Per capita consumption of aquatic products grows, and China's aquatic product market scale will further expand
Due to China's rapid economic development, the main consumer market for aquatic products in China has expanded from traditionally fish-eating coastal regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Dalian and Shenzhen, as well as the eastern regions adjacent to the coast, to the central and western regions, and the consumption structure has also upgraded from meat to aquatic products. The main reason is that the consumption demand driven by economic development in these regions has increased in both quality and quantity. The gap in regional economic development has the characteristic of making this trend develop even faster.
The consumption of aquatic products is mainly concentrated in the eastern region, which is related to factors such as the economic development, residents' income level and product supply capacity of the eastern region. At the urban level, the provinces and cities ranking relatively high in aquatic product consumption expenditure include Fujian, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Hainan, among which the per capita consumption expenditure on aquatic products in Fujian and Shanghai reached 999.62 yuan and 817.64 yuan respectively (2010), while the per capita consumption expenditure in Zhejiang, Guangdong and Hainan was 713.79 yuan, 657.73 yuan and 669.83 yuan respectively (2010). In rural areas, in order to reduce the consumption gap between urban and rural areas, while promoting aquatic product consumption with cities as the focus, the Chinese government has also actively expanded aquatic product consumption in rural areas. In 2010, the consumption of aquatic products in rural areas of Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan reached 17.21 kg, 16 kg, 15.06 kg, 14.55 kg and 15.74 kg respectively, far higher than China's average level of 5.15 kg.
Therefore, in the future, China's aquatic product consumer market will, on the basis of industrial development such as the expansion of the distribution system and structural changes in consumer awareness, show a development pattern of spreading from the current urban centers to inland regions. In 2007, China's per capita availability of aquatic products was 36.23 kg, and by 2011, per capita availability had grown to 41.84 kg, an increase of 1.41 kg over 2010.
Recently, the tendency of urban aquatic product consumption in China has shifted from freshwater fish to marine fish, and consumer demand has begun to shift toward fresh frozen foods. In addition, the phenomenon of urban consumption patterns shifting from household consumption to dining out has accelerated.
Urban dining out mostly takes place in Chinese restaurants or Western restaurants, in the forms of entertaining guests, family gatherings and dates. Chinese people attach great importance to banquets, and it is a traditional Chinese culture that anyone who is invited to a banquet must invite the host back in return. Therefore, dining-out consumption by social groups is very high. While this growth expands in urban areas, it will also, along with changes in the food consumption structure, cause the overall aquatic product market to expand accordingly. Therefore, due to changes in household consumption patterns caused by economic growth and changes in the social dietary structure, as well as the government's policy direction of expanding demand, per capita consumption of aquatic products in China will continue to grow in the coming years, and at the same time, because China's overall population base is large, the scale of the aquatic product market will become even more enormous.