China's call and resolve this issue in an equal and professional manner.

Finally, Brother Gengzhi does not know why DiCaprio is involved in this matter. But we found that Miles of The New York Times mentioned many times in his articles a artificial intelligence big data platform that he used to track the movements of Chinese fishing boats in the distant seas, which has quite a relationship with DiCaprio.

The platform is called "Global Fishing Watch". It is jointly established by Google, Marine Environmental Protection organization Oceana and a technology company called SkyTruth. Its main business is to locate data through satellites. Monitoring of fishing boats in the ocean. However, although the platform claims to be an "independent non-profit organization", some US media reports show that the platform was unveiled on September 15, 2016 at a conference hosted by , the US State Department, .

And DiCaprio was not only an important guest who unveiled the platform at the conference at that time, but Canadian media reports also pointed out that he was also one of the sponsors of the platform.