China Market Profile

China’s structural role in the global seafood system

China occupies a central and structurally unique position within the global seafood system. It is simultaneously the world’s largest aquaculture producer, one of the largest seafood consumers, a major importer of fishery and aquaculture products, and a key exporter and re-exporter of processed seafood. Unlike most other major seafood markets, China performs all of these roles at scale. As a result, developments in China’s domestic seafood market have direct and often immediate implications for global seafood production, trade flows, pricing dynamics, and processing capacity.

Over the past decade, China’s seafood sector expanded significantly in both volume and value. Growth was driven primarily by sustained increases in aquaculture output, which increasingly offset long-standing and struc…