Chinese has a long history of eating seafood. Especially for coastal residents, seafood has always been an integral part at the table. Seafood is a more efficient source of protein than meat and has additional benefits of nutrition. In recent years, Chinese consumers’ demand for seafood has been growing along with their consumption upgrading. In the next 10 years, China's per capita consumption of seafood will increase to 25 kg, and per capita consumption in urban areas will exceed 30 kg. This means that indigenous aquatic products in the Chinese market will be in short supply, thus there will be more overseas products exported to China to fill the gap. China's demand for imported seafood reached 7.6 million tons in 2018 and is expected to exceed 10 million tons by 2020.
With the upgrade of consumption, imported seafood is favored by more and more Chinese consumers. Boston lobster, Norwegian salmon, New Zealand abalone…Nearly all the world’s seafood are being served at Chinese dining tables. In 2018, China imported 11.91 billion US dollars worth of aquatic products, an increase of 3.62 billion US dollars from the same period last year. ASEAN, Russia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have become important sources of Chinese seafood imports. In 2018, ASEAN exported more seafood to China than Russia.
Nowadays, imported seafood from thousands of miles away is no longer an unattainable rarity to Chinese people. During the Spring Festival in 2019, buying semifinished dishes online for New Year's Eve dinner have become a new choice for the post-80s and 90s young consumers in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai,etc.The sales of Tmall semi-finished dishes have increased by 1,683% compared to the previous year. Among them, imported seafood such as Russian king crab and Boston lobster have been served to consumers in more than 120 shops of Hema Fresh in 20 cities. However, due to the restriction of policy, technology and cost, most seafood imported to China are frozen. Until 2018, import volume of frozen seafood accounted for 93% of the total import volume of seafood in China.
Source:www.food2china.com
