An overview of China's aquaculture Industry 2010

As regulations and quotas in the fisheries sector worldwide are being intensified and the demand for high quality aquatic products is increasing, more and more attention turns to aquaculture as the solution to confront the issue of diminishing supply and increasing demand.

To this concern, China is a country that should not be neglected. Currently China’s output from aquaculture is the largest in the world and accounts for about 67% of the world’s total production. Moreover, China is the only country in which aquaculture output exceeds wild capture output and where more than 90% of the domestic consumption of seafood is from aquaculture. The Chinese government at the same time also attaches great  importance in further developing aquaculture as it plays a key role in alleviating poverty in rural areas, ensuring food supply and international trade. Therefore the need for further development of aquaculture worldwide and certainly in China presents many opportunities for cooperation in terms of research and development, farming techniques, food safety and quality, feed, environmental protection, processing etc.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Business Support Office (NBSO) in Dalian have joint hands in order to provide the Dutch business community and especially those active in related sectors with a compact, yet complete glance of the status quo of aquaculture in China. Hopefully the content of this overview can serve as a useful map to further explore business opportunities in  aquaculture and related sectors in China.