The edge of EEZs, aka the high seas, aka fucking international waters. There's lots of documentation of PRC DWF legally fishing where they're entitled that useful idiots think is illegal activity because US was pumping propaganda bux and generating false narratives / wedge issues countries PRC was cozying up with and rationalize deploying their coast guards to undermine PRC interests.
There's occasionally misbehavior, i.e. AIS shenanigans for incursions from minority of vessels, but PRC bheavior proportionally is slightly BETTER than other DWFs, i.e. SKR, TW, ES. TLDR if an a countries entire extract model falls because some foreign vessels pops a few nautical miles into 200 mile long EEZ, i.e. a few % of occasional incursion, then their national fishing managment models are not sustainable.
BTW, there's a reason only few ships are ever interdicted, because in aggregate, PRC DWF is just not a fucking issue. There were actual attemps where US coast guards tried to board PRC DWF fleets on high seas, again, international waters, and was lolled off. So the answer to all those asking why DWF fleets aren't sunk (I assume in good faith they mean all DWF and not just PRC's), the answer is simple: most operate legally, in international waters, pillaging the commons unsustainably as they are entitled to.
There are studies of AIS disabling events, highest proportion of ships/time. IIRC, avg worst is Spain, ~15% obscure. Then US, ~8%, then TW ~5% then PRC slightly less. US gets pass since US fishing happens in North West Atlantic - US has big EEZ. Not much info on SKR/JP (other biggest DWF) except they tend to fish where PRC fishes and do all your slave labour that other DWF does, so hard to believe they don't do AIS shenanigans. IIRC worse (by type) absolute was JP for tuna longliner. There's other consideration that DWF has global players interacting, i.e. JP doesn't do destructive trawling, but they run big transhipment reefers (fridge boat) to support to fish longer.
MSM will focus almost exclusively PRC. It's spiked narrative. TLDR, go track "research" on PRC DWF since ~2020 when the champaign started. The estimate of PRC DWF by west aligned research... laundered by western news went from something like 3000 to 6000 (reasonable), to 10000 to 18000... in 5 years. Meanwhile PRC wild catch increased from 12m tons to 15m tons, i.e. PRC somehow built ~30000 new fishing ships in 5 years, 950% increase... only to fish 25% more. It's all stupid all the time.
Where's the whataboutism? It is, in fact, super dooper helpful to remind people that US lawfare/propaganda has it's limits and in many domains, geopolitical reality has a PRC bias. Maybe it'll help some people understand why reeeing about US narratives against PRC keeps being futile.
