Cheap fish in Thailand is filling the country with "seafood tourists" from China
Higher prices for seafood in China is developing new industries in Southeast Asia such as tourism, reports Seafood source magazine.
"Seafood tourists" is the new type of visitor that is often encountered in Southeast Asian countries, such as Thailand, the most popular destination for Chinese in 2017, as mentioned in a Ctrip report.
As China has decided to shut down domestic fishing in some areas to conserve fishery stocks, in March 2018 the average seafood prices went up by 7.11% year-on-year, according to a survey conducted by China's Agriculture Ministry.
In luxury restaurants in Beijing, for example, live tropical reef fish has a price tag that ranges from $100 to $300 and that can explain why the seafood importers and vendors in Bangkok are mentioning the Chinese tourism as a driver for seafood consumption in recent years.
Nevertheless, this situation has a dark side of the story as the seafood smuggling has intensified in the last couple of years due to the flaws existing in Hong Kong's legislation on fish&seafood imports. The local rules omit live fish imports from having to be recorded by the city’s Fish Marketing Organization, as currently, only "dead" or frozen imports are recorded. About 60% of the fish brought into Hong Kong ends up in mainland China, often smuggled over the border, according to a report published recently by the University of Hong Kong’s Swire Institute of Marine Sciences in cooperation with ADM Capital Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Coral Triangle Program. (The Coral Triangle area refers to an area of great biodiversity spanning a large part of Southeast Asia).
The impact of rising Chinese seafood consumption is likely having a direct impact on endangered species in Southeast Asia, according to the authors of the report, who are mitigating for a higher level of education for the Chinese consumers as they are becoming a major economic force in the region.
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