Quote:
Originally Posted by Bertuzzied
I'm pretty sure most the sharkfin served in the world is not in communist china.
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One of the reasons I'm critical of a shark fin soup ban in Canada or in the US, both minor consumers of shark fins, is that such a ban here won't really do anything to save any more sharks.
If most of the shark fin soup in the world was being consumed in America and Canada by Asian immigrants, then such a shark fin soup ban here would be brutally crude but effective nonetheless in saving some sharks.
However, the three biggest consumers, by a wide margin, of shark fins are in countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. If there's no similar ban in those countries, then there's no decrease in worldwide consumption because any decrease here will be nullified with increased consumption from those three countries.
Shark fins has always been popular in those three Asian countries, but the problem is that a growing middle class in China can now afford to indulge in shark fin soup when not so long ago China was a very poor country where its citizens couldn't afford such luxuries.
The problem really is that a growing Chinese middle class is not just consuming more shark fin soups, but also driving more cars, eating more red meat, generating more trash, etc.. In other words, they're consuming more and more like Americans, with the exception of the shark fin soup which is why there's so much controversy surrounding shark fin soup.
(Not to be too didatic, but I don't know if we should really call China communist even though the Communist Party of China runs China. Its not like we'd call the US a Christian Theocracy even when George W. Bush was their President. )