Two interesting stories from Undercurrent News. The first is a fishy smuggler’s tale, revolving around a certain ‘Frozen’ Peng and his imports of expensive foreign fish disguised as cheaper, smaller fish – thus letting him evade Customs duties on imports worth $500m. Customs discovered huge freezers of pricey fish, uncommon in the Huangpu part of Guangzhou.
The second story relates to mackerel – which appears to be the new salmon in Asia. Norwegian and Scottish exports have skyrocketed – in the latter’s case by 400% year-on-year in weight terms. The fish go to China, where they are processed and exported to Japan. China’s mackerel exports to Japan rose 10% last year, while Japan’s direct imports from Norway grew 17%. From the UK, the fish tend to go to Rotterdam from where they are shipped to Asia.