Q&A · 14:06-15:33

A research gap around China's overseas fishing fleet

No sound, affordable book on China's overseas fishing fleet earns a recommendation, and one account shifts responsibility away from the actors conducting coercive activity.

Question

Is there a good book on China's overseas fishing fleet and its effect on naval strategy?

Short answer

Not yet: the available work is scarce or prohibitively expensive, and the affordable chapter he read framed responsibility in a way he found unconvincing.

Notes

The specialist literature is sparse, expensive and not yet good enough for a confident recommendation. Two recent books are priced for very limited academic circulation, while a cheaper edited volume contains only one relevant chapter. That chapter tends to place responsibility on states being pressured rather than on the people carrying out the activity. Resilience by targeted states does not erase an aggressor's agency, a distinction behind the caution about this reading.