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A Chinese distant-water fishing firm has signed an agreement to build a fisheries base in Ecuador, despite tensions between the two countries this summer after a Chinese squid fleet encroached on the country’s waters.
China Ocean Group Development Co. has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mercado Común Del Sur (Mercosur) to build a pelagic fishery base in Ecuador. China Ocean Development Group Chairman Liu Rongsheng was joined by a number of other corporate executives, government officials, researchers, and retired diplomats at the official signing ceremony at the Sheraton hotel in Shenzhen.
Also present was Paul Penaherrera, Ecuador’s commercial counselor in Guangzhou, who also heads the local office of export promotion agency Pro Ecuador, as well as executives from the China Distant-Water Fishing Association, whose members include some of the fishing companies operate squid-fishing vessels in the Southern Atlantic. Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno protested their actions this summer, when a fleet of some 260 fishing ships, most Chinese-flagged, spent around a month fishing in international waters just outside a 188-mile wide exclusive economic zone around Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands.