MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Report says Chinese firms control nearly two-thirds of the squid fleet in Argentina's waters

The vessels operate under the Argentine flag and Argentine rules, but their controlling capital is Chinese.

Companies of Chinese origin own 63.1% of the jigger fleet that, under the Argentine flag, fishes squid inside Argentina's Exclusive Economic Zone, according to a report by illegal-fishing and marine-conservation researcher Milko Schvartzman, published by the outlet Infobae. The study states that 53 of the 84 jigger vessels that catch the species under the national flag have Chinese companies as owners or “beneficial owners,” based on satellite observations from Global Fishing Watch and the translation of official Chinese documents.

More than half of that fleet, according to the report, is controlled by five Chinese fishing corporations, among them the state-owned China National Fisheries Corporation. The vessels operate under the Argentine flag and Argentine rules, but their controlling capital is Chinese.

The report holds that those companies enjoy hidden subsidies from Beijing. Under Chinese regulations, products caught by Chinese firms in foreign waters are considered “national products” and are exempt from import duties and value-added tax when entering China, the world's main squid market. Adding the import tariff (12%) and VAT (9%), Schvartzman calculates a 21% advantage over local competitors, which the report estimates at some $45 million a year in additional benefit.

With that margin, the study warns, the Chinese corporations could keep acquiring Argentine companies and, in less than a decade, take over the entire national squid fleet. The report also links at least 15.5% of the fleet's beneficial owners to illegal fishing —with at least four cases in 2025 and 2026 under flags of convenience— and describes a phenomenon of “biological laundering”: the mixing, in processing plants, of legal Argentine catch with undeclared fishing from “Mile 201,” which it says would compromise the traceability of Illex argentinus and expose the sector to trade sanctions. It also documents labor fraud through Chinese captains and Argentine “signature” crew members.

The report lastly questions the government's decision to open an expansion of squid licenses for 18 new vessels without requiring applicants to disclose their capital structure and beneficial owners —“the same error” that, according to Schvartzman, allowed the current concentration. Squid is one of the South Atlantic's most valuable resources: in April it accounted for 12% of Argentine exports to China, nearly on par with beef. As a photosensitive species, it is fished at night, and the fleet's luminosity at Mile 201 was captured even from space by the Artemis II mission.