China News Service, Guangzhou, November 9 (Reporter Wang Jian) China's ornamental fish industry is moving from "fish farming and selling fish" to independent sources, cross-border trade and standard export. The 2026 Guangzhou (Nansha) International Ornamental Fish Conference kicked off on the 9th. More than 300 industry representatives, scientific research institutions and leading enterprises from home and abroad gathered in Nansha, Guangzhou, to advance the topic from species display to seed industry innovation, hierarchical customs clearance, import and export supervision and industrial finance.
The special thing about this conference is that it hits a track that has been underestimated for a long time. my country's ornamental fish consumption continues to expand, and the annual output value of the aquarium industry in Guangdong Province has reached nearly 40 billion yuan. However, high-end arowana, special aquatic plants and other sources have been restricted overseas for a long time. In recent years, Guangzhou has made breakthroughs in technologies such as fully artificial breeding of arowana and mass production of aquatic grass tissue culture, promoting the shift from dependence on imports to independent and controllable high-end sources. Nansha has become the interface for this "breeding-cultivation-quarantine-export" system to go international.
Nansha’s confidence comes from industrial density and institutional pilot projects. In 2025, the local ornamental fish production will be 55.04 million, with an output value of 280 million yuan. It has gathered 24 entities in the entire industry chain and has been selected into the first batch of billion-yuan modern agricultural industry clusters in Guangdong. Relying on the agricultural opening-up cooperation pilot zone, an exclusive green channel for ornamental fish exports has been opened, and some enterprise products have obtained EU market qualifications.
More critical carriers are being implemented. Guangzhou Nansha International Ornamental Fish Ecological Valley is planned to cover an area of 733 acres with a total investment of over 1 billion yuan. It will be constructed in three phases and integrate the functions of "trade + seed industry + quarantine + service + culture". The first phase will build an import and export hub in line with EU and Southeast Asian standards. It is expected to complete the main project in 2028 and be fully operational in 2030.
During the conference, the main forum focused on "new seed industry, new wisdom" and "new sales channels and new markets". Officials from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, experts and scholars shared the stage with practitioners at home and abroad. They discussed not only how to raise fish well, but also how China can participate in the reconstruction of global aquarium industry rules and channels. From a fish swimming overseas to exporting a set of germplasm, quarantine, and circulation standards, the question Nansha is trying to answer is: can the next growth pole of China's recreational fisheries be upgraded from a "world factory" to a "world interface."
