A Harbinger of the Problems Confronting China's Economy and Environment: The great Chinese shrimp disaster of 1993

Abstract

Within the space of about 5 years, China developed an aquaculture industry that accounted for more than 50% of the world's farm-raised shrimp, producing billions of dollars in exports. Then day-after-day in 1993, peasants all along the coast of China awoke to find their shrimp floating dead in the water. The Chinese shrimp industry collapsed, completely disrupting world seafood markets. The greed, poor planning, the passion to evade shifting governmental regulations, and massive ecological neglect that brought about this disaster indicate some of the problems underlying ‘the Chinese economic miracle’. When set against the great scheme of the Chinese economy, this is a little story, but it is one that says much about the fragile economic and ecological underpinnings of China's growth. The outlines of the story are very simple. It begins like many tales heard in recent years about the Chinese economic miracle.