China’s ban on Australian lobsters has Asean members clawing way into market

Southeast Asian countries are fishing for more opportunities to get their lobsters onto Chinese plates, and analysts expect that the trend will not only intensify, it will become increasingly difficult to reverse the longer that Beijing’s protracted ban on Australian rock lobsters remains in effect.

Meanwhile, three Asean members – Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam – have strived to grab a greater market share by seizing on China’s crustacean demand that swelled during the 2010s as its middle class expanded.

The door for their lobsters to enter China has opened wider in the nearly three-and-a-half years since Beijing banned lobster imports from Australia in response to calls from Canberra for an inquiry into the origin of the coronavirus. And despite bilateral ties improving since last year, the ban has remained in effect.

The three members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) accounted for 6.8 per cent of China’s total import share last year – doubling the rate from 2019.

The increase also came as Beijing has been moving closer to its Southeast Asian neighbours to buffer growing geopolitical complications with the US-led West, while the vast market potential of the world’s second-largest economy has continued to attract Southeast Asian exporters to expand their presence.

Customs data shows that Indonesia ranked as the fifth-largest lobster exporter to China, with the value of such shipments reaching US$18.27 million in 2023, up nearly 44 per cent, year on year, and accounting for 2.9 per cent of the market share.

And Thailand, China’s seventh-biggest importer of this seafood, saw its lobster shipments increase 160-fold since 2019, from a total value of US$88,123 to US$14.1 million last year, or a 2.2 per cent