Written by Maria Cahalane 

Introduction

Illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing poses a significant threat to global food security and marine sustainability, and also serves as the leading global maritime security threat.¹See Christina Voigt, Oceans, IUU Fishing, and Climate Change: Implications for International Law, 22 Int’l Comm. L. Rev. 377 (Aug. 2020); Raul Pedrozo, China’s IUU Fishing Fleet: Pariah of the World’s Oceans, 99 Int’l L. Stud. Ser. U.S. Naval War Col. 319, 320 (2022). Global demand for seafood has more than doubled since the 1960s, with the demand outpacing the supply of what can be sustainably caught.²See Ian Urbina, Pete McKenzie & Milko Schvartzman, How Chinese Fishing Vessels Dominate Domestic Waters Across the Globe, TIME (Aug. 1, 2024) https://time.com/7006513/china-illegal-fishing-ocean-investigation/ (on file with American University International Law Review) (stating that more than one-third of the world’s stocks are overfished). In response to this demand, there has been a proliferation in foreign industrial fishing ships, specifically from China.³See id. This massive expansion of illegal fishing practices risks depleting the domestic fishing stocks of countries in the global south and also compromising the food security of locals from overfished areas.⁴See id.

China has been at the forefront of global IUU fishing, which violates both national and international regulations.⁵See id.; see generally Pedrozo, supra note 1, at 320. Despite the United Nation’s adoption of the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) along with successive legal instruments aimed at combatting IUU fishing, China continues to dominate the IUU fishing industry.⁶See id. While China is not a party to any of the binding agreements against IUU fishing practices, they are a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and have ratified the 2025 Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies.⁷See generally Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, June 17, 2022, WTO Doc. WT/MIN(22)/33. By targeting the trade practices that contribute to IUU fishing, the WTO’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies will likely have a greater impact than previous international treaties at curbing China’s illegal fishing practices because China is a signatory that has explicitly agreed to the terms.⁸See id.

Background

Alleged violations of international norms by Chinese flagged vessels continue to rise as China’s Distant-Water Fishing Fleet (DWF) increasingly engages in illegal fishing in foreign “Exclusive Economic Zones” (EEZ).⁹See Pedrozo, supra note 1, at 329. DWF fleets engage in industrial scale fishing activities linked with IUU fishing, and are normally subsidized by their governments, which incentivizes IUU fishing.¹⁰See id. at 328. China has been using DWF fleets to engage in predatory fishing practices in various regions of the world, including: the Western and Eastern Pacific Ocean, the Southwest Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Antarctica.¹¹See id. at 319.

The UNCLOS was adopted in 1982 and established a legal framework governing the uses of the ocean and its resources.¹²U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, Dec. 10, 1982, 1833 U.N.T.S. 397. China has failed to comply with the legal obligations under UNCLOS concerning the conservation and management of the living resources of the high seas.¹³See Pedrozo, supra note 1, at 319. Since the adoption of UNCLOS, the international community has drafted and adopted several fisheries management instruments, both binding and voluntary, that address IUU fishing.¹⁴See id. However, China is not a party to any of the binding agreements addressing IUU fishing.

The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies was entered into force in September 2025, after being ratified by two-thirds of WTO members, including China.¹⁵Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, June 17, 2022, WTO Doc. WT/MIN(22)/33. This Agreement commits WTO members to curbing billions of dollars in annual spending on subsidies that contribute to the depletion of marine fishing stocks.¹⁶See id. WTO members must start implementing the agreement as soon as possible, which entails submitting information in accordance with the agreement’s transparency and notification procedures and halting subsidies that are addressed in the agreement’s provisions.¹⁷See Megan Jungwiwattanaporn & Liz Karan, Fisheries Subsidies Agreement: Why It Matters, Pew (Oct. 27, 2025) https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2025/10/fisheries-subsidies-agreement-why-it-matters (on file with American University International Law Review).

Legal Analysis

The WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies aims to tackle one of the key drivers of overfishing and illegal fishing by curtailing harmful government subsidies, or payments made by nations to commercial fishing operators to keep those businesses profitable.¹⁸See id. These subsidies primarily go to industrial fishing fleets in order to artificially lower fuel and vessel construction costs while allowing them to fish farther out to sea for longer periods of time.¹⁹See id.  In 2019, these fishing subsidies by Chinese authorities were valued around $16.5 billion annually, much of it supporting DWF fleets.²⁰See No Man’s Water: China’s 17,000-Vessel DWF Fleet and the Rush for the High Seas, One Earth (Jan. 21, 2026) https://www.one-earth.it/en/no-mans-water-chinas-17000-vessel-dwf-fleet-and-the-rush-for-the-high-seas/ (on file with American University International Law Review) (citing information from ODI Global). Planet Tracker calculated that at least forty-five percent of profit from Chinese DWFs comes from subsidies.²¹See Mark Godfrey, China’s Distant-Water Profits Under Threat from WTO Subsidy Deal, SeafoodSource (Dec. 9, 2025), https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/china-s-distant-water-profits-under-threat-from-wto-subsidy-deal (on file with American University International Law Review).  Any reduction in these subsidies is likely to affect their profitability by reducing or halting the number of DWF fishing vessels being built and fueled to engage in predatory fishing practices.²²See id.

Under the WTO’s dispute settlement system, Members can bring complaints against other Members for non-compliance with WTO agreements.²³Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, Annex 2, Apr. 15, 1994, 1869 U.N.T.S. 154. Contrary to the skepticism among major players in the WTO that the existing WTO rules are inadequate for dealing with China, China has a relatively strong record of compliance in the complaints that have been brought against it since its accession.²⁴See Henry Gao, WTO Reform: A China Round?, 114 Am. Soc’y Int’l L. Proc. 23, 24 (2020); see also James Bacchus, Simon Lester & Huan Zhu, Disciplining China’s Trade Practices at the WTO, 856 Pol’y Analysis 1, 6 (2018) [hereinafter Bacchus]. In twenty one of the twenty two completed cases litigated against China, China responded by taking some action to move toward greater market access, either through an autonomous action by the state, a settlement agreement, or response to a panel or appellate ruling.²⁵See Bacchus, supra note 25.

The biggest issue currently to the enforcement of any WTO agreement is that the WTO has no working dispute system due to the United States’ continued refusal of Appellate Body appointments.²⁶See Kathleen Auld, Linda Del Savio & Loretta Feris, An Environmental Agreement in a Trade Court – Is the WTO’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies Enforceable?, 24 World Trade Rev. 25, 26 (2025). Therefore, if any other member in the WTO were to file a complaint regarding China’s non-compliance with this Agreement, it would be held at the Appellate Body indefinitely until new members are appointed.

Conclusion 

The WTO’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies and China’s alignment with it presents a potential enforcement mechanism for targeting trade practices of countries to get them to comply with environmental obligations. However, with the WTO’s dispute settlement system at a standstill, it is yet to be seen whether China will comply with the agreement’s rules and procedures in the absence of the mechanism that has forced their compliance to WTO rules in the past. By targeting the harmful subsidies that contribute to IUU fishing, the WTO’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies will likely have a greater impact than previous international treaties at curbing China’s illegal fishing practices because China is a signatory that has explicitly agreed to the terms and previously shown compliance with WTO agreements.