July 2014, fishing vessels moored in the port of a fishing village in Zhangzhou, Fujian, China, during the fishing moratorium. A fishing moratorium is a fishing ban period for the recovery of marine resources. China’s domestic fisheries resources have suffered from 40 years of severe overfishing which led to the decline and eventual collapse of the commercially exploited fish stocks. Overfishing in China’s own waters pushed its fishing companies to look for alternative fishing grounds overseas. West Africa has been the first and main overseas base of China’s distant water fishing industry since 1985. It is important that China includes sufficient sustainability principles and objectives in its fisheries management framework, for both domestic and distant water fisheries.