China's Weaponized Fishing Fleet

From American Thinker.com (July 25):

Japan started recording derelict North Korean fishing vessels washing ashore in 2011, according to reporting by CNN’s Hilary Whiteman and Mairi Mackay.  Since then, 63 on average of the "ghost ships" have annually come ashore. Most are empty, but some contain dead bodies and occasionally a skeletal crew. Generally, the ships are old, underpowered, and lacking GPS.

Initially, authorities assumed the vessels belonged to crews who were trying to defect from North Korea. Or "climate change" had caused the squids to move away from North Korean shores forcing the fishermen to travel dangerously far out to sea, where they died from exposure.

But by using satellite data, a team of researchers from the conservation group Global Fishing Watch pieced together the most likely explanation, as reported in last year's NBC article  "Ghost Ships":

China is sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, violently displacing smaller North Korean boats and spearheading a decline in once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70 percent.

In March 2020, the United Nations received anonymous reports from two separate nations alerting them to illegal Chinese fishing within North Korea's exclusive economic zone. The statements included testimonies from a Chinese crew confirming their government knew of the illegal fishing in North Korean waters.  

The Chinese fleet operating in those waters became known as the "Dark Fleet" because they often turned off their transponders when entering North Korean waters, hiding them from land-based authorities for months. [read more]

China’s gov’t doesn’t really care about any country except itself. China uses N. Korea as a distraction.