At the invitation of the Fishery Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the WTO Division of the Ministry of Commerce, professor Tang Yi from the College of Marine Culture and Law of SHOU, on behalf of the Chinese government, attended the international symposium entitled “Control of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing under WTO Rules” in Geneva of Switzerland on November 22, 2018, and gave a special report on Chinese practice in combating IUU fishing and issues related to fishery subsidies.
The negotiation about fishery subsidy rules, as a multilateral rule negotiation within WTO framework, was first proposed at the Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001. However, it was not restarted until the release of the Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development several years later by the UN in 2016. The topics of the negotiation included the prohibition of subsidies causing over-fishing and excessive capacity, the prohibition of subsidies to IUU fishing, the special and differential treatments to developing countries, the issues of notification and transparency, etc. On the basis of the Buenos Aires Ministerial Conference in 2017, it held special meetings on various specific topics at the WTO Headquarters in 2018.