--- title: China Wants to Sell The World on Xinjiang Farmed-Fish description: China is marketing fish from Xinjiang as a triumph of technology and frontier development. But a new investigation reveals a deeper struggle over fraud, trust, and the political remaking of a heavily scrutinized region. canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/ author: Ian Urbina article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-10-09T13:00:03.677Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-09T13:00:03.914Z article:section: Climate og:title: China Wants to Sell The World on Xinjiang Farmed-Fish og:description: But a new investigation reveals a struggle over fraud, trust, and the political remaking of a heavily scrutinized region. og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1475908b6d69f059/6ac7a68b10ccec38105198cf/Hotan_Yujianjianglai_Aquaculture_Company_tells_you_that_every_fish_fry_is_a_promise_to_the_future.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2004 og:image:height: 1127 og:image:alt: Hotan Yujianjianglai Aquaculture Company tells you that every fish fry is a promise to the future.png og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: China Wants to Sell The World on Xinjiang Farmed-Fish twitter:description: But a new investigation reveals a struggle over fraud, trust, and the political remaking of a heavily scrutinized region. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1475908b6d69f059/6ac7a68b10ccec38105198cf/Hotan_Yujianjianglai_Aquaculture_Company_tells_you_that_every_fish_fry_is_a_promise_to_the_future.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # China Wants to Sell The World on Xinjiang Farmed-Fish > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=5a91a5a6-d285-4015-a69f-ae9a1a3590e5&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: China is Fish Farming in the Desert: Creating a "Blue Miracle" in Xinjinang [Watch (HLS stream): China is Fish Farming in the Desert: Creating a "Blue Miracle" in Xinjinang](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/AYPikCxW.m3u8) (13:18)  _Published 2026-10-09. But a new investigation reveals a struggle over fraud, trust, and the political remaking of a heavily scrutinized region._ by [Ian Urbina](https://time.com/author/ian-urbina/) ## Ian Urbina Oct 9, 2026 1:00 PM UTC by [Ian Urbina](https://time.com/author/ian-urbina/) ## Ian Urbina Oct 9, 2026 1:00 PM UTC When Chinese state television hailed inland salmon as a miracle in 2018, many viewers saw something more familiar: not a wonder, but a sales pitch. The segment, aired by China Central Television that May, celebrated [salmon farming](https://time.com/6199237/is-farmed-salmon-healthy-sustainable/) in western [China](https://time.com/tag/china/). Over images of sleek fish cutting through clear water, the narrator marveled that “a precious fish like salmon, which typically lives in the open ocean,” could now be raised inland, in the country’s barren western hinterland. The message was unmistakable. [Technology](https://time.com/collections/davos-2023/6246073/sandhya-sriram-shiok-meats-seafood-sustainable/) had made the improbable possible. “The land is the same land, and the people are the same people,” the program declared, “but when technology is brought in, miracles are born.” Online, viewers began poking at the claim almost immediately. Was that salmon at all, many asked, or just rainbow trout dressed up as something fancier? On Chinese social media, the mood turned from curiosity to irritation. “People expect Atlantic salmon, but we’re getting freshwater rainbow trout that costs half as much,” one Beijing-based WeChat account complained. “How could you not be angry?” Science writer Fang Shimin dispensed with niceties: “This is cheap rainbow trout being passed off as expensive salmon. If you don’t want to deceive consumers, just call it rainbow trout.” Such anxieties would only grow larger as China worked to sell an idea that, not long ago, might have sounded implausible: seafood from the desert. As China has rapidly expanded its fish farms as part of a state policy aimed at self-sufficiency, it has developed at least 1,000 fish farms in Xinjiang, a historically restive region located in the country’s mountainous and desert inland. [The Outlaw Ocean Project](https://theoutlawocean.com/), a news organization in Washington, D.C. that I founded and run, mapped these farms as part of a sweeping [investigation](http://foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com) showing how much seafood is reaching the U.S., including government facilities, in violation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). The distrust was not irrational. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said this year that while there is no official global estimate for seafood fraud, empirical studies suggest it may exist in up to 20% of the worldwide trade, sometimes appearing as species substitution and other kinds of misrepresentation. For most people, seafood comes with an expected geography. Salmon belongs to Norway or Alaska. Cod evokes the cold North Atlantic. Shrimp suggests warm coasts and estuaries. Xinjiang, by contrast, calls up deserts, surveillance, cotton fields, and the Chinese government’s mass detention, forced-labor, and assimilation campaign against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, along with the long, hard distances of the country’s far west. The most landlocked patch on the planet, Xinjiang is among the last places many people would associate with premium fish. And yet for years, Chinese officials, state media, and seafood companies have been trying to teach consumers to do exactly that. They have promoted “Xinjiang seafood” as one of the small wonders of a new China: fish raised in glacial meltwater, in cold mountain reservoirs, in alkaline lakes, and at farms built against the edge of the desert. The imagery is always some variation on the same promise. Geography is no longer destiny. Harsh landscapes can be made productive. A remote frontier, disciplined by engineering, can become a source of delicacy and pride. In that sense, Xinjiang seafood is not merely an agricultural product. It is a narrative achievement. The state-led campaign to create that narrative matters because it offers a rare window into Beijing’s worries about food security and its methods for redirecting Western attention away from its human rights problems. It also showcases China’s larger ambitions of using industry to help settle a historically restive region. This campaign saw its zenith in 2023, when Xinhua News Agency reported that the “Xinjiang seafood” label had surged in prominence on Chinese social media. Government data from that year show Xinjiang as China’s second-largest producer of “salmon,” trailing only Qinghai Province on the Tibetan Plateau. Its success is also relevant to what Americans eat, as the Outlaw Ocean Project found that seafood from Xinjiang ends up in the U.S. in violation of federal law. One company, called Tianyun, now ships to 14 countries, including the U.S., and distributes to food companies that supply military bases, public schools, and U.S. congressional cafeterias, according to [Bait to Plate](https://baittoplate.theoutlawocean.com/?preview%5Fbypass=2a9c8b1e-5c3d-4f0e-9c7a-1b2d3e4f5g6h), an online tool that tracks the fishing and seafood industries. [Xinjiang Tianyun](https://foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com/discussion/45ea60f1-dd3a-49dc-92a5-22d5a55ec852) said in a statement that claims of systemic forced labor “are completely factually unfounded” and described the UFLPA as an unreasonable and politically motivated framework that violates the principles of fair international trade. Xinjiang Tianyun insists that it strictly abides by China’s laws on labor and contracts and resolutely protects the legitimate rights and interests of every employee. The 2018 salmon dispute exposed how fragile China's narrative of achievement in Xinjiang can be. To some consumers, the issue was simple: they feared they were paying salmon prices for a cheaper fish. But the outrage ran deeper because it also touched food safety. That same year, the Chinese food-safety expert Zhong Kai warned against serving trout raw, citing parasite risks common in freshwater fish. “I do not recommend eating it raw,” he said, advising thorough cooking. Online commenters accused state media of misleading the public. This was “not the salmon ordinary people think of,” they wrote. Masami Takeuchi, a food-safety officer at the FAO, noted that illnesses caused by eating raw freshwater fish can be serious, even when symptoms arrive late or are hard to trace. The fear, then, was not simply that consumers were being overcharged. It was that they were being sold an aspirational image that obscured material differences in the fish itself. That anxiety found ready soil in a country where food scandals have repeatedly taught the public to distrust official reassurance. China’s aquaculture industry has expanded at staggering speed, and with that expansion have come the familiar pressures of industrial animal farming: crowding, disease, waste, chemical intervention, and a recurring mismatch between the pastoral language used to market food and the industrial realities that produce it. A 2020 study in _Nature_ found that aquaculture has the highest antibiotic-use intensity per kilogram of biomass among major animal-production sectors, exceeding use in both humans and land-based livestock. Chinese researchers have warned for years about severe antibiotic abuse in the industry. Sedatives have posed another problem. Diazepam, sometimes used to calm fish during transport, has repeatedly shown up in official inspections despite being prohibited. In 2021, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs began requiring routine diazepam testing, and a 2023 paper in _China Food Hygiene Journal_ described diazepam residues as “widely detected” in water and seafood products. In 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an alert after detecting residues of prohibited substances—including malachite green, a carcinogenic veterinary drug—in seafood shipments from China, citing “significant public-health concerns.” None of this proves that Xinjiang seafood as a whole is fraudulent or unsafe. But it helps explain why the category has struggled to inspire a durable sense of consumer trust. In a food system often shadowed by contamination scares and labeling disputes, grand claims end up feeling less like reassurance than marketing. The more insistently officials and companies promoted inland salmon, trout, whitefish, caviar, and other products from China’s far west as a new high-value frontier, the more some consumers wondered what, exactly, they were being asked to believe. The answer, in part, was a story the state had been helping to write for years. As early as 2011, Vice Minister of Agriculture Niu Dun was urging officials to “enhance brand building and awareness of the market expansion of Xinjiang’s seafood enterprises.” A 2017 government Action Plan for Fisheries Poverty Alleviation and Aid to Xinjiang and Tibet and Xinjiang went further, instructing local offices to “strengthen communication and coordination with mainstream media” and to “systematically publicize the progress of fishery poverty alleviation,” thereby creating what it called “an environment of positive public opinion.” The phrasing was telling. Fisheries in Xinjiang were to be built, yes. But they were also to be narrated. That narration took many forms. Officials promoted fish-themed tourism. In Wenquan County, a local attraction described as “Xinjiang’s first cold-water fish theme park” invited visitors to tour a museum, sample whitefish sashimi and caviar, and even catch fish on site, weigh them, and bring them into town for processing. The scene was faintly surreal: a region associated abroad with coercion and repression recast domestically as a place of family outings, provincial pride, and specialty delicacies. The politics were never absent. They were simply plated more attractively. Then, in late summer 2023, the campaign accelerated. Posts about Xinjiang seafood surged across Chinese social-media platforms. Hashtags such as “Xinjiang welcomes everyone to come eat seafood” and “No joke—Xinjiang really does produce seafood” climbed Weibo’s Hot Search List. On Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, interactions tied to Xinjiang seafood jumped spectacularly. A seafood industry report later said that videos associated with “Xinjiang seafood” and “Xinjiang salmon” amassed more than 150 million views in 2023\. One widely circulated Douyin clip, “Xinjiang Salmon ‘Leaps’ onto the World Table,” drew more than 2.7 million views and helped touch off the frenzy. Like many of the videos that followed, it lingered on crystalline mountain water, gleaming facilities, and the visual incongruity of prized fish emerging from the country’s interior. Soon, the theme leapt beyond China’s own internet. YouTube, which is banned in China, saw a sharp rise in Xinjiang seafood videos that fall. The message was no longer meant only for domestic audiences. Xinjiang seafood was being staged for foreign consumption, too—not just as food, but as an emblem of innovation, abundance, and purity. The timing was hard to miss. On August 24, 2023, [Japan began releasing](https://abcnews.com/International/japan-begins-releasing-treated-fukushima-water-pacific/story?id=102523576) into the Pacific Ocean treated wastewater that had accumulated since the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Beijing denounced the move as “selfish and irresponsible” and imposed a blanket ban on Japanese aquatic products. In the tense weeks that followed, content promoting Xinjiang seafood leaned heavily on purity: glacial melt from the Tian Shan, cold inland reservoirs, waters safely removed from allegedly contaminated seas. Xinjiang seafood was being sold not only as novel or upscale, but as patriotic, safe, and strategically desirable. To some analysts, the speed and scale of the online surge suggested something more coordinated than ordinary virality. Fergus Ryan, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the pattern bore the hallmarks of top-down and algorithmic amplification rather than grassroots enthusiasm alone. In his view, the campaign may also have served another purpose: redirecting attention from mounting scrutiny of China’s seafood sector after an October 2023 [investigation](https://theoutlawocean.com/investigations/china-the-superpower-of-seafood/the-uyghurs-forced-to-process-the-worlds-fish/) by the Outlaw Ocean Project reported that seafood plants in Shandong had used thousands of Uyghur labor transfers to process fish destined for major Western markets. Against that backdrop, Ryan argued, the flood of upbeat Xinjiang seafood content functioned as a kind of information flooding, crowding search and recommendation systems with stories of “fishery miracles” rather than forced labor. Whether every post was centrally directed matters less than the political usefulness of the category itself. Xinjiang seafood offered the state an unusually supple symbol. It could suggest scientific prowess, dietary upgrading, regional development, ecological management, and ethnic harmony all at once. It could showcase “clean” water, advanced facilities, and smiling workers. Most of all, it could recast one of the world’s most scrutinized frontiers as a landscape of abundance. That ambition extends beyond domestic image-making. Beijing plainly hopes to export not just Xinjiang seafood but the idea of Xinjiang seafood. Yet that effort faces an obvious obstacle: In the United States, the UFLPA presumes that goods made wholly or partly in Xinjiang are produced with forced labor unless importers can prove otherwise, while in Europe, a 2024 forced-labor regulation will bar products made with forced labor from the E.U. market once it begins applying in December 2027. This is where the events depart from a conventional tale of food fraud. In many countries, misleading labels thrive because supply chains are opaque and enforcement is weak. In Xinjiang, opacity was part of the business model. The product itself was being woven into a larger political narrative about what the region was and what it was becoming. Fish farms were not merely farms. They were exhibits. Part of the effort to promote Xinjiang seafood involved government-orchestrated media tours for foreign journalists and vloggers, often called “frontier influencers” or “global stringers,” to visit Xinjiang, including its fish farms. After being shepherded to government-run facilities and through regions like Tibet or Xinjiang that are typically off limits to most other journalists, these influencers tend to create seeing-is-believing style videos that offer “happy life” testimonials from locals, while showcasing the region as a high-tech and indispensable hub for global development and “green” innovation. By 2025, Xinjiang seafood had become a recurring stop on that circuit. A state-funded outlet released a video featuring an American vlogger identified as Jack exploring what it called the “agricultural miracle” of a fish farm on the edge of China’s largest desert, the Taklamakan. That same month, a British creator toured a reservoir in Alar City and praised its role in both flood control and local fish production. A Russian student, one of the better-known foreign influencers working this terrain, filmed herself at a salmon farm in Nilka, announcing cheerfully that she had come to be “an employee for a day” and see the industry for herself. Some of the footage circulating during this push featured Tianyun, one of the companies caught up in the earlier inland salmon labeling dispute. Even some of the industry figures tied to those disputes were later recast as patriotic exemplars of frontier development. In 2025, one prominent executive from Xinjiang’s salmon business was honored in Beijing by the Communist Party as a “National Model Worker,” then pledged to help expand China’s salmon industry and improve the skills of workers from all ethnic groups. The symbolism was familiar by then. Commercial actors were being folded into a larger state story about modernization, unity, and progress in the far west. All of which points to the larger feat behind Xinjiang seafood’s rise. China did not simply have to learn how to raise cold-water fish in unlikely places. It had to construct a category and teach consumers how to feel about it. It had to make fish from a landlocked, desert-heavy, politically burdened region seem not only possible but desirable: clean rather than contaminated, premium rather than ersatz, modern rather than improvised, harmonious rather than coercive. That required hatcheries, reservoirs, feed, transport networks, and technical expertise. But it also required softer definitions, confident reassurances, staged tourism, influencer testimony, and a steady current of triumphal images. In the end, Xinjiang seafood is best understood not simply as a product of ponds, pipes, hatcheries, and feed, but as a product of narrative force. Fish flash through cold inland water; cameras glide across reservoirs; influencers smile into the desert light; officials speak of innovation and harmony. The image holds. Until, somewhere behind it, the old questions return: What is this fish, really? Where did it come from? What story is being wrapped around it? In Xinjiang, those questions do not fade when the meal arrives. They sit there at the table. _(The reporting for this story was part of a larger_ [_investigation_](https://foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com) _conducted by an international_ [_team of journalists_](https://foodforfeed.theoutlawocean.com/contributors) _based at The Outlaw Ocean Project._ Ian Urbina is the founder and executive editor of The Outlaw Ocean Project._)_ ## Transcript Mu. Ming Lee Tzu Pheng. China's remote and far west is known as the most landlocked place on the planet, a land of extremes scorching heat, Arctic cold, and seemingly endless deserts. Yet it's here that China is now driving one of the most remarkable and unlikely industrial transformations of the modern era. It is growing seafood in the desert. This undertaking is not simply reshaping an austere geography. It's redesigning the cultural identity and economies of the people who reside here. Yet it is in this same region that China has committed some of the gravest human rights abuses in recent decades. China calls it the blue Miracle. And for Beijing, this is a tale of how technology defeated nature to bring abundance to Xinjiang. China's Xinjiang region, located on the country's far northwest frontier, is a formidable landscape. It sits in near-total geographic isolation, ringed by some of the tallest mountains on the planet. The mountains, while breathtaking to look at work to keep much of Xinjiang starved of moisture, making it one of the most arid regions on earth. A huge swath of Xinjiang is taken up by China's largest desert, the Taklamakan. The desert is credited with having buried 20 different cities over the ages, and it has come to be called a variety of grim names the land of ruins, the Sea of Death. Less than 10% of Xinjiang has ever been fit for human habitation. Those who have eked out an existence here have mostly been nomadic herdsmen populations that include Turkic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Mongols and Tajiks. And it has been against these populations that China has committed gross atrocities over the last several decades, including mass internment, so-called re-education, mass surveillance, and forced labor. Ever since the Communist revolution, China has endeavored to transform Xinjiang from what it once considered a barren wasteland into a place of industry. Starting in the 1950s, Beijing has backed agricultural development, brought in factories, infrastructure and development projects in an effort to tie the region more closely to the rest of the country. Now, Xinjiang produces roughly 20% of the world's supply of cotton and is a major source of export crops such as tomatoes, lavender and wine grapes. It also produces oil and natural gas. Solar and wind energy and textiles. But of all of China's successes in Xinjiang over the last 75 years, growing seafood may be the most remarkable. Today, what is broadly called aquaculture is a global phenomenon. More than half of all seafood consumed by the world's population now comes from fish farming rather than wild catch. China has long been the world's superpower of seafood. It has more fishing vessels operating in more parts of the globe than any other country. It also has well over 200,000 ships in its own national waters. With the health of fish stocks threatened globally and some on the verge of collapse, China, along with the rest of the world, has increasingly turned to fish farming to satisfy an ever growing desire for seafood. Through the 1980s and 1990s, local governments in China converted tidal flats and estuaries into shrimp ponds and marine cages, building hatcheries, feed mills and export Infrastructure. By 2014, fish farms dotted more than 30% of China's shoreline, predominantly along its eastern coast. And though China's initial aquaculture boom did great business, it also did great damage. Waste went off from fish farms became a major source of pollution. In response, the Chinese government moved to restructure the aquaculture industry by relocating it inland. Enter Xinjiang, an inhospitable land further from the ocean than any other patch on earth. During the 1950s, Chinese geologists discovered aquifers under Xinjiang's Taklamakan Desert while drilling for oil and natural gas. The water the scientists pulled up was extremely salty, but the scientists next discovered how to chemically alter it to mimic seawater and make it more suitable for fish farming. These breakthroughs are part of the reason for why there are now more than 1200 fish farms across Xinjiang, producing roughly 200,000 tons of seafood annually. Though these 1200 farms today only make up less than 1% of all aquaculture in China, the growth of fish farming in Xinjiang is among the fastest in the country. This transformation was partly about geography and engineering, but also about anthropology. Apart from redesigning Xinjiang's land and its water, the Chinese government also needed to transform its people and its economy. It needed to convert the native populations from herdsmen to fishers, from nomads to sedentary farmers, from agrarians to entrepreneurs and investors. One company played a big role in this project the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or Zpc, a division of the Chinese army that now more or less runs Xinjiang. Land was seized. Training programs were implemented and enforced. State backed companies were launched. The reluctant were threatened with detention, and many were shipped out of Xinjiang to work in China's larger eastern cities. In recent years, the development of fish farming and other industrial projects in Xinjiang has involved more than a million people being held in detention camps, coupled with large scale land seizures, forced sterilizations and criminal penalties for Uighurs or other minorities speaking native languages, or practicing religious and cultural traditions. Albeit brutal. The Xpc and the Chinese government's efforts in Xinjiang have been productive. By the end of 2024, the Xpc partially or fully ran at least 42 fish farms in Xinjiang that collectively produced over $290 million worth of seafood. But it was not all stick rather than carrot. When it came to convincing Xinjiang locals to participate in fish farming. Consider the case of Tianjin, one of China's poster child companies in the PR campaign for Xinjiang Seafood. Tianyun became a government darling for its success in enlisting locals to participate in aquaculture. The company has built homes and given jobs as enticements for people to work for them. Every year, in a much publicized ceremony, Tianyun hands out stacks of cash on velvet lined platters to locals who have become investors in its fish farming operation. Who do you mean? You. Mean in other parts of China's PR campaign surrounding Xinjiang, seafood include media tours of the region for foreign reporters. The government has recruited food buffs, influencers and vloggers to record and post videos about the wonders of growing fish in the desert. Xinjiang. What? Can. I do for you? The messaging here is clear. After recent global outrage and economic blowback over inhumane tactics employed in the region, China is trying to reframe the world's perception of Xinjiang and the products it exports. In the US, all products made wholly or in part in Xinjiang are already banned under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or Ulpa. In response to written questions, Tianjun said that the EWF LPA is an unreasonable and politically motivated law that violates principles of free trade. Tianjun added that it strictly abides by China's labor laws and protects the rights and interests of its employees. What then, is really happening with the booming fish farms in China's hinterland? Not unlike what Australia, Canada and the US did in past centuries, settling their own frontiers, subjugating their own natives. China is engaged in a project in Xinjiang that's far bigger than seafood. It's aiming to save the depleted and polluted local waters off its east coast. It's trying to extract resources like green energy, fossil fuels, cotton, tomatoes, fruits and now a vital form of protein from a region that Beijing long viewed as an underutilized borderland. But the Blue Miracle is also trying to convert a native people into a dutiful workforce, and one that largely produces for the benefit of wealthier urban centers in the country's developed east. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/"},"headline":"China Wants to Sell The World on Xinjiang Farmed-Fish","datePublished":"2026-10-09T13:00:03.677Z","dateModified":"2026-10-09T13:00:03.914Z","description":"But a new investigation reveals a struggle over fraud, trust, and the political remaking of a heavily scrutinized region.","url":"https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/","keywords":["China"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1475908b6d69f059/6ac7a68b10ccec38105198cf/Hotan_Yujianjianglai_Aquaculture_Company_tells_you_that_every_fish_fry_is_a_promise_to_the_future.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ian Urbina","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ian-urbina/"}],"articleSection":"Climate","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1475908b6d69f059/6ac7a68b10ccec38105198cf/Hotan_Yujianjianglai_Aquaculture_Company_tells_you_that_every_fish_fry_is_a_promise_to_the_future.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hotan Yujianjianglai Aquaculture Company tells you that every fish fry is a promise to the future.png","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/climate/","name":"Climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/china/","name":"China"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/","name":"China Wants to Sell The World on Xinjiang Farmed-Fish"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"China is Fish Farming in the Desert: Creating a \"Blue Miracle\" in Xinjinang","description":"But a new investigation reveals a struggle over fraud, trust, and the political remaking of a heavily scrutinized region.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/AYPikCxW/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-10-09T13:00:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/AYPikCxW.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/","duration":"PT13M18S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/article/2026/10/09/china-xinjiang-fish-farming/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```