The 2025 National Security Strategy correctly identifies the Western Hemisphere as critical to American security after years of strategic neglect. For far too long, bipartisan apathy and complacency towards hemispheric affairs allowed America’s near abroad to become a permissive environment for its foremost global competitor, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to expand its strategic footprint and thus threaten America’s economic and security interests.
With Washington distracted or uninterested, Beijing invested nearly $300 billion in infrastructure projects across Latin America, established an “all-weather strategic partnership” with Venezuela, reportedly developed signals intelligence facilities in Cuba, and became the top trading partner for most South American countries. As a result, America’s relative influence in its own neighborhood declined as China’s rose. Thankfully, under the NSS’ mandate to “deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets,” the Trump administration has begun to reverse this trend.
Efforts to curtail Beijing’s regional influence include pressuring partners such as Panama to scrutinize Chinese involvement in strategic infrastructure like ports tied to the Panama Canal, encouraging restrictions on Chinese technology firms such as Huawei over well-documented espionage concerns, and taking bold and decisive action against regimes aligned with Beijing, including the capture of Nicolás Maduro during Operation Absolute Resolve.
Yet one domain where Chinese malign influence persists, with clear implications for hemispheric security but minimal policy attention, is illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. While not as immediately obvious as the presence of Chinese air defense systems in Venezuela or Chinese-operated ports in the Panama Canal, China’s distant-water fishing fleet poses a tangible and time-sensitive threat to American interests because it strips sovereign waters of resources, undermines food security, damages local marine ecosystems, enables China’s persistent maritime presence in America’s own backyard, and, critically, provides Beijing a tool to exert coercive pressure against nations in our hemisphere.
China’s Fishing Fleet Is a Tool in Its Grand Strategy
The CCP is pursuing a comprehensive grand strategy designed to supplant the United States as the world’s strongest power and overtake it in the key determinants of national strength: a stronger military, a bigger economy, and better technology. In doing so, they are exploiting every possible advantage, including their distant-water fishing fleet, the largest in the world with upwards of 16,000 vessels. As China has depleted fish stocks in its near abroad and worldwide demand for seafood has risen, it has increasingly sent this fleet abroad, including into the sovereign waters of Western Hemisphere states, to engage in IUU fishing. But the deployment of this fleet to distant seas is more than an attempt to satisfy domestic seafood demand and bolster its coffers; it is a deliberate campaign by Beijing to expand its global power and undermine American influence.
According to a recent congressional investigation, Beijing has “transformed what appears to be a commercial fishing fleet into a strategic instrument that serves two complementary functions: as a diplomatic tool Beijing can activate or withdraw to manage foreign tensions, and as a coercive platform that extends the [People’s Liberation Army] capabilities far beyond [China]’s territorial waters.” When these fleets congregate along the edges of South America’s exclusive economic zones in direct violation of the sovereignty of nations like Ecuador and Peru, they not only threaten natural resources and the local marine ecosystem but they also provide an asymmetric vector of coercive influence for Beijing to wield in its dealings with those nations.
Chinese fishing vessels regularly appear by the hundreds off the largely unpatrolled coasts of Latin America. These vessels, often operating with state support and potential People’s Liberation Army (PLA) coordination, advance China’s geopolitical influence, with Beijing moving these vessels “like pieces on a chessboard—withdrawing them before diplomatic summits to ease tensions, surging them into disputed waters to assert leverage.” This activity mirrors China’s gray-zone coercion in the South China Sea and East China Sea, leveraging ostensibly civilian assets to achieve strategic effects without crossing the threshold of military conflict. It should not be tolerated in the Western Hemisphere.
How Chinese IUU Threatens US Interests
The deployment of China’s distant-water fishing fleet threatens core US national interests in four main ways.
First, it undermines American food security and supply-chain resilience. The US imports more than 80 percent of its seafood, and Chinese IUU operations—often accompanied by well-documented ethical abuses, such as forced labor—accelerate the depletion of stocks in the Western Hemisphere, thereby reducing available supply while exposing US consumers to unreliable imports tainted by human rights violations.
Second, the fleet advances Beijing’s long-term goal of challenging US maritime dominance by establishing a persistent presence in America’s near abroad. Sustained “commercial” activity in these waters could provide the pretext for protective naval escorts or other military assets. At the same time, the vessels themselves offer potential dual-usesupport for logistics or intelligence collection on US and partner naval movements.
Third, IUU fishing weakens regional economies and increases vulnerability to Chinese economic coercion. Lost fisheries revenue and displaced local fishermen push coastal states like Peru and Ecuador toward greater dependence on Beijing’s trade deals and Belt and Road Initiative financing, creating leverage that Beijing exploits across diplomatic, infrastructure, and security domains.
Fourth, the unchecked presence of Chinese fleets signals the limits of US credibility in the hemisphere. If Washington cannot effectively support regional partners in protecting their sovereign resources and exclusive economic zones, broader US security commitments, from countering transnational crime to deterring military encroachment, may appear increasingly feckless.
How to Unleash the US Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is already leading many of the administration’s maritime efforts in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in countering illicit narcotics trafficking. But more can be done to counter Beijing’s IUU fishing. The Coast Guard offers a calibrated instrument of US power, combining law enforcement authority with persistent regional engagement, making it uniquely suited to counter China’s gray-zone maritime activity. Given its law-enforcement mandate, white-hull diplomacy, and extensive experience in the region, the Coast Guard is the natural choice to take the lead on countering China’s IUU fishing.
The Coast Guard should expand joint training and targeted patrols with at-risk partners such as Ecuador and Panama; conduct Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) operations—ideally with shipriders and partners from host nations—against vessels operating illegally to impose costs and expose human rights abuses; and enhance maritime domain awareness through intelligence sharing and technology transfers that empower regional states to enforce their own exclusive economic zones. No hemispheric nation should remain subject to the predations of China’s distant-water fleet without consequence, and the Coast Guard should help impose those consequences.
In 2020, hundreds of Chinese vessels assembled near Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands and Peru’s territorial waters, rapidly depleting squid stocks vital to local economies. Dependent on Chinese trade and Belt and Road Initiative financing, Ecuador and Peru issued only muted protests despite widespread indignation. While the public outcry did eventually prompt Beijing to relocate much of the fleet to nearby waters and announce temporary moratoriums on fishing in the region, the operation succeeded in extracting significant resources at minimal diplomatic cost.
Strategically, it revealed the fishing fleet’s role as a low-risk tool for projecting persistent maritime presence, securing food resources, and compelling accommodation from hemispheric states, while also demonstrating to the region that confronting Beijing’s activity, even in the Western Hemisphere, risks broader economic retaliation.
If left unencumbered by US pressure, China’s distant-water fleet will continue to unlawfully extract resources, weaken the resolve of states like Ecuador and Peru to counter Chinese malign influence, and ultimately diminish US influence in its own hemisphere. By unleashing the Coast Guard and empowering nations to take concrete steps to address China’s predatory fleet, the United States can better protect our hemisphere against our primary global competitor and demonstrate its refocused commitment to securing our hemisphere as outlined in the National Security Strategy.
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