A government newspaper and social media accounts in China have targeted actor Leonardo di Caprio and The New York Times for criticizing China’s deep-sea fishing industry.
Di Caprio recently took to his Twitter account to highlight an in-depth New York Times article published on September 26 titled “How China is Targeting Global Fish Supply,” which details the global footprint of China’s fishing fleet. . The Chinese-language edition of the Global Times, a tabloid run by the Communist Party’s daily organ People’s Daily, called the article’s claims false and distorted.
The Global Times targeted its author, former Times China correspondent Stephen Lee Myers, saying he was “biased” against China. Without refuting the specific details of illegal fishing mentioned in the article, the Global Times pointed to China’s annual fishing moratorium for its coastal waters and a seasonal ban introduced for China’s squid fishing fleet operating on the high seas. near Latin America, set up by the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, which regulates the fleet.
China’s highly censored media has rarely portrayed the country’s deep-sea fleet in a negative light, opting to highlight government talking points about the country’s exploitation of economic opportunities on the high seas. While the business press has sometimes investigated the questionable ownership structures of companies operating private fleets, many local newspapers in China enthusiastically reported on the plans of various Chinese port cities to develop their distant water fleets and related seafood processing enterprises through to grants. Part of China’s offshore fleet is state-owned, which also controls the press, which in recent years has become hyper-nationalist, denouncing any form of Western criticism as an attempt to thwart China’s rise.
The episode surrounding Di Caprio’s comments to the New York Times highlights the difficulties of raising awareness among the Chinese public about overfishing. These obstacles could partly explain the efforts of environmental activists to focus on food safety and quality as the main selling points of sustainability-related eco-labels in China.
Commenting on the Global Times on Weibo, social media users pointed out what they saw as hypocrisy on the part of DiCaprio and Western media. Pointing to DiCaprio’s tweets, a Weibo user slammed DiCaprio under the handle DXMfaOB.
“He usually eats better than anyone else. Westerners are like that. When they’re full, [they] tell others you can’t eat more,” the user wrote.
“Europe and the United States have grown and grown, and they have high value-added and profitable industries. They then tell others, “Development will damage the environment, all of you stop and make low-end products,” commented another Weibo user, named “Jiangnan First Monsoon.”
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