The US is teaming up with countries and regions including Vietnam to fight “illegal fishing,” where US officials conveniently accused China of being one of the violators.
Such a political move has met fierce opposition from the Chinese Embassy in the US, with the embassy’s spokesperson Liu Pengyu saying that the US accusation is “completely untrue and does nothing to protect the marine environment and promote international cooperation in sustainable fishery,” Reuters reported.
US President Joe Biden signed Monday a memorandum aimed at stepping up coordination and enforcement within the US government against illegal fishing and the use of forced labor, and the White House revealed that it is also seeking engagement with Ecuador, Panama, Senegal, Vietnam and the island of Taiwan on fighting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, or the IUU, media reported.
A US official not named in the report said while the new US effort does not target any country, China “is a leading contributor to IUU fishing worldwide and has impeded progress on the development of measures to combat IUU fishing and overfishing in international organizations.”
According to an AFP report, another US administration official said that the cooperation would include “capacity building” as part of a strategic plan without providing further details.
The new round of picking on China using the name of fighting IUU fishing came shortly after the launch of a so-called Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) initiative at the QUAD Summit in Tokyo in May, which was viewed by many as a direct response to China’s maritime activities in the region.
Under the banner of “working with regional partners to respond to humanitarian and natural disasters, and combat illegal fishing,” the initiative aims to use satellite technology to create a tracking system for China’s “illegal fishing” activities.
However, analysts reached by the Global Times on Tuesday said they viewed the latest US move to be a purely geopolitical scheme to use IUU fishing to sugarcoat its intelligence gathering activities against China and create discord between countries especially between Southeast Asia and China.
The US could not care less about other country’s maritime rights and interests. Rather, what is behind the US push to fight IUU is its political agenda of persuading countries that heavily rely on the fishing industry such as Southeast Asian countries, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
The US is increasingly invested in disrupting, tracking and limiting China’s maritime activities, using the name of fighting IUU, Song pointed out, citing US Coast Guard forces to Southeast Asia.
Chen Hong, director of the Australian Studies Center at East China Normal University, said that the US has used combating illegal fishing as a stunt for a long time to crack down on China’s “Blue Economy” and other maritime activities.
The “capacity building” could involve satellite technology mentioned in the IPMDA, as well as establishing an all-around monitoring of China’s civil and military maritime activities, and the IUU fighting excuse would give such unwarranted move a civil camouflage, Chen Hong said.
US President Joe Biden. Photo: AFP
